WhatsApp will limit forwarded messages to five
NEWDELHI: Instant messaging service WhatsApp plans to limit the use of forwarded messages to five individuals or groups in a bid to curb the spread of misinformation and fake news in one of its largest markets. The number is significantly lower than the limit of 20 for users elsewhere.
“Today, we’re launching a test to limit forwarding on WhatsApp. In India — where people forward more messages, photos, and videos, than any other country in the world — we’ll also test a lower limit of 5 chats at once and we’ll remove the quick forward button next to media messages,” the company said in an email on Friday morning.
On July 11, WhatsApp launched a new label to identify forwarded messages. The firm also plans to create a system for preventing the spread of fake news and provocative texts in consultation with academic experts and law-enforcement agents, it said in an earlier statement. Forwarded messages on WhatsApp have incited mobfury, triggering multiple cases of lynching across the country.
There are more than 230 million monthly active WhatsApp users in India. More than 1.5 billion people across the world use the messaging app.
“We believe that these changes — which we’ll continue to evaluate — will help keep WhatsApp the way it was designed to be: a private messaging app,” Facebook, which owns WhatsApp added. Ananth Padmanabhan, fellow at Centre for Policy Research, said its unlikely that WhatsApp’s new measures will curb the spread of fake news on the platform. “The real challenge for WhatsApp would be to see how these measures end up affecting the original business plan of being a merchant platform etc. Even if technical architectures can be suitably developed for each functionality, the market signal now seems to be that it is a private messaging app. This will certainly affect its transition to a wider platform,” he added. On Thursday, in its second notice to the US company in three weeks, the government warned that in the absence of adequate checks, it will treat the messaging platform as ‘abettor’ of rumour propagation and legal consequences will follow.
“When rumours and fake news get propagated by mischief mongers, the medium used for such propagation cannot evade responsibility and accountability. If they remain mute spectators they are liable to be treated as abettors and thereafter face consequent legal action,” the IT Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.
Prior to this the government had expressed “deep disapproval” about WhatsApp’s inability to prevent the spread of “irresponsible and explosive material”.
Fake videos and rumours of child-lifting circulated via WhatsApp have triggered lynchings in at least eight states.
Taking note of the recent incident in Bidar, where a 32-year-old software engineer was killed after messages about child lifters did the rounds on WhatsApp, the ministry rued that “rampant circulation of irresponsible messages in large volumes” on the platform have not been addressed adequately by the company.
“It is regretted that the enormity of the challenge and the rampant abuse happening in the country leading to repeated commissioning of crimes pursuant to rampant circulation of irresponsible messages in large volumes on their platform have not been addressed adequately by WhatsApp,” it said.