We have come across news of many unfortunate events happening due to the spread of some sort of fake news on WhatsApp. Fake news spread like wildfire on WhatsApp and people tend to forward the news without checking if that news is authentic or not.
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WhatsApp Is All Set To Curb Fake Posts On Its Platform
It has been reported that WhatsApp is testing a Feature to help the users to detect suspicious links and spam messages that are circulated on WhatsApp. This feature is known as Suspicious Link Detection.
In a country like India, with over 1 billion active monthly WhatsApp users, the spread of misinformation is very easy. WhatsApp is on its way to launch a new feature to stop the spread of any ‘dangerous’ or fake news. It has been reported by the Washington Post that 8 people were killed in India due to the spread of misinformation in the last two months.
WABetalnfo has spotted this new feature in WhatsApp’s beta version 2.18.204 for Android. As per the blog post by WABetalnfo, the Suspicious Link Detection will help users to identify suspicious links by detecting any URL from the malicious or fake website.
This new feature a part of 2.18.204 beta version of WhatsApp on Google Play Store but is still under the developing stage. WhatsApp has given no official statement about the penalty for using a fake ID confirmation of this feature.
Here is how this new feature will work:
WhatsApp will flag the spam messages in red color and any malicious URL will come with a message that says, “This link contains usual characters. It may be trying to appear as another site.” The WhatsApp will send the warning again in case a user still wants to open that URL. The app will detect the URL locally instead of transmitting any data to the server to ensure the encryption of the messages.
If this feature comes into being, it will indeed curb the spread of misinformation to a large extent.
