WhatsApp's initiative to curb the false news is enough?

For SMHoaxslayer's Pankaj Jain, the rumored cancellation journey, started in 2015, took a hideous turn. Now he has to dismantle the false news that can lead to lynching, riots and deaths.

A series of lynchings across the country recently led to the deaths of 27 people. The crowd that killed them was triggered by a metamorphosed video on the kids traffic on WhatsApp. The incident prompted the government to deal with the situation and the Ministry of IT asked the platform to prevent the circulation of fake messages and provocative content. This resulted in a host of measures of the instant messaging platform aimed at limiting the wrong content. On Tuesday, WhatsApp announced the addition of a new feature, "forward", that would identify forwarded messages sent on its platform. The instant messaging platform has also deployed newspaper ads to educate the mbades about fake news. But is it enough to reduce the spread of false messages, rumors in the country?

"That's not enough," says Jain of SMHoaxslayer. According to him, the newspaper ads and the new feature force people to find out if a news story or a message is wrong, but people do not really care.

Jency Jacob, Editor-in-Chief of the Boom Live fact-finding website He says that even though a more demanding audience will probably be a little more cautious now, when he transmits these messages, a large number of people in semi- urban and rural do not have the ability to spot a false message.

India is the biggest market for WhatsApp and reached 200 million monthly active users in the country in early February, up from 160 million in November 2017. This growth is attributable to affordable prices data and the increase of smartphone ownership in the country. However, now it seems that the platform has bitten more than it can chew.

This is not the first incident of its kind but so far, social media, Google have been held responsible for spreading false news and content. The role of these platforms in the swing of the US presidential elections in 2016 put the issue in the foreground. But with the recent incident, WhatsApp is now in the spotlight and its parent company Facebook is again in trouble.

Despite the presence of fact-checking platforms such as SMHoaxslayer, Boom, Altnews and technology platform initiatives, the spread of fake news has not yet been verified.

What initiatives can be taken to control them? According to Pratik Sinha, founder of Altnews, a fact-checking site, this is not entirely the responsibility of WhatsApp. He thinks the government should introduce programs to educate citizens on the issue. "The primary responsibility lies with the government, that is, with the population that belongs to the lower economic strata: everyone transmits false news, but this part of the population acts accordingly. , "he says." Jacob calls on various stakeholders, including government, media and technology platforms, to reach out to people and spread digital culture.

However, the task of reducing the spread of fake news and messages on WhatsApp will not be easy, given the mbadive 200 million users that it has in India and the stress that this represents for privacy, which is the USP of the platform.