New WhatsApp Features To Check Online Information About Viral Messages
Image Source : Whats App Blog
WhatsApp rolling out new features which help users to quickly search the content of viral messages, Announcement by Company. A magnifying glass icon will start appearing next to WhatsApp messages which has been forwarded by more than five people or more people. By tapping up on it, It will open up online information related to messages to check if it is a common conspiracy or misinformation of message.
In the image feature released by Company, It is one example of a viral message that “Corona Virus Can Be Cured By Drinking Fresh Boiled Garlic Water” and once clicked on a magnifying icon it will search information about it and it claims as False.
Company makes an attempt to police misinformation on WhatsApp are difficult due to end-to-end encryption, So it is difficult to see contents of any messages sent on the service. This new feature will give facility to users to fast check the information about viral messages rather than company scanning messages for this kind of conspiracy. Also company says that any messages that are chosen by the person to search will be sent directly to the browser.
This is just the latest feature that was introduced by Comapany to try and stop the spread of misinformation. In April Whatsapp introduced a way to keep the limit of forwarded messages and after that viral messages can only be forwarded to one person only rather than five persons. Whatsapp has measured that after rolling out this feature, It cuts around 70% spread of viral messages though it is difficult to find out how many of these messages contained misinformation.