Hoaxes, Facebook Messenger Application Limits Message Forward Features

Photo illustration (Facebook)

JAKARTA - Facebook is back in fighting fake news or hoaxes on its platform. The company is now limiting the number of forward messages on its Messenger app.

Quoting Slashgear, Friday 4 August, users who use the application can only forward messages to five people at a time. If you try to add a new user to the forward list, the app will display a notification "forward limit has expired."

"Limiting forwarding is an effective way to slow the spread of viral misinformation and harmful content that could potentially cause real-world harm," said Jay Sullivan, Messenger's Director of Product Management, Privacy and Security.

It is known, Mark Zuckerberg's social network has its own reasons for limiting the message forward feature. Because, forwarding a message is so easy that many people just accept it, and do not know how dangerous the message is.

Not everyone takes the time to analyze the content of a message, especially if the message comes from someone they trust. That makes it all too easy to spread false information.

WhatsApp had this problem last year and immediately implemented a rule on how many times a message can be forwarded. A few months ago, WhatsApp also experienced a sudden spike in misinformation about COVID-19.

Currently, the addition of this feature is carried out ahead of major elections in New Zealand and the United States (US) in order to ward off misinformation. Apart from that, the way it works is very similar to the message forwarding limits available on WhatsApp.

Earlier in 2018, Facebook brought a similar feature to WhatsApp in India, expanding to the global market in January last year. Meanwhile, in April, WhatsApp narrowed the limit for messages that are often forwarded to one chat at a time.