WhatsApp's 'forwarded' and 'forwarded many times' tags may not prevent the spread of …

Image: Getty WhatsApp’s ‘forwarded’ and ‘forwarded many times’ tags may not prevent the spread of misinformation as they are often misunderstood by users, new report suggests 29 June 2023 The purpose of WhatsApp’s ‘forwarded’ and ‘forwarded many times’ tags are often misunderstood by users and consequently may not stop the spread of misinformation, a new report suggests. The Loughborough University report, by Dr Natalie-Anne Hall, Dr Brendan T Lawson, Professor Cristian Vaccari, and Professor Andrew Chadwick, shares the findings of a study that interviewed 102 UK messaging app users at length about their experiences on the popular personal messaging platform. Misinformation can spread extremely quickly through WhatsApp – with high-profile cases emerging over the past five years – as the forwarding function allows users to easily send content from one conversation to another. WhatsApp introduced the ‘forwarded’ and ‘forwarded many times’ tags to alert users that the content has passed through multiple conversations and to prompt them to critically reflect on the source of the message before passing it on.   However, until now, the effectiveness of the tags was unclear. The findings of the Loughborough University study indicate that not all users understand the purpose of the tags, and
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