Welcome to the Tech Mem Right Home for Tuesday, April 7th, 2020.

I'm Brian McCullough today.

What's App wants to make it harder for things to go viral.

AirB&B buys some runway, Foursquare merges with another location data company,

checking in with Masa San, and the latest startup to say it wants to blow up email and

unseat Gmail. Here's what you missed today in the world of

tech.

In an effort to fight fake news in this time of pandemic,

WhatsApp is now limiting the forwarding of viral messages

that have been forwarded five or more times to only one group at a time.

So let me say that a little more clearly.

If something has been forwarded to you on what's app more than five times

and you receive it, you will no longer be able to just mass forward it to every

single chat you're participating in. Instead, you will have to pass it along by hand one

forward at a time, quoting Alex Hearn at the Guardian.

The change does not completely prevent widespread forwarding since ultimately a message

can be passed on however many times a user is happy to hit the forward button. But by inserting friction into the

process the company hopes to slow some of the most viral messages on its

platform such as the widely spread falsehood that coronavirus is related to 5G.

That claim has led to the vandalization of more that an increase in the amount of forwarding which users have told us can feel overwhelming and can contribute to the spread of misinformation,

said a WhatsApp spokesperson in a blog post on Tuesday morning.

We believe it's important to slow the spread of these messages to keep WhatsApp a place for personal conversation."

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