In a Bid To Curtail Spread of Misinformation, Facebook's WhatsApp Now Tells Users When a Message Has Been Forwarded (hindustantimes.com)

In a bid to fight spread of misinformation on its platform, Facebook-owned WhatsApp announced on Tuesday that it is launching a new feature globally that will highlight when a message has been forwarded versus composed by the sender. At the centre of the issue is high-volume sharing of misleading and false information, often arching political and religious sentiments, that is tricking a significant number of WhatsApp users. (WhatsApp is used by more than a billion users worldwide.) From a report: From now on, WhatsApp will put a "forwarded" label on these messages. "This extra context will help make one-on-one and group chats easier to follow. It will also help you determine if your friend or relative wrote the message they sent or if it came from someone else," the company said in a note. "WhatsApp cares deeply about your safety. We encourage you to think before sharing forwarded messages. As a reminder, you can report spam or block a contact in one tap and always reach out to WhatsApp directly for help," it added. To see this new forwarded label, users are required to have the newest supported version of WhatsApp on their phones. Additionally, this week the company relaunched a campaign in India as part of which it is running full-page ads on several newspapers in the country to create awareness about the issue.

Comments

Slippery Slope to Total Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just a step in the direction of making us think that it is the big mega-corporation's job to censor what what we read.

Stop using anything from Facebook, please. Make them a small corporation again. Let them thrive in China where censorship will help them make money. But get them the heck out of my free United States democracy. They are dangerous.

Re:Slippery Slope to Total Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Overreact much?

This is Facebook finally, finally, deciding to add a snippet of highly relevant and useful metadata to some posts. Metadata that most every other service, including Twitter, has added routinely from the get-go.

Re:Slippery Slope to Total Censorship

[Falos]

I'm all for people abandoning facebook, especially the type in question (ie parrots inside echochambers).

I'm aware that censorship is a broadly-applicable word. It applies even to private platforms muting "hatespeech". Legal censorship is a thing. You can censor whatever you want, you don't even have to adhere to any concrete standards, you can do fuckall. That tends to contradict the noble posturing usually found nearby, however.

Anyway I'll happily swing the word around. But it doesn't belong here. This is a fucking FW tag. Nothing removed or prevented.

FW:FWD:FW:RE:FW:funny read to the end!! isn't censored. Though it probably will be if you post it anywhere intelligent.

Re:Slippery Slope to Total Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you're right. If there's anything anti-censorship activists can agree on, it's that providing people with more information is bad.

Re:Slippery Slope to Total Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the sales pitch that done it in. "We're doing this to curtail misinformation", has become highly politicised under a different term, that war on "fake news"*. So while personally I don't have a problem at all with adding a tag that says "this was forwarded from $source", at the same time I can easily see why people mistrust the announcement, exactly because of the spin.

So yeah, nice try but salespitch fail.

* And before you go pointing fingers at that disliked-by-CNN party well-known to have bandied around the term a lot recently, "progressive" "sociology" departments full of "critical theory" derps have done much the same thing. If they agreed with it, it was facts, if they didn't agree with it, it suddenly had to be relative, seen in context, etc. And they've been doing that at least since the '70s, though the hard core that originated "critical theory" has been at it since at least the '30s. Criticising things that you disagree with is the whole bread and butter of "critical theory" to the points that they now consider themselves "post fact". Academics that don't deal in verifyable facts. And still get to call themselves professor. Right.

Re:Slippery Slope to Total Censorship

[AmiMoJo]

Is the "Fw:" suffix added to email a form of censorship? Did it lead to greater censorship?

Re:Slippery Slope to Total Censorship

[mjwx]

This is just a step in the direction of making us think that it is the big mega-corporation's job to censor what what we read.

How? This is basically the equivalent of mail clients placing FW: in front of a forwarded message...

If anything I'd rather know if a message I receive is genuinely from the sender or something they've copied.

Re:Slippery Slope to Total Censorship

[cascadingstylesheet]

Is the "Fw:" suffix added to email a form of censorship? Did it lead to greater censorship?

Er, the Fw: prefix would be a form of oppression, if you couldn't $^&^& edit it or remove it.

Re:Slippery Slope to Total Censorship

[antdude]

Just stop using anything including /.. :P

Not really.

[Gravis Zero]

This is just a step in the direction of making us think that it is the big mega-corporation's job to censor what what we read.

Actually, It's one mega-corp trying to stop efforts from people who are deliberately misinforming you on their platform. They have no control of information you get elsewhere.

Let them thrive in China where censorship will help them make money. But get them the heck out of my free United States democracy. They are dangerous.

What's more dangerous is people that get their information from the internet without checking the credibility of the source. Facebook is full of these kind of people and they are doing real damage to our democracies.

Stop using anything from Facebook

I agree, social media has done far more harm to the world than good.

Re:Not really.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. They are.

Re:Not really.

[cascadingstylesheet]

Actually, It's one mega-corp trying to stop efforts from people who are deliberately misinforming you on their platform. They have no control of information you get elsewhere.

Two platforms so far, owned by the same corp.

Good thing we don't have a few internet mega corps who own multiple platforms. And all lean in the same direction, politically.

Re:Not really.

[Anne Thwacks]

Short Facebook shares now!

If you don't want false information, what are you doing on Facebook? even the stuff your friends post on Facebook is fake!

Re:Not really.

