WhatsApp forwards drop by 70% after curbs

A senior IT ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the communication was in response to the ministry’s query to WhatsApp on the steps it has taken to combat the spread of misinformation during the pandemic.

The number of times messages are forwarded on WhatsApp fell by 70% in three weeks after the private messaging app introduced curbs on “highly-forwarded messages” on April 4 to curb the spread of misinformation amid the coronavirus disease pandemic.

The reduction was registered globally among the 2 billion users on the platform.(Reuters file photo)

The reduction was registered globally among the 2 billion users on the platform.

The messaging platform released the statistics in a communication to officials of the Union ministry of information and technology this week, HT has learnt. The volume of messages on the platform, however, remains unknown.

A senior IT ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the communication was in response to the ministry’s query to WhatsApp on the steps it has taken to combat the spread of misinformation during the pandemic.

“We send routine queries to social media platforms, and WhatsApp wrote to us specifying that their virality of highly-forwarded has gone down by 70% after they reduced forwarding of highly-forwarded messages from five to one,” said the official. In India, too, the reduction was 70%, as per the communication.

A WhatsApp spokesperson said that this new change was brought in to keep the platform secure. “WhatsApp is committed to doing our part to tackle viral messages. We recently introduced a limit to sharing ‘highly forwarded messages’ to just one chat. Since putting into place this new limit, globally there has been a 70% reduction in the number of highly forwarded messages sent on WhatsApp. This change is helping keep WhatsApp a place for personal and private conversations,” the spokesperson said.

WhatsApp had announced on April 4 that highly-forwarded messages -- messages which have been forwarded five times -- can be forwarded to only one recipient. “Today we are announcing a new limit so that frequently forwarded messages can only be forwarded to one chat at a time. This limit kicks in once a message has been previously forwarded 5 times or more,” the company had said in a statement.