Hoax news is a big problem in today's world, especially for messaging platforms and social media. The more interesting the information rumor, the higher the chance of it spreading.
As a result, this hoax news has bad consequences, even fatally it causes riots until souls are lost. To overcome this, various platforms are trying to present features to prevent the spread of hoax news, one of which is WhatsApp.
In 2019, WhatsApp restricted users from sharing forward messages to more than five chats at a time. A year later it was reduced to just one chat.
Currently, WhatsApp enforces forwarding restrictions for messages that are viral or that are forwarded frequently. Once a message has been shared more than four times, it will be marked as frequently forwarded where it will be symbolized with a double arrow and a Forwarded label above it.
But with the changes in the beta version of WHatsAp, it looks like the restrictions will soon apply to regular messages as well. The Meta-owned service is reportedly trying to limit the forwarding of all messages to only one group chat.
According to a report from WABEtaInfo on WhatsApp beta Android version in v2.22.7.2 showing a screenshot that reads "Forwarded messages can only be sent to one group chat"
It's not clear why WhatsApp made this change, but it's possible it wanted to limit the spread of misinformation and rumors on its platform.
With restrictions on forwarding chats to more than one group at a time will force users to share messages individually in each group.
This is also expected to prevent the spread of misinformation.