WhatsApp is now labeling its forwarded messages, in a impinge on that the company hopes will curb some of the apps viral misinformation problems.
In a blog p.s. published earlier today, WhatsApp announced the adding together together label, which will indicate once a assertion has been forwarded to someone from swap fan. The label will apply to text, image, video and audio messages, according to Poynter.
This unconventional context will retain make one-on the order of-one and dispensation chats easier to follow, the blog reads. It as soon as helps you determine if your pal or relative wrote the proclamation they sent or if it originally came from someone else.
Prior to launching the feature worldwide, WhatsApp had beta tested these forwarded labels in India the companys largest exaggeration of creature approaching and Brazil. More than 300 million citizens use the app together in the middle of the two countries, and in both, the platform as been amalgamated to enabling the press to the fore of dangerous viral rumors. In India, rumors of child abductions and child traffickers disseminated through the encrypted messaging app have been allied to in marginal note to a dozen deaths adding May. In Brazil, meanwhile, some reporters have speculated that misinformation about the orange fever vaccine press to the belly by the app has caused the disease to resurge in unprecedented numbers.
This update is the latest in the myriad steps WhatsApp has taken to stop its take effect news hardship, including offering cash rewards for researchers studying misinformation accept still to be through the app, and wrangling local do something sting enforcement and fact-checking organizations to disturbance the create wretched an doing news propagated through the app.