Facebook has placed a limit on the number of people you can forward a message to in Messenger. To prevent the spread of misinformation, you can now only forward a message to five people or groups at one time.
In an About Facebook blog post, Jay Sullivan, Facebook’s director of product management, announced the new forwarding cap in Messenger. This restriction was put in place to help curb the spread of misinformation about COVID-19 and the upcoming US presidential election.
In the post, Sullivan commented on the purpose of the forwarding restriction, saying:
Limiting forwarding is an effective way to slow the spread of viral misinformation and harmful content that has the potential to cause real world harm.
With the new forwarding limit in place, you can only forward a message to five people or groups at once. This is a huge decrease from Messenger’s original forwarding limit, which was 150 people.
Now, when you attempt to forward a message to more than five people or groups, you’ll see a notification that says “Forwarding limit reached.”
In April 2020, Facebook imposed a similar restriction on WhatsApp, limiting forwarding to fight misinformation. The new rule prevents users from mass-forwarding a message that has already been forwarded more than five times. This was also put in place to prevent the circulation of fake news.
In a post on Facebook, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted that the forwarding restriction on WhatsApp has been largely successful in stopping the spread of fake news. Zuckerberg said that he has “found it to be an effective method of preventing misinformation from spreading in many countries,” especially during “sensitive periods.”
Now that Messenger has a forwarding limit, there’s no telling how long this limit will last, or if the limit will become even stricter in the future. So, if you’re a forwarding addict, you might want to skip out on Messenger for now, and opt for another messaging alternative.