WhatsApp Service stops users to forward a message more than five contacts. You can forward a message up to 5 members either they are family or friends. It is reported this act applied to control fake news and spam content spreading over WhatsApp.
Last time, there have been spreading a lot of misinformation over WhatsApp which had misguided the people during elections in India. Nowadays, there are elections again in India and Indonesia. So, WhatsApp made this strategy to restrict misinformation limited to some contacts. Even you can add a maximum of up to 256 members in a group for sharing so there are minimum chances that someone spread false news to a majority of people.
It is unclear WhatsApp has set this limit temporary during the elections or permanently for future. We don’t know how the users behave on this WhatsApp action. The consumer with a large family of 20 members couldn’t share its latest with relatives.