[Scroatzilla]

There is one big problem with your argument: The notion of "credibility" might *seem* objective. However, there is a little cottage industry ("fact checking") that *asserts* credibility while pushing misleading or false information (e.g. Snopes).
Social media is such a new and powerful paradigm shift in human communication that the knee-jerk reaction by well meaning folks to "stop false information" is understandable, but also extremely naive. Of course the algorithm and/or human beings will inevitably consider > to be false and the source of the > to be non-credible.
So, the only *free* thing to do is let information flow, allow people to decide for themselves, and allow things to happen as they happen. The only "destruction" of democracy that I see is that > are losing their ability to shape public opinion because human beings are able to share information more quickly and easily with each other.
I presume (hope?) that, if non-censorship prevails, we'll have a nice average of really really stupid and really really intelligent people who steer us approximately toward the improvement of humanity. My hope for the immediate future is that we all stop fanning the flames of far-left and far-right voices.

Re:Not really.

[Gravis Zero]

So, the only *free* thing to do is let information flow, allow people to decide for themselves, and allow things to happen as they happen. The only "destruction" of democracy that I see is that > are losing their ability to shape public opinion because human beings are able to share information more quickly and easily with each other.

That only thing they are doing is informing people if it's a mass communication, they aren't blocking information. Also, you greatly underestimate the ability to manipulate people. Have you forgotten Cambridge Analytica so quickly?

Re:Not really.

[another_twilight]

And all lean in the same direction, politically.

Yeah. Towards 'corporatism'. Everything else is spin.

Re:Not really.

[another_twilight]

pushing misleading or false information (e.g. Snopes).

Your use of the word 'pushing' makes it sound as though Snopes has an agenda that it is pursuing. I'd like to see some evidence to back up that assertion.

I've seen Snopes perform sloppy research. I've seen articles that were improved over time.

Snopes is no more authorative than Wikipedia, but both have the same thing going for them. They cite sources.

Snopes tells you what it did to reach the conclusion it has drawn. If those sources are incomplete, that's apparent. If information is from a source you consider biased, that's apparent. It raises the bar from the usual assertion and denial and that is invaluable.

Rather than criticising Snopes for not being perfect or unbiased, how about applauding the methodology? Encouraging people to demand sources and citations and then to check them, themselves is the only way to elevate conversation out of the 'he said/she said' nonsense of sensationalism.

There a many ways to shape perception by providing more information, rather than just restricting it. 'Letting it flow' is not an answer to information manipulation.
Criticism and analysis is, and whether Snopes has an agenda or is simply imperfect, they are at least attempting to provide both.

Facebook and whatapp?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll have to ask my grandma what those are like.

WhatsApp Flags Forwarded Messages

[grep -v '.*' *]

highlight when a message has been forwarded versus composed by the sender

So I suppose it'll also tag a copy/paste sequence directly from another message? That's just as hard (easy) as forwarding. (Actually, it's ever-so-slightly harder, but not really.)

What if I dictate it verbally? (if nothing else, split screen or 2nd screen.)

What if I paraphrase it?

So all they're actually doing is highlighting the FORWARD indicator. Like that's going to stop anyone from forwarding the message to start with? I really don't get this. (I really don't get Facebook / Twitter either, but that's another matter and just me.)

Re:WhatsApp Flags Forwarded Messages

[drew_kime]

So I suppose it'll also tag a copy/paste sequence directly from another message? That's just as hard (easy) as forwarding. (Actually, it's ever-so-slightly harder, but not really.)

Never worked tech support, have you?

Finally

[Ubi_NL]

I think their reasoning is bullshit, but i found forwarding a message in whatsapp a pain in the neck, as i always needed to send another message to say that i forwarded the previous one from Jack.

This is whatsapp catching up with an email feature we had 30 years ago.

Re:A billion users?

[Narcocide]

Bots are users too!

Re: creimer is fat and a gay

[Anonymous Coward]

I pity someone who spends their time making personal attacks against someone who hasn't posted here for months.

Re:Forwarded?

[sysstemlord]

No they don't use the message contents to know if it's forwarded. In WhatsApp there is a forward button on each message, if it's pressed, they add the tag.

Re:A billion users?

[sysstemlord]

Almost 100% of people in my country use it for all communication. It depends on where you live.

Re:Forwarded From:

[xvan]

I'm concerned with the privacy of this. Given that the ID is your phone number, an that's resolved to either a local/default nickname by the phone, such feature may have the consequence of spreading the phone number of the original sender without intention.

safety

[cascadingstylesheet]

Ah yes, it's all for our safety.

I wouldn't trust that bit of info there, comrade!

Rumor number

[Anonymous Coward]

What they need is a rumor number (the idea was developed by a friend of mine in high school).

The idea is this:
If I tell you something that I witnessed that is a rumor number of zero.
If you then tell someone else, then it is a rumor number of one.
They can then tell someone with a rumor number of two and so on.

Each forwarding would increase the rumor number, so if you get a message with a rumor number of 156, you can be pretty sure that it has "been around" and might not be the most reliable message (think the game telephone), whereas ones with number of 2-4, might just be worth thinking about.

Workaround

[iTrawl]

"If you're a true friend, please copy/paste this to your friends, don't forward it."

I'm seeing this on Facebook once in a while

Ugh, I use that

[AbRASiON]

To save me re typing some of my longer messages to particular friends. It's going to look bad on my part now