WhatsApp announced earlier that it’s limiting the number of contacts you can forward a message to one at a time. This was a step further into its direction of cutting down overshared messages, from the previous limit of five. And it looks like the strategy is working.
A WhatsApp spokesperson said that there has been a 70% reduction in the number of highly forwarded texts since. This is a massive increase from the 25% drop when it decided to push the forwarding limit further down.
When the new forwarding limit was announced, WhatsApp said that it has seen a significant increase in forwarded messages. And it’s understandable, as it was around the time when countries around the world were announcing social distancing measures to fight COVID-19.
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WhatsApp says this change helps keep the platform a place for personal and private conversations. The company also says that it is committed to help deal with viral messages. And with the current climate, chances are many of them contain unverified or even false information.
And it looks like the move has paid off. It would appear that those who don’t bother fact-checking before sharing can’t be bothered to take the extra steps in their forwarding as well.
(Source: TechCrunch)
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