What you need to know
- WhatsApp is tweaking its messaging reporting feature to better protect users' privacy.
- The feature will soon allow you to select the messages that you want to forward to WhatsApp.
- Currently, when someone reports a contact, the last five messages are forwarded to WhatsApp to help moderators understand the context to decide if the person needs to be banned.
Earlier this month, a report from ProPublica raised concerns about WhatsApp's content review system and claimed that the Facebook-owned messaging app undermines the privacy of its users.
While Facebook denied the claims and stressed the system's importance in "preventing the worst abuse on the internet," WhatsApp has now added the ability to report a specific message with the latest beta version of its Android app.
The feature gives users complete control over the messages they want to be forwarded to WhatsApp. As can be seen in the screenshots shared by WABetaInfo, the latest WhatsApp beta update lets users report specific messages from both individual and group chats. You can also report specific messages received from a business account.
WhatsApp's current message reporting system only allows users to report a contact. Once you report someone, the five most recent messages are forwarded to WhatsApp's moderation team. Facebook says this is done to help moderators better understand the context and decide whether or not the person should be banned.
If you have the latest WhatsApp beta installed on your phone, you should see a new "Report" option when you select a specific message. Since the feature is already functional in the latest beta build, it may not take very long for it to make its way to the best Android phones on the stable channel. In addition to Android, the feature is now live in the latest iOS beta as well.
The change comes less than two weeks after WhatsApp became the first popular messaging app to offer end-to-end encryption for chat backups. The feature is currently rolling out to users across the globe and can be used to protect backups on Google Drive and iCloud.
