To say that WhatsApp has been sleeping on the fight against fake news will be total injustice to the platform as it if very evident that they are doing all they can to curb the spread of fake news through the messaging service.

What started with a simple limit of how many conversations you can forward a message at one time, evolved to tagging frequently forwarded messages as so and now, these same frequently forwarded messages are the subject of WhatsApp’s latest feature.

As spotted by WABetaInfo, WhatsApp is working on preventing the sending of frequently forwarded messages to groups. If a message has been forwarded more than four times, WhatsApp will make that message as “frequently forwarded” and thus prevent it from being sent to any group. In essence, limiting the number of people who get to see it, just in case it is fake news or hate speech.

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WhatsApp Frequently Forwarded Tag

The option to block frequently forwarded messages from being sent to groups will be hidden within the group’s settings and only group admins will be able to change this option.

Looking at all the features WhatsApp has implemented to curb the spread of fake news, they are all easily gotten around by simply copying the text and pasting it as a new message but the essence of these updates is to slow down how fast a message becomes viral. The said features are yet to roll out to the general public as they have all been spotted on beta versions of WhatsApp, maybe the company is planning on releasing all of them at once in a major upcoming update.