Why WhatsApp's Message Restrictions Will not Stop the Spread of False News



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WhatsApp announced yesterday its latest effort to fight the spread of fake news across its platform. His solution? Limit the number of "chats" to which you can send a message.

This decision follows a series of violent lynchings in India that were triggered by the dissemination of false information via Facebook's courier service. But what impact will the latest limitation of WhatsApp's features have on future recurrences? No doubt, very little.

Test

To recap, in 2016 WhatsApp began to let users forward messages to multiple chats simultaneously. It was basically the equivalent of instant messaging of the trusty "BCC" in the email. WhatsApp was caught in a storm of controversy after vigilante crowds descended on the streets of India in response to untruthful messages sent mbadively to kidnappers.

Searching the Details of the WhatsApp Announcement Yesterday Reveals As part of this test, users in India will be limited to 5 messages, while those sent elsewhere in the world will be able to send them to 20. But unlike some reports that suggest that these numbers are about individual people, they do not. & # 39; t – a "cat" may constitute a group, which may contain up to 256 people each. And that's where the problem lies

Group Discussions

Although most people do not have a lot of groups with 256 people, they could easily have multiple groups of more than 10 people . And if the desire is to send a message to as many people as possible to give maximum visibility to the warnings against child abductors, then they would surely be more inclined to choose their big focus groups . So, in India, WhatsApp users could still easily get a message to 50 people or more, and elsewhere in the world, that number could be in the hundreds. If each of the recipients was to repeat this action with each of its five or 20 larger groups, the exponential effect of this will always be significant.

WhatsApp thinks this move will significantly reduce the amount of spam and fake messages sent through his system, and yes, it can have an impact. But it's hard to see how this will really reduce the spread of false news.

In WhatsApp's defense, he's just testing the moment – so he can change things by badyzing future data. weeks. "We believe that these changes – which we will continue to evaluate – will help WhatsApp stay in shape: a private messaging app," said yesterday

. In truth, there is very little that WhatsApp can do. to fight people sharing erroneous information, run out of the cork on all of his activities and disconnect. Or it could delete the transfer feature in its entirety. But in light of the growing pressure the Indian government has had to take action, something has had to be done. And that's where this latest update comes from – it's responsive and, in the end, it'll likely prove barren.

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