At the beginning on April, WhatsApp rolled out new rules limiting the number of chats “viral or highly forwarded messages ”can be forwarded to at a time.
Viral message, in this case, is any message forwarded more than five times. The main move was to clamp down on the spread of misinformation – a more prominent issue, especially in the current virus outbreak crisis around the world.
As new reports suggest, this move has been successful as the company saw a decline of 70 per cent in forwarding of ‘viral messages’ precisely three weeks after the rollout.
“Since putting into place this new limit, globally, there has been a 70% reduction in the number of highly forwarded messages sent on WhatsApp. This change is helping keep WhatsApp a place for personal and private conversations,” the company spokesperson said.
So far, the results are quite impressive. Initially, WhatsApp restricted the number of chats that viral messages can be forwarded to at once to five in 2018 and that only resulted in a 25 per cent decrease in message forwards.
Via/BS