WhatsApp tries to prevent the messages from becoming viral to fight the false news

Image: brittany herbert / mashable

WhatsApp is taking its most spectacular step yet to reduce false news.

The application is testing a new feature that places limits on how many times a single message can be transmitted, WhatsApp announced on Thursday. The update comes as Facebook is scrambling to fight the outbreak of fake news from the courier application, which has led to a number of violent incidents in India.

With the change, WhatsApp will limit the number of times you can transfer a single message. In India, the limit will be five cats; it will be 20 in other countries. The application will also remove the "quick forward" shortcut that appears next to the media messages.

In its announcement, WhatsApp is running the feature test as a way to "keep WhatsApp as it was designed: a private messaging app." But WhatsApp is facing a growing crisis, caused by spreading false information throughout its application. In India, where WhatsApp is by far the most dominant messaging platform, misinformation has given rise to violent explosions, including several lynchings.

The Indian government has asked the company to address the issue. apparently taken seriously. The messaging application, which has historically made relatively infrequent updates to its main product, has made three major changes over the past three weeks.

Previously, the app added new admin controls for group chats. These updates, as well as the latest limitations on the content being transferred, are designed to prevent the content from becoming viral in the many group discussions of the application. The company also runs a public advertising campaign and pays researchers to study the problem.

For Facebook, these updates come at a time when the company is facing critical questions about its role in controlling content. CEO Mark Zuckerberg sparked outrage earlier this week when he appeared to be defending Holocaust deniers' intentions (he then tried to explain his comments), and the social network was strongly criticized for not banning InfoWars. 19659008] Facebook announced earlier this week that he would suppress publications "that could unleash violence", according to The Wall Street Journal, but it is unclear how the company plans to enforce the policy or how it will decide what constitutes credible threats.

With WhatsApp, the company seems to take a much simpler approach. As the company can not control the actual content of the messaging application, which uses encryption, it focuses instead on the difficulty of making problematic viral messages in the first place.