WhatsApp wants to combat the false news and misinformation on its platform, one of the biggest evils that social networks are accusing at the moment and that has become particularly problematic in the courier service instantaneous . The unfounded shared news and the spread of message strings created with no other intention than to create confusion among its recipients have multiplied in recent times until the time has come to end it.

Facebook now announces the WhatsApp Research Awards awards that will be awarded to individuals who submit projects that help improve the platform and fight the spread of hoaxes with the help of proposals original. To encourage the search for really effective solutions, the company will organize a competition in which those who will be most useful will receive a prize of $ 50,000 . Details can be found on the project page and the deadline for submitting proposals is extended until August 12, 2018.

A program, by the way, that joins Facebook's program created in the month of April On this occasion, however, it was a new way to give rewards to those who discovered vulnerabilities in the social network.

Key Domains

Facebook, owner of WhatsApp, give some lines of action and key areas that they consider to be the highest priority to deal with, even though They already warn that proposals should not be limited to them alone. The areas that can most help resolve the conflicts that are currently being generated in the platform are: processing problematic content information, election-related information, networking and virality, digital literacy and misinformation; detection of problematic behavior in encrypted systems.

WhatsApp is designed to be a personal and private communication space and is not designed to facilitate trends or virality through algorithms or comments. However, these behaviors occur organically in the social dimensions. We are interested in projects that enhance our understanding of the dissemination of information through WhatsApp networks.

In this way, the platform covers many issues that have caused the most controversy in recent times, such as influence over the electoral processes or the carrying out of potentially illegal activities. A problem that faces the major networks and services that interconnect people as they increase their volume of users and now Facebook wants to stop to prevent WhatsApp from doing the same thing. object of scandals like those who had to face recently the company led by Mark Zuckerberg