No More Forwarding of WhatsApp Messages to More than 20 Chats

From now henceforth, WhatsApp users will not be able to forward a message to more than 20 chats according to the new rules set by the Facebook-owned messaging app.

According to WhatsApp, the move is aimed at curbing the spread of fake news in most countries around the world.

In Kenya, prior to the last general election, WhatsApp was blamed for being behind the spread of fake news as well as hate messages in various counties.

In the recent days, attacks in India that have led to the death of more than 20 people have been blamed on false information that was spread via WhatsApp on child kidnapping and trafficking.

The messaging app has now a new feature that marks forwarded WhatsApp messages as ‘FOWARDED’. Users of the app across the world will not forward to more than 20 chats while those in India have been limited to five chats only.

According to stats released by the Bloggers Association of Kenya, Kenya has approximately 12 million WhatsApp users, ahead of Facebook which stands at 7.1 million. YouTube and Instagram are said to have approximately 8 and 4 million users respectively while Twitter users are one million.