WhatsApp’s Forwarding Limit Seems To Be Working Wonders

During high-profile events, like elections and the current global pandemic, everyone is constantly seeking as much information as they can find and sharing it. Sometimes this information can be false or wrong, and given how fast messages can spread and go viral, this can be dangerous.

WhatsApp has in the past attempted to curb misinformation by limiting the number of people a message can be forwarded to, although more recently, the company has further increased those limitations by limiting highly-forwarded messages to just one person at a time. It turns out that it was a great idea.

According to a statement made by a company spokesperson, they told TechCrunch that ever since they introduced this new limitation, they are seeing a 70% decrease in highly-forwarded messages. “We recently introduced a limit to sharing ‘highly forwarded messages’ to just one chat. Since putting into place this new limit, globally there has been a 70% reduction in the number of highly forwarded messages sent on WhatsApp.”

This shouldn’t be surprising as due to the increased difficulty in forwarding messages, we imagine that some people just can’t be bothered anymore. Note that this only applies to messages the platform deems as highly-forwarded, meaning that if you want to forward other kinds of messages, those limitations should not be in place.

Tyler Lee
Categories: General
Tags: Apps, Whatsapp