WhatsApp not launching three blue ticks feature; don’t fall for fake news

WhatsApp: You might have heard news flying around that instant messaging platform WhatsApp could introduce a third blue tick to signify when a screenshot of the chat has been taken. Well, if you were wondering if it is true, here’s your answer – no. The news is fake, which means that WhatsApp is not planning to introduce any such blue tick, according to WhatsApp feature tracker WABetaInfo.

Currently, WhatsApp has the feature of two ticks – in case of an individual chat, a single grey tick says that the message has been sent from the sender’s side, a double grey tick says that the message has been delivered to the recipient, and a double blue tick says that the message has been read by the recipient. In a group chat this feature works differently, but that is a separate issue altogether. It is also notable here that users can also choose to turn their blue ticks off, which means that sender never finds out whether such users have only received their messages or have also read them. The converse is also true. But again, that is a separate issue.

Rumours were flying on the internet for some time, suggesting that the Meta-owned platform might be bringing in a feature to indicate when a screenshot of the chat has been taken. For this, as per rumours, a third tick would be introduced. While this sounds ridiculous – and a little repetitive since these exact rumours also fly around whenever any issue related to Facebook or a government keeping tabs on WhatsApp conversations surfaces – many internet users had apparently believed that such a feature was in the works.

Now, though, WABetaInfo has termed it as fake news in a tweet.

It must be noted here that WhatsApp does not have any mechanism at the moment to indicate to a user that another user has taken a screenshot of their WhatsApp chat or media shared over it.