WhatsApp limits popular message forwarding to one person

WhatsApp will further restrict message forwarding. Messages that have already been forwarded ‘often’ will soon be able to be forwarded to only one person at a time. The limit was five. WhatsApp wants to use this to prevent the spread of disinformation, among other things.

According to WhatsApp, the service is currently being used a lot because of the corona virus. After all, people are now able to communicate physically with each other to a lesser extent. According to WhatsApp, this has the side effect of “a significant increase” in the number of forwarded messages. WhatsApp users would find this ‘overwhelming’, according to the service. According to the platform, this can also contribute to the spread of disinformation. WhatsApp therefore wants to prevent the large-scale forwarding of messages, to make the messaging service ‘a place for personal conversations’.

In concrete terms, messages that have been forwarded ‘often’ can only be forwarded to one person. When a message has been forwarded ‘often’ or is popular, WhatsApp will not announce in the message. The service does write that these messages have an icon with two arrows. According to WhatsApp’s FAQ, messages that have been forwarded more than five times will have this icon. It seems that from now on a message can be forwarded five times until the new restriction takes effect and the message can then only be forwarded to one person.

This is not the first time WhatsApp has imposed restrictions on message forwarding. In the summer of 2018, the service started a test in India, where messages can be forwarded to up to five chats. In January 2019, the service expanded this functionality to the rest of the world. According to WhatsApp, this restriction resulted in a quarter fewer forwarded messages.