It’s a habit, which has grown into us – to check WhatsApp first thing in the morning. Sadly, the only messages one can find are the numerous Good Morning, Good Afternoon and Good Night messages. But, the worst case scenario is when you get repeatedly messages from the same person; which is bound to spam your storage. Not any more. WhatsApp has officially rolled out a limit to only five messages at a time for Indian users in a bid to curb the spread of fake news and provocative content. The new limit is applicable to only the 200 million users in India.
Fathima N J a, physiotherapist feels that her storage will considerably increase if this move comes through. She says, “This limit, I feel, has a lot of positives and negatives. All kinds of fake news and provocative content can be restricted. I get a lot good morning and good night messages which end up eating my storage. Hopefully with this, my storage space will increase.”
However, messages that actually might help in case of an emergency might get lost if this limit comes into action. Ngilyang Mica, a health professional, says, “Limiting forwards will bring about a good change. I have seen people forwarding pictures of the deceased, accidental deaths and more, which I feel can have an ill effect on some people.”
Chandrika M R, an IT professional who organises fests feels that this limit might restrict her from promoting these fests. She says, “With this limit, I feel forwarding of unnecessary messages will be restricted to an extent. But this move will also pose as a disadvantage to people who want to forward important messages. From time to time, I organise fests. This limit poses a problem as I will not be able to promote it or forwards details.”
Another youngster opines that despite it being a good move; disadvantages are bound to crop up. Sharon Alexandra says, “My images are full of only good morning messages. I’m constantly deleting most of these message from my inbox. During the elections, I constantly got messages from people telling me particular political groups to support or vote for which I felt was not nice. But having said this I feel that in this digital era, awareness on various topics are spread only through medium through WhatsApp. Recently I saw some video where a group leader threatened people who sang devotional songs. Awareness against such people can be spread only through these means.”
