The WhatsApp forward was dramatic, with images of cash-filled boxes and an underground tunnel, all allegedly discovered by a raid on politician V K Sasikala. When Sadhna C's father received it, he called her for a fact-check. The Hyderabad-based IT professional found that “they were pictures from two completely unrelated news stories. The hoax had already been debunked online by then. I forwarded a clarification to my father,
who then sent it back on the group. There was no response,” the 25-year-old told TOI. WhatsApp has been grappling with a fake news and rumour-mongering problem in India, its largest base, where it has 200 million monthly active users. The November 2016 post-demonetisation hoax of 2,000 rupee notes with GPS chips is most vivid in recent memory. Bogus cancer cures and spurious quotes apart, there is another sinister class of WhatsApp forwards, which focuses on creating or worsening communal divides. A mild specimen of this type questions Indian celebrities who have married outside of their religion. “More than 90-95% of the disinformation online originates on WhatsApp. The proportion was lower about a year ago. But it has increased significantly in the last 6-9 months,” says Govindraj Ethiraj, cofounder of Boom Live, a fact-check and hoax-debuking website. With the 2019 general elections in sight, WhatsApp's parent company Facebook has signed on Boom Live as one of the fact checkers for news stories from India. The social network's head of public policy in India, and South and Central Asia told TOI earlier this month that political and issue-based ads on Facebook would soon be marked as such, with users being able to see who funded them. But WhatsApp itself is yet to make any move in this direction.
This week, the company announced new features for group messaging. Administrators now have greater control over who can add people or change the group title. A WhatsApp spokesperson told TOI over email: “We are working to give people more control over groups and are constantly evolving our tools to block automated content. In the run up to next year's election in India, we will step up our education efforts so that people know about our safety features, as well as how to spot fake news and hoaxes.”
Unlike Facebook or Twitter, a WhatsApp message does not show where it originated from, whether it was forwarded, or how many shares it has received. “There is no way to tell if a piece of information has reached 10 or 10 million. Unless WhatsApp takes more responsibility, this will remain the most insidious way of fomenting trouble,” says Ethiraj. Nikhil Pahwa, who is one of the founders of the Internet Freedom Foundation, sees WhatsApp as the “biggest media platform” in India. “It is a medium of mass consumption with lack of traceability,” says Pahwa.
Law enforcement is flailing. In April 2017, the Varanasi district magistrate and SSP issued a joint order saying that factually incorrect information, rumours or misleading information posted on a social media groups, including WhatsApp groups, could result in an FIR against the group administrator. However, in December 2016, the Delhi High Court had said that online group administrators could not be held liable for content posted on their groups.
India isn't the only one with a fake news problem. This March, Egypt announced a fake news hotline for its citizens. In April, Malaysia introduced an Anti-Fake News Act, which has been criticized by many for being overly broad.
The Cambridge Analytica scandal hit Facebook hard, as trails of how user data was misused to spread fake news and propaganda were established. Ethiraj says the impact has had “zero rub-off ” on WhatsApp. “A lot of people do not even know it is owned by Facebook,” he says, adding WhatsApp does have its upsides as an efficiency tool.
On Twitter, one can often find those posting false claims and misattributed quotes derisively referred to as products of “WhatsApp University.” Reddit has a community, or “sub-reddit”, dedicated to WhatsApp forwards called “theunkillnetwork” (“unkill” means uncle, the perceived demographic of middle-aged men who use the platform most enthusiastically).
Fixing accountability while maintaining user privacy is a tough call. “There is a misinformation problem in India, like globally, and we need more on-the-ground evidence on how sponsored political content is being pushed through social media. But this should not result in calls to weaken secure encrypted services,” says Mozilla technology policy fellow Amba Kak. “Instead, we need stricter scrutiny of social media spends by political parties and affiliated entities, and the channels through which this is routed,” she says.
Pahwa feels that to begin with, forwarded messages could be labeled so — a feature that WhatsApp is reportedly testing. “To be seen as a responsible actor genuinely interested in fixing problems, WhatsApp should hold public consultations on changes to its platform. They need to be accountable to users,” he says. (Copyright BCCL©India, 2018)
This week, the company announced new features for group messaging. Administrators now have greater control over who can add people or change the group title. A WhatsApp spokesperson told TOI over email: “We are working to give people more control over groups and are constantly evolving our tools to block automated content. In the run up to next year's election in India, we will step up our education efforts so that people know about our safety features, as well as how to spot fake news and hoaxes.”
Unlike Facebook or Twitter, a WhatsApp message does not show where it originated from, whether it was forwarded, or how many shares it has received. “There is no way to tell if a piece of information has reached 10 or 10 million. Unless WhatsApp takes more responsibility, this will remain the most insidious way of fomenting trouble,” says Ethiraj. Nikhil Pahwa, who is one of the founders of the Internet Freedom Foundation, sees WhatsApp as the “biggest media platform” in India. “It is a medium of mass consumption with lack of traceability,” says Pahwa.
Law enforcement is flailing. In April 2017, the Varanasi district magistrate and SSP issued a joint order saying that factually incorrect information, rumours or misleading information posted on a social media groups, including WhatsApp groups, could result in an FIR against the group administrator. However, in December 2016, the Delhi High Court had said that online group administrators could not be held liable for content posted on their groups.
India isn't the only one with a fake news problem. This March, Egypt announced a fake news hotline for its citizens. In April, Malaysia introduced an Anti-Fake News Act, which has been criticized by many for being overly broad.
The Cambridge Analytica scandal hit Facebook hard, as trails of how user data was misused to spread fake news and propaganda were established. Ethiraj says the impact has had “zero rub-off ” on WhatsApp. “A lot of people do not even know it is owned by Facebook,” he says, adding WhatsApp does have its upsides as an efficiency tool.
On Twitter, one can often find those posting false claims and misattributed quotes derisively referred to as products of “WhatsApp University.” Reddit has a community, or “sub-reddit”, dedicated to WhatsApp forwards called “theunkillnetwork” (“unkill” means uncle, the perceived demographic of middle-aged men who use the platform most enthusiastically).
Fixing accountability while maintaining user privacy is a tough call. “There is a misinformation problem in India, like globally, and we need more on-the-ground evidence on how sponsored political content is being pushed through social media. But this should not result in calls to weaken secure encrypted services,” says Mozilla technology policy fellow Amba Kak. “Instead, we need stricter scrutiny of social media spends by political parties and affiliated entities, and the channels through which this is routed,” she says.
Pahwa feels that to begin with, forwarded messages could be labeled so — a feature that WhatsApp is reportedly testing. “To be seen as a responsible actor genuinely interested in fixing problems, WhatsApp should hold public consultations on changes to its platform. They need to be accountable to users,” he says. (Copyright BCCL©India, 2018)