WhatsApp Releases New Feature…. Here’s How It Works!
I think we can all agree that parts of 2019 to date in 2020 will go down as the years of fake news if there ever was one.
The Covid-19 pandemic saw everyone becoming a medical doctor, a nurse practitioner, a scientist and even a newscaster!
The pandemic produced theories upon theories of the ‘cure’, ‘solution’, origins, statistics, and basically everything under the sun to do with Covid-19.
And the most popular medium for such news besides Facebook is WhatsApp. Everyday we wake up to news about a new ‘vaccines, cures, world leaders conspiring to wipe out human population with the virus, new tablets which can be drunk to cure the virus.
There’s just so much fake news which reads like real news when it comes to WhatsApp, people have become so confused and some have followed such advice to their detriment.
The Facebook owned WhatsApp has been on the front lines of fighting fake news, earlier this year they limited the number of people who can receive forwarded messages, to just 5 people only.
Now WhatsApp has taken it a step further by introducing the ‘search the web’ feature to help in spotting fake news especially within forwarded messages.
This new WhatsApp feature provides a search engine for users to search for forwarded messages and other content or news they might have received on the web. You can even verify content you saw somewhere without Whatsapp itself having seen the content.
How Does This New WhatsApp Feature Work.
Image by WABetainfo
The feature comes with a magnifying glass icon next to a forwarded message or in the chat box.
To verify its authenticity, tap on the magnifying glass and you will be taken to Google search which will establish if the news is fake or not.
It will also come with a feature which indicates that a message has been forwarded too many times. Two arrows will indicate that a message which has been received was not written by the forwarder themselves or a close contact of the user or that it’s been forwarded one too many times.
This new feature is now available in the following countries, Brazil, Italy, Ireland, Mexico, Spain, UK, and US for those who have the latest versions of WhatsApp for Android, iOS and WhatsApp Web.
The rest of the countries will follow, it is advised that one should update their WhatsApp so as to take advantage of the new features.
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