In a bid to curb fake news, Facebook-owned company WhatsApp had introduced the ‘Forwarding’ feature to sent forwarded message to others. Now the social-media giant is testing two new updates to improve the message sending feature.
WhatsApp is likely to add two new features- “Forwarding Info” and “Frequently Forwarded.” Both the features are under development. The “Forwarding Info” feature is likely to release in the next beta updates. Forwarding Info The “Forwarding Info” feature will help people to know about how many times a message has been forwarded or sent. One can get the idea about the information after visiting the Message Info section of the WhatsApp. Frequently Forwarded As of now, when we forward a message or a photo in WhatsApp, we get the label of “forwarded” above message text. In a new feature, when a message gets forwarded for more than four times, the WhatsApp will display the “Frequently Forwarded” label on the top of the message.
The freeware and cross-platform messaging app had put a global limit on forwarded messages to five people. This was done to ensure users that what they were reading or seeing, is not a composed one from their relatives, friend but forwarded from someone else. The “Forwarding Info” and “Frequently Forwarded” are likely to be a part of WhatsApp Android beta version 2.19.80.
The spreading of fake news and rumors has become a matter of great concern for the world’s largest democracy. With around more than 200 million active users in India, the spread of fake news poses a great threat to the country. We have also seen the misuse of WhatsApp for propaganda and spreading hate were reported in the 2018 Karnataka Assembly elections.
Earlier this month, Abhijit Bose, the India head of WhatsApp had announced that the messaging app would take concrete steps to identify and weed out fake news on the platform. WhatsApp is also conducting extensive research to understand the challenge of misinformation and how to tackle the problem effectively.

Source: financialexpress.com