WhatsApp is used by more than a billion people across the globe to stay in touch with their friends and family. The cross-platform messaging service has often received criticism for not taking enough steps to ensure that misinformation and rumors don’t flow from its service. There have been more than a few instances which resulted in violence after rumors against someone or a particular group of persons spread rapidly through WhatsApp. To that end, the Facebook-owned company has now announced that it’s placing a limit on text forwarding.
Speaking at an event in Jakarta, Indonesia today, WhatsApp’s vice president for policy and communications Victoria Grand said that the company is limiting the number of recipients a user can forward a text message to five. This limit will be enforced for all users across the globe to prevent “misinformation and rumors.”
“We’re imposing a limit of five messages all over the world as of today,” Grand said. WhatsApp previously allowed users to forward one message to 20 individuals or groups. The company imposed the five recipient limit in India first last year after the spread of rumors over WhatsApp led to killings. It’s now rolling out this limit to all users.
A new update is going to be rolled out in the near future in order to activate this new forward limit.