According To Iran News, WhatsApp is to impose a strict new limit on message forwarding as the Facebook-owned chat app seeks to slow the dissemination of fake news, the company announced.

The world’s most popular messaging application, WhatsApp, has inadvertently become an epicenter of misinformation and rampant spread of fake news via videos and forwarded messages. With the coronavirus pandemic raging across the globe, the messaging platform will contribute its bit by imposing restrictions on forwarding, Sputnik reported.

Facebook-owned social media messaging platform WhatsApp stated on Tuesday that it will impose new limits on forwarding messages in an attempt to curb the spread of misinformation and retain the application’s original purpose of personal conversation.

From 7 April onwards, the company will categories any messages as “highly forwarded” if a given message is shared five or more times. As per the new rules, a “highly forwarded” message will not be able to be forwarded to more than a single user at a time.

“We know many users forward helpful information, as well as funny videos, memes, and reflections or prayers they find meaningful. In recent weeks, people have also used WhatsApp to organize public moments of support for frontline health workers”, WhatsApp said in a blog post on Tuesday.

Earlier, users of the application were able to forward a single message to 256 people. The limit on forwarding has been bought down over the years.

“However, we’ve seen a significant increase in the amount of forwarding which users have told us can feel overwhelming and can contribute to the spread of misinformation. We believe it’s important to slow the spread of these messages down to keep WhatsApp a place for a personal conversation”.

The moderation of data shared through the application has also been prevented due to the end-to-end encryption feature of WhatsApp.

But the new limit, imposed by recognizing highly forwarded messages, will to a certain extent constrain the rampant spread of misinformation.

The Indian government has written a letter to all social media platforms to curb the fake news that has been spreading during the time of the pandemic. India’s Ministry of Information Technology has advised the global tech giants to delete the fake news or provocative messages immediately.

Authorities in India have launched a massive campaign to bust fake news, as WhatsApp groups have lately been flooded with messages encouraging unscientific ways to fight COVID-19.

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Android users are up in arms online complaining that one of the most recent WhatsApp updates is draining their phone’s battery life by up to 50 percent in a matter of hours, regardless of active use. These solutions could help.

Some users suggested switching battery optimization from “Intelligent Control” to “Optimize” for WhatsApp or turning off WhatsApp Web, a sister application for your computer which allows you to use a web-based version of the messenger in your browser, RT reported.

Others suggested ‘force stopping’ the application before going to sleep to prevent overnight battery drain, or restricting background processing while also clearing the cache (though this is a rather extreme and annoying fix for an ongoing issue).

“It’s fixed in version 325. Not yet available in the Play Store though, but you can download it from the official site,” Reddit user _sinergie_ posted.

What’s happening?

Users reported alerts on their phone indicating that WhatsApp used battery “While in active use” for some 1.5 hours, despite the fact that they had only opened the application for a negligible amount of time.

Many have pinned the blame on Whatsapp 2.19.308 with OnePlus users seemingly the hardest hit. There are widespread complaints from irate Android users across the internet, from Google Play Store reviews to the OnePlus Forum, Twitter and also on Reddit.

In several extreme cases, users complained that the Facebook-owned instant messaging service accounted for almost half of their phone’s power usage.

“Was wondering why my phone was draining quite a bit faster than normal today. 16% battery drain from WhatsApp after only actively using it for less than 5 minutes today,” wrote one OnePlus 7T user.

“Was wondering why my phone was draining quite a bit faster than normal today. 16% battery drain from WhatsApp after only actively using it for less than 5 minutes today,” wrote one OnePlus 7T user.

Furthermore, people have complained of being unable to charge their devices fast enough to keep pace with the intense power consumption, adding that their phones have also begun heating up while they receive constant alerts about high power consumption.

However, some Xiaomi, Huawei, Samsung Galaxy users seems to be immune from the life-draining update and have questioned what all the fuss is about.

“S9+ user here who uses WhatsApp extensively. No change in battery life for the past few months whatsoever” wrote one bewildered user.

