WhatsApp had last week announced a new special function for COVID-19, it being launched yesterday, and coming after many, many, criticisms directed at the company behind the platform, from many quarters. Because WhatsApp has become a growing source of fake news, the company has launched a new function that almost completely limits the possibility of resending a message that has become viral through repeated resending by many people.
WhatsApp announced that a message that is re-sent by many different accounts, and is practically viral, can only be re-sent to one person, from one point, and not to 5, as is the case with the rest of the messages. The artificial intelligence that works behind the WhatsApp platform is the one that will automatically detect messages that have a lot of resending, probably regardless of the time period, and will limit the possibility of resending them.
WhatsApp: This is what the LAUNCHED function looks like Special for COVID-19
WhatsApp it will mark such messages with a double arrow, as you can see on the right side of the image above, and when resending to more than one person is attempted, it will display a notification, like the one on the right. Those messages will no longer be able to be "viralized" by those who create them, so whether it is fake news or something else, resending will be automatically limited, without the possibility of "lifting" the limitation.
WhatsApp he did not say whether he will differentiate between real messages, which should be re-sent to many people, and those with false information, so we have to assume that everything will be limited if it becomes too viral. The measure that the WhatsApp people take is an extreme one, but it is a very good one because it is almost impossible to block the viralization of false information, and apart from measures of this kind, not much can be done to stop them.
WhatsApp had this measure taken after very high pressure on the platform of the Facebook company, the false information being distributed in it for a long time without stopping, but now this limitation is finally being introduced.
