Facebook Messenger will limit message forwarding to combat misinformation

We’re starting to enjoy following Jane Manchun Wong’s Twitter as the reverse software engineer posted another interesting find. After sharing hints about Instagram’s disappearing messages, and the option to hide certain stories for certain individuals, Jane has turned her attention to Messenger.

It appears that Facebook is working on limiting the number of people a message can be forwarded to. Jane demonstrated the option by trying to forward a test message to a couple of chats in Messenger, and when the number exceeded five, the following text appeared: “Can’t forward to more than 5 chats”.

 

Facebook Messenger is working on limiting the amount of threads a message can be forwarded at a time, in order to add frictions on misinformation pic.twitter.com/qRZcE0t4w6

— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) March 21, 2020

Introducing a limit to forwarding aims to cut spam and misinformation in social media. The issue has always existed but the current situation with the coronavirus pandemic emphasizes the need for such restriction. As is the case with most of the features Jane uncovers, the forwarding limitation in Messenger is still in a testing phase and it’s not clear when it will start rolling out.

“We're working hard to limit the spread of misinfo on our platforms, especially with #COVID19, and we’re exploring more options like testing stricter limits for how many chats you can fwd a message to at one time. This feature is still in development and not testing externally yet”, commented Alexandru Voica, EMEA communications manager at Facebook.