I was forwarding a funny video to a couple of friends when I got the below message, stating that I can only share with up to 1 chat this message as it has been forwarded many times. This is apparently one of Whatsapp’s new limitations to disrupt false Covid-19 claims. I saved the video in my gallery and resent it, and I was able to forward it back to 5 people, which means WhatsApp is probably tracing the videos by their id or something, not by the content (not sure that’s even possible).

The new limit is one fifth the previous limit of five chats, imposed in 2019. Even if not 100% efficient, it’s still a good measure to limit, to a certain point, the spread of endless WhatsApp videos and more specifically fake news and misleading information.