SoylentNews

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

In January, WhatsApp reduced the limit for forwarding content to five users or groups at a time. The feature had been trialled in India last year, in the wake of violence fuelled by rumours spread via the messaging service.

While the researchers didn't have access to private communications, they ran simulations based on the data they gathered from public groups to test the effect of forwarding limits on the spread of content.

They found that the five-forward limit slowed the spread of content by one order of magnitude. For example, if a piece of content would ordinarily take five days to reach an entire network, the limit would slow the spread to 50 days.

This would give fact checkers far more time to verify the truth of a piece of content, says Benevenuto.

But this delay depended on the virality of the content – how likely users are to share an image after seeing it. For highly viral content, the limits weren't effective in preventing it from quickly reaching a large portion of the network.

Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2217937-whatsapp-restrictions-slow-the-spread-of-fake-news-but-dont-stop-it/

Original Submission