[ad_1]
<img class = "js-image-replace" alt = "This folder photo taken on March 22, 2018 shows apps for WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and other social networks on a smartphone in Chennai. Indian police urged people on June 27 not to believe false rumors about WhatsApp after five new incidents of fierce crowds attacked people and left a dead woman and a dozen wounded
AFP
are first exposed to the Internet thanks to low-cost smartphones
The government of India has asked the WhatsApp messaging service to act urgently to stop the spread of "irresponsible and explosive messages" on its platform after a series of days. deadly attacks. But will that have an effect, asks Ayeshea Perera of the BBC.
What messages are sent?
The statement comes amidst a wave of crowd lynching that has killed at least 17 people across India in the past three months. Media reports put the death toll higher.
The violence was put on the count of rumors of kidnappings, prevalent on WhatsApp, which led people to attack foreigners.
Police say it's hard to make people believe that the messages are fake. One of the most recent lynchings, in the state of Tripura, in the north-east of the country, was an employee of local authorities who circulated in villages with a loudspeaker, asking residents not to believe that rumors circulated on social networks.
The Indian government said that the company can not escape the "responsibility and responsibility" for the content that its users share.
Why is the situation out of control?
The series of attacks is becoming more alarming and shows no signs of slowing down.
The Indian Telecommunications Regulatory Commission says that there are more than one billion active mobile connections in India and that millions of Indians have started to connect in a very short time.
For the vast majority of them, their first point "Suddenly, people in rural areas