If you’ve been using WhatsApp for some time now, or actually Facebook for that matter, you’ve probably come across those chain letter types of posts, urging you to forward an “important” message so you can stop something that is often fake news. If you don’t believe in those things, it can be really annoying, and if you do believe in them, we need to have a serious talk. WhatsApp is reportedly testing out a new feature that will let people know if what they’re receiving is one of those spam messages.
Two sites that watch out for new WhatsApp features have reported that some users are seeing notifications warning them that they are at risk of forwarding a spam message. If a message that you receive is also of this chain letter nature, you will receive a notification saying it “has been forwarded many times”. A spokesman from the company has declined to comment, which makes us believe that the feature is still in the top secret (although not such a secret now eh?) stage of development or they’re just testing it out and have no plans yet of releasing it anytime soon.
More often than not, these chain letters contain fake information, sometimes obviously. And yet people still forward them “just to be safe”, not knowing they can actually sometimes cause damage when people start to believe them. Facebook and Facebook Messenger have the same problem, so hopefully, they’re also working on something for the social media app to counter this.
Mark Zuckerberg’s recent announcement that they’re changing how people spend time on Facebook was met with applause by users tired of seeing brands and more importantly, fake news/propaganda on their timelines, and also dismay by publishers and pages. We’ll see in the next few weeks how this will work out with all stakeholders, and hopefully, WhatsApp will eventually join this with the rumored feature.
VIA: Tech Crunch