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By: Hamid Reza Naghashian

Do readers of this article know that WhatsApp messaging service is currently one of the most powerful social networks in the today’s world? This network today connects almost one billion people in the world and let them be aware of their condition and tastes. The creator and founder of this popular social network is a poor boy from a village in Kiev, Ukraine, who moved to the U.S. Instead of going to school, he joined Yahoo Co. and began learning programming. Jan Koum was hired by Yahoo Co. as infrastructure engineer. Coding in computing was a good business at that time but Koum was not after money and instead he was eager to flourish his talent and creativity. As a poor boy, he lived in a village in Kiev and he did not have even bread to eat. He worked as a sweeper in his village to earn his living and today the world bows down to him. But today money is still the only thing which is insignificant to him as he only thinks of scaling  the summit for creating a major link between all people in the world.

On the whole, Koum processes over 30 billion of messages which are exchanged by the users. Koum recently has announced that by the yearend, the number of WhatsApp messenger users will surpass one billion people.

Life story of this talented prodigy starts from a day in February 1976 when Jan was born to a poor family who were living in a small village in Kiev, Ukraine. Poverty was the main word and maybe the only word that Jan’s parents and family know it very well. But 16 years later, everything began to change.

In a cold and windy night in the winter and in a bleak house because of poverty, his father said that it was difficult to continue living in the village and decided to send his family to the U.S. to live but he himself decided to stay in the village to finish his job. After moving to California, the U.S. government gave them assistance to have an apartment to dwell and Jan, who was then only 16, began to work as a sweeper in a store. He later launched a food-staff booth in collaboration with his mother. They had hard times to earn their living. But five years after their presence in the U.S., Jan’s father died in Ukraine and his mother could not bear it and she died later. Their deaths put Jan under heavy psychological pressures.

In the high-school, Jan revealed his interest in computer networking and programming and later he enrolled in the university but he failed to finish his study and joined Yahoo Company. There he continued programming. In 2009, an idea stroke his mind and he decided to write a program which was later become famous and popular in the world. Koum named the app “WhatsApp” to sound like “what’s up” which is common among the people. And that app was the current WhatsApp messaging service which is used by millions of people which link and feed them with information and messages. The CEO of Facebook acquired Koum’s app services and company for $19 billion, turning him into an instant billionaire, worth an estimated $7.2 billion.

Today WhatsApp is one of the most advanced, fastest, comfortable and popular apps in the world which can get along with any language or taste in the world and we Iranians consider it as the safest place for our dialogues and exchanges of information or messages. But the question is: Is WhatsApp really a safe for us Iranians?

Recently after some allegations on questioning the safety and security of WhatsApp for its users, spokesman to the WhatsApp has told the Guardian daily, “In WhatsApp’s implementation of the Signal protocol, we have a ‘Show Security Notifications’ setting (option under Settings > Account > Security) that notifies you when a contact’s security code has changed. We know the most common reasons this happens are because someone has switched phones or reinstalled WhatsApp. This is because in many parts of the world, people frequently change devices and SIM cards. In these situations, we want to make sure people’s messages are delivered, not lost in transit.” He added, “Over one billion people use WhatsApp today because it is simple, fast, reliable and secure. At WhatsApp, we’ve always believed that people’s conversations should be secure and private. Last year, we gave all our users a better level of security by making every message, photo, video, file and call end-to-end encrypted by default. As we introduce features like end-to-end encryption, we focus on keeping the product simple and take into consideration how it’s used every day around the world.”

He reiterated that the company has implemented the signal protocol and it has added the option of show security notifications in its security section.

This option will help the users to get informed in case a stranger tries to intrude through changing the key. The way WhatsApp messaging service implemented the protocol, new keys are generated when – for example – a user gets a new phone or reinstalls the app.

Several factors may lead to change in the key as one can mention when the user is to change his SIM Card in the smart cellphone. The spokesman reiterated that the app does not want the messages are lost or missed when the user is changing the SIM Card. This is some sort of security which is taken into consideration by the experts. They believe there is essentially no social security in WhatsApp messaging service and information of users like in other apps or social networks can be passed to other and it is not wise to have fully trust on this app or any other apps in the social networks.

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