Users to forward a message to just one group chat

Apr 4, 2022 22:16 GMT  ·  By

There’s a lot of misinformation happening online, and as the world’s largest messaging platform, WhatsApp is very often involved in the whole thing.

The Meta-owned company isn’t necessarily happy with this, so it’s now working on making it much harder to spread misinformation on WhatsApp.

As discovered by WABetaInfo, WhatsApp wants to limit the option to forward a message to just one group chat. In other words, if you attempt to forward the same message to more than just a group chat, you’ll end up getting an error telling your that “Forwarded messages can only be sent to one group chat.”

Message forwarding limitations

At this point, the only warning related to forwarded messages on WhatsApp is a small notification displayed when a certain message has been forwarded too many times.

However, users are still allowed to continue forwarding the same message. But all this could change soon, as WhatsApp wants to make it harder for someone to forward a message to more than a group chat.

At this point, however, it’s way too early to discuss when this feature could go live for users. Furthermore, you’d better not hold your breath for its launch, as it’s all just an experiment for the time being, and WhatsApp could even drop it completely before the broad availability is announced. At this point, the message forwarding restrictions are part of the latest iOS beta, but without a doubt, a similar approach is also planned for Android devices well.

It remains to be seen when the new feature will be ready for prime time, but unfortunately, the company doesn’t afford to hold on to its release for too long. The misinformation happening right now is insane, especially given the recent geopolitical tensions, so the new feature would land just at the right time if it gets the go-ahead in a timely manner.