{"id":3792,"date":"2016-05-14T16:08:29","date_gmt":"2016-05-14T10:38:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=3792"},"modified":"2016-05-14T16:08:29","modified_gmt":"2016-05-14T10:38:29","slug":"government-whatsapp-messages-forward-fake-news-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=3792","title":{"rendered":"What WhatsApp Gets Wrong About Its Fake News Campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

H<\/span><\/p><\/div>

eard that new ad playing incessantly on <\/span>radio<\/span><\/a>, stridently urging you to not spread fake news? Of course you have. If it weren\u2019t enough for WhatsApp to haunt your phone the entire time, it\u2019s now everywhere else also. <\/span>\n\nIt is safe to say that <\/span>WhatsApp<\/span><\/a>\u2019s had a bad year in India. Amid India\u2019s massive 4G revolution in the past 18 months, the platform\u2019s user base grew to a figure upward of 200 million, and though this sounds like a great boost for WhatsApp, it\u2019s not. In fact, it\u2019s quite frightening when lakhs of first-time users are trying to find their way around the world wide web, sharing any video and information coming their way, without bothering to verify it. It was all fun and games when we were just clogging the internet with our <\/span>Good Morning WhatsApp messages<\/span><\/a>, but in no time our habit of blindly <\/span>forwarding texts<\/span><\/a> has taken a dark turn. <\/span>\n\nUnfortunately for WhatsApp, its biggest market has quickly become its most problematic one. Fake news became a beast that India has not been able to tame and in the last two years, more than 30 deaths have been linked to fake WhatsApp forwards. In July, after a spate of <\/span>mob lynchings<\/span><\/a>, the government <\/span>issued<\/span><\/a> a warning to WhatsApp to \u201ctake accountability and responsibility\u201d for the spread of \u201cfake and provocative messages\u201d through its platform. \u201cFigure out how to get the country out of this mess,\u201d it what it basically told the messaging platform. <\/span>\n\nThis set WhatsApp off on a journey to make amends. It decided to limit the number of times messages could be forwarded in India \u2013 one person can now forward a particular message only five times. Also if someone who is not in your address book sends you a message, WhatsApp automatically asks if you want to block or report that user. \u201cWe\u2019ve also recently made a number of changes to <\/span>group chats<\/span><\/a> to prevent the spread of unwanted information,\u201d the company said in a statement.<\/span>\n\n

Fake news became a beast that India has not been able to tame and in the last two years, more than 30 deaths have been linked to fake WhatsApp forwards.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nIn the same statement, they also promised to up their act and start educational campaigns. This promise was backed by a print and radio <\/span>ad campaign<\/span><\/a> \u2014 that turned out to be uninspiring at best. First came the newspaper ad with \u201ctips to help you decide if WhatsApp messages were true or not\u201d. The list included generic gems like, \u201cyou control what you see\u201d, \u201cfake news often goes viral\u201d and \u201cbe thoughtful of what you share\u201d. The radio ads followed a similar script \u2014 understand when a message is \u201cforwarded\u201d, check information that seems unbelievable, question information that upsets you and be thoughtful about what you share. <\/span>\n\nMeanwhile, WhatsApp\u2019s latest addition to its \u201cwar against fake news\u201d are three 60-second video ads focused on <\/span>educating Indians<\/span><\/a> about the dangers of fake news and spurious forwarded messages. But all these videos do, is show you exactly how badly this \u201cwar on fake news\u201d was planned. The videos are cute, immersive, and relatable, but they all miss out on one crucial point \u2013 that they are \u00a0supposed to be educating the masses.<\/span>\n\nOne of the ads tells the story of a <\/span>young woman<\/span><\/a> who has moved away from home and uses WhatsApp to stay in touch with her family. When her uncle forwards a fake news message on the family group, she calls him to tell him that he should not share such rumours and convinces him to leave the group from where he sourced the offending message. In another, a <\/span>student<\/span><\/a> who is an admin of a class WhatsApp group warns a fellow student to not share fake forwards or else he\u2019d be removed from the group. In the third, a woman schools her mother on how to block senders who send inauthentic messages, and delete rumours. <\/span>\n\nThe effort to curb fake news is too little and more importantly, it\u2019s too benign. How many of these ads will even reach and eventually impact the 200 million-odd Indian WhatsApp users? And more importantly, how is someone new to the world of the <\/span>internet<\/span><\/a> supposed to distinguish if a piece of information is authentic or fake in the first place? The reason rumours spread, and outrage people enough to kill and lynch, is because they are genuinely believed. To change the way people consume information needs more than simply an expensive ad campaign.<\/span>\n\n

The videos are cute, immersive, and relatable, but they all miss out on one crucial point \u2013 that they are supposed to be educating the masses.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nThis is, at best, an exercise in being seen to do something \u2014 than actually doing something <\/span>impactful<\/span><\/a>. <\/span>\n\nWhatsApp, clearly, has taken direction from its parent company <\/span>Facebook<\/span><\/a> that set up a \u201cwar room\u201d to tackle fake news. While it unveiled a team of engineers, data scientists, and threat investigators to stop the spread of misinformation, it\u2019s hard to tell how impactful the campaign really was. A Guardian <\/span>report<\/span><\/a> on the war room points out that Facebook \u201cprovided minimal new information about its specific strategies and impacts when it comes to combating foreign interference and false news.\u201d For now, the war rooms have been <\/span>disbanded<\/span><\/a> although Facebook has promised to widen its focus to other parts of the world ahead of crucial elections. And in India, with <\/span>general elections<\/span><\/a> fast approaching, WhatsApp is racing against time. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\n\n\u201cWhatsApp\u2019s new measures are a band-aid, not a solution,\u201d Bal Krishn Birla, a tech <\/span>entrepreneur<\/span><\/a> from Bangalore, who runs a volunteer service Check4Spam <\/span>told<\/span><\/a> Time magazine. Birla, along with 15 others, checks if a news is fake or not. They receive anywhere between 100 and 250 messages a day which they verify using methods like the reverse image search, which can check the authenticity of an image or video, according to the report. But Birla believes the lasting solution lies in media education. <\/span>\n\nWhat India then sorely needs is a crash course in fake news. We need volunteers to go from town to town, village to village to spread awareness on how dangerous fake news could be. It\u2019s like the campaigns for polio or <\/span>AIDS <\/span><\/a>\u2013 first you make people conscious of the existence of something bad, then you tell them how to prevent it.<\/span>\n\nThe fight against fake news is a long one. A marketing ploy won\u2019t do. <\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the last two years, more than 30 deaths have been linked to fake WhatsApp forwards in India. After the government warned WhatsApp to “take accountability” for the unchecked spread of fake news, it set off to make amends. But are they enough?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":207,"featured_media":3793,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[197],"tags":[7104,7105,76,354,18,7106,7107,3367,7108,7109,7110,7111,7112,5420,939],"class_list":["post-3792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-ad-campaign","tag-chat","tag-death","tag-facebook","tag-family","tag-forward-messages","tag-general-elections","tag-government","tag-group-chat","tag-images","tag-mob","tag-print","tag-radio","tag-video","tag-whatsapp"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat WhatsApp Gets Wrong About Its Fake News Campaign<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In the last two years, more than 30 deaths have been linked to fake WhatsApp forwards in India. After the government warned WhatsApp to "take accountability" for the unchecked spread of fake news, it set off to make amends. 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