WhatsApp is working on a new forwarded message flag for fighting fake news, and real-time stickers

WhatsApp is working on a number of new features, including a new ‘forwarded message’ notifier to notify users if a message sent to them is a forwarded one. [caption id=“attachment_4058841” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Image credit: WhatsApp[/caption] This new feature is likely to help the company prevent the spread of spam by informing users that the messages are being sent from a different WhatsApp chat and that the information is not first hand. According to a report by WABetaInfo, the message is flagged as ‘forwarded message’ if it is directly being sent from another chat, without any change or modification to the chat. The company has already tested similar methods to try and fight spam internally where the system would flag messages that have been forwarded too many times among different chat conversations with ‘Forwarded Many Times’. The report adds that the ‘Forwarded message’ flag was first spotted in the beta version of WhatsApp for Android, version 2.18.67. Apart from the forwarded messages flag, the company is also working on new real-time ‘time’ and ‘location’ stickers. [caption id=“attachment_4370971” align=“alignnone” width=“825”] WhatsApp forwarded message on iOS[/caption] [caption id=“attachment_4370973” align=“alignnone” width=“825”] New WhatsApp stickers on iOS[/caption] In a separate report by WABetaInfo, stickers will work like the responsive stickers that users may have already seen on Snapchat and Instagram, and the location of the user while sharing an image, with the location tab using WhatsApp. The responsive stickers were spotted in version 2.18.30 of Whatsapp for iOS.