WhatsApp Limits Messages to 5 Forwards in an Attempt to Prevent “Fake News”
Previously, it was possible to forward a single message on WhatsApp to 20 people and groups in total. However, in light of the increasing criticisms, WhatsApp has decided to limit this feature to 5 people. This change was announced at an event in Jakarta, Indonesia by Victoria Grand, the Vice President for Policy and Communications at WhatsApp.
Due to the nature of WhatsApp and the end-to-end encryption that is built into the app, there have been multiple instances over the years where it has become a platform to spread misinformation as you can easily pass along falsified reports, images, stories, etc. and there’s no way to trace the origin or stop the spread.
This revised feature was initially introduced in India where the widespread rumors and misinformation spread, leading to mob lynching and killings where 20 people lost their lives. There have also been reports to indicate that WhatsApp was used in the Brazilian elections last year by far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro in order to discredit his opponents.
The Facebook-owned messaging service was also instrumental in organizing a trucker strike in Brazil during May 2018. The impact of this strike was that roads were blocked for roughly 10 days and all manner of deliveries were not carried out, from fuel to shipments of commodities.
A great deal of criticism has been dished out to both Facebook and WhatsApp over the fact that the messaging service very consistently becomes a platform for fake stories and outright hoaxes right before significant events such as elections. Many governments have reached out to both Facebook and WhatsApp over the encryption utilized by the app. They feel that there should be some way for law enforcement authorities to access the messages being shared and that there should be backdoors in the app to help them solve these crimes faster.
However, WhatsApp along with security experts have stated that introducing backdoors is a much larger threat to security than not having them. They have said that there is great potential for abusing those backdoors and that users’ privacy will be much harder to guarantee since criminals and other nefarious entities could very easily compromise the app.