WhatsApp Moves to Rein in Your Crazy Uncle

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I know this is serious, but I can’t help laughing about it:

WhatsApp users will be blocked from forwarding messages to more than five individuals or groups under new rules the messaging service is rolling out worldwide to fight the spread of misinformation….The five-recipient limit was initially put in place in India last July. A larger limit, of 20 recipients, was put in place globally. WhatsApp said at the time the limits would “help keep WhatsApp the way it was designed to be: a private messaging app”.

….The limit was introduced last summer along with another feature to clearly label forwarded messages and the removal of a quick-forward button next to images, video and audio clips. The company says the measures reduced forwarding by 25% globally and more than that in India, which had one of the highest forwarding rates in the world.

So Uncle Doofus and Aunt Gullible will no longer be able to spam their entire extended family with an endless procession of idiotic tweets and Facebook posts. I suppose the smart ones will just create a few groups and keep spamming away, but how many smart ones do this in the first place?

Of course, this requires discipline from all of us. When your spamming elders call to ask you how to set up a group on WhatsApp, we all have to agree that the answer is that it’s not possible. Don’t screw this up! We must keep our grandparents and their generation in the dark about this. Remember: loose lips sink ships.

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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