WhatsApp marks forwarded messages
WhatsApp is fighting fake news. This is a growing problem of the platform. With a new feature, WhatsApp wants to address this problem. Messages that have been forwarded will now be ‘forwarded’ to the label. This means that the recipient of the message sees it when it is a forwarded message. Why does the chat service enter this?
Fake news WhatsApp
Fake news on WhatsApp is spreading quickly through the forwarding of messages. Especially in India this is an issue with serious consequences. In India, 15 people have been killed in recent months by rumors spread through WhatsApp.
What does such a label achieve? WhatsApp hopes that people will see this message less as truth. For example, fake news or spam can be recognized earlier. For WhatsApp itself it is extra difficult to filter fake news, because the end-to-end encryption only allows the transmitters and the recipients to read the messages. A message that has been copied and then pasted into another call will not receive a ‘forwarded’ label. The question is whether this label will work.
The service is also working on making the messages more secure in other ways. It is said that the service will turn suspicious links red. So you see which messages with links are possible spam.
The function is gradually rolled out on the chat service. For this it is necessary that you have the most recent version of WhatsApp.