WhatsApp Will Now Allow You To Verify Web Links And News Using Google: Here’s What You Need To Know
WhatsApp has introduced a new feature aimed at combating misinformation by allowing users to verify web links directly within the app using Google. This tool is designed to help users determine the authenticity of web links or news shared in chats.
How It Works
When you receive a suspicious link, you can now employ the built-in “Search the Web” option. Clicking this searches the information, or link, from reliable sources by using Google. It can help make users quickly realize whether the content shared is authentic or part of a fake news chain.
Why This Feature Matters
With the surge in false information, mainly through forwards, it provides a high degree of security when added to the list of features. This allows people to fact-check such questionable material on their own before touching upon it, especially in halting any harmful or misleading information from spreading.
How Misinformation Spreads on WhatsApp
With over 2 billion users worldwide, WhatsApp has become one of the most prominent platforms for communication. Unfortunately, this also leaves it vulnerable to all the challenges associated with the spread of misinformation, such as forwarded messages. Fake news, conspiracy theories, and misleading health information in unverified facts on numerous channels, especially during certain events like elections or the COVID-19 pandemic, have been blowing their way through the platform. With the encrypted nature of WhatsApp, monitoring and stopping the spreading of false information is extremely challenging.
Such messages forwarded can go viral within private groups and hit hundreds or thousands of users within hours. Because WhatsApp’s encryption can only be end-to-end, conversation information cannot be traced. This private aspect of privacy is very important for user security but also allows false information to pass unidentified and without resistance.
Availability
This is already being rolled out for beta versions of the app and will then be expanded to an audience more broadly. WhatsApp is and has always been all about user security and privacy, and this latest update won’t stray from those core tenets.
Overall, this is a huge step forward for keeping WhatsApp as safe a place to communicate by making it easier to fact-check.
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