WhatsApp to limit number of message forwards to five

The Centre’s notice came four days after a software engineer was lynched by a mob over child lifting rumours that were spread on the social media, including WhatsApp, in Bidar in Karnataka. Pointing out the Karnataka incident, the Ministry in its statement had also said that it was regretted that the “enormity of the challenge and the rampant abuse happening in the country leading to the repeated commissioning of crimes pursuant to rampant circulation of irresponsible messages in large volumes on their platform have not been addressed adequately by WhatsApp”.

“Today, we’re launching a test to limit forwarding that will apply to everyone using WhatsApp. In India — where people forward more messages, photos, and videos than any other country in the world — we’ll also test a lower limit of 5 chats at once and we’ll remove the quick forward button next to media messages,” the company said Friday, adding that it will continue to evaluate the changes in the features that will help WhatsApp remain a “private messaging app”.

The IT ministry’s second notice to WhatsApp asking it to further strengthen its systems had come after the company announced measures to counter the spread of rumours and unverified information, including letting only group administrators decide which members can post and labelling forwarded messages to distinguish between the messages that have been forwarded from the ones that have been created by the sender. Apart from the messaging app, Twitter, too last week announced it was expanding its effort to fight abuse and spam on its platform by removing the accounts that have been locked on account of suspicious behaviour.