Misinformation and rumors are a big issue in today's world. The juicier the rumor, the higher are its chances of spreading like wildfire and having an adverse effect on society — even causing mob violence in some instances. To combat this issue, major messaging and social media platforms have various restrictions in place. In 2019, WhatsApp prohibited users from sharing frequently forwarded messages to more than five chats at once. A year later, it further lowered this limit to just one conversation. Now, the Facebook-owned messaging service is looking to restrict the forwarding of all messages to just one group chat.

Currently, WhatsApp has this restriction in place for viral or frequently forwarded messages. Once a message is shared more than four times, it is marked as frequently forwarded — they are denoted by a double arrow and a Forwarded label on top. However, going by the change in the beta program, it looks like the restriction will soon come into effect for regular messages as well. As spotted by WABetaInfo in v2.22.7.2 of WhatsApp beta for Android, users are shown a warning — "Forwarded messages can only be sent to one group chat" — whenever they try to forward a regular message to more than one group conversation.

It is unclear why WhatsApp is making this change, but it is possible that it further wants to limit the spread of misinformation and rumors on its platform. The limitation will make it annoying to forward a chat to more than one group at once — users will need to share the message individually in each group. This should be enough of a deterrent to reduce the spread of misinformation. It might also reduce the amount of unwanted memes and good morning messages on the platform.