The fight against fake news and false allegations is becoming increasingly important in social networks. Now WhatsApp would like to follow suit and use a new function to prevent the spread of fake news.
Since 2015, the spread of false news has reached one peak after another, be it during the refugee crisis , the corona pandemic or, currently, the war in Ukraine . Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and especially TikTok are flooded with fake images and videos.
For years, the respective “fact checkers” on social networks have been checking user-created posts for accuracy and taking action against false information.
WhatsApp now wants to follow suit with a new function and make it more difficult for its users to send or forward fake news.
In the latest beta version of WhatsApp, forwarded messages can only be forwarded ONCE. WhatsApp wants to prevent a chain reaction when fake news is repeatedly forwarded.
According to WABetaInfo, this is already available with beta version 22.7.0.76 of WhatsApp for iOS and for Android from beta version: 2.22.8.11. As you can see from the screenshot, WhatsApp will limit the ability to forward messages to prevent spam and misinformation.nfo.
Wasn't that already an issue?
Correct, because this blocking function is not new, as it was introduced in Brazil a few years ago. ( We reported ). This function will now be rolled out worldwide in a future update.
Another differentiation
In Brazil, a further differentiation is made: a message that has only been forwarded once can be forwarded to a maximum of five other chats there. A message that has already been forwarded several times, only once.
We already have a similar restriction!
The official WhatsApp page says:
“You can forward a message to a maximum of five chats at the same time. If a message has been forwarded frequently, it can only be forwarded to one chat at a time.”
However, the whole thing can be easily avoided!
Heise writes on this topic:
“However, the restriction only offers rudimentary protection against the mass forwarding of messages. Users can still simply copy the content of the message and paste it into a new message. There is no limit for this. WhatsApp itself points out that due to end-to-end encryption, it has no insight into how often a message is forwarded. For data protection reasons, this is determined using a counter in the metadata of the forwarded message itself. As soon as a message is newly created, forwarding is beyond the control of the provider.” (Source: Heise )
Notes:
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