WhatsApp testing alerts—Users will be stopped from forwarding fake news and spam messages

In the wake to combat spammy content on WhatsApp, the famous chat app is reportedly testing a new feature which would send notifications and alerts to users if they have received that have been received by other users and forwarded many times when they plan to forward the message themselves.

Some of the WhatsApp sites have featured screenshots of the testing feature which indicated the message is not labeled as spam or fake directly, but it would notify the user that the content has been shared frequently. If a user receives one of this type of message they will see “Forwarded Many Times” under the name of the sender, and if the user is about to send one of these messages they will see on the forwarding screen “A message you are about to forward has been forwarded many times”. However, WhatsApp spokesperson declined to comment on the feature where it has been tested and whether they will incorporate the change in future.

WhatsApp viral messages are okay, that’s the beauty of WhatsApp to share the content which inherently is viral but the spammy and fake news content must be notified which WhatsApp is focusing on. Some of the viral messages are targeted at stealing users data, tricks them to open sites that are spammy and download malware.

Spammy messages and fake news on social media is increasingly becoming an issue for all social media platforms. It’s a hot debate nowadays and companies like Facebook, YouTube, Google, Twitter are working tirelessly to tackle the growing problem of fake news.