The fight against spam messages and fake news hasn’t been rosy for Facebook and its subsidiaries, more so the popular messaging app, WhatsApp. But in the latest attempt to combat the spread of fake news, the chat app is now testing a new feature that lets users see the number of times a certain message has been forwarded.
The feature, discovered by the notorious WABetaInfo, is available in WhatsApp version 2.19.80, the latest beta update. However, obtaining this info needs you to jump through a hurdle or two.
Once you receive a message, you must also forward it to someone else and then open the Message info section, where this data can be found. If a message is forwarded five or more times, it is marked with a bubble saying “Frequently Forwarded.”
With this feature, WhatsApp hopes that users will be able to identify some messages as spam or fake news. Usually, such messages have a huge number of forwards.
Given that this feature is limited to the beta version, you must be using the latest beta in order to experience it right away. The APK file can be downloaded here, but you can as well wait for the official rollout, although we don’t know when this will happen.
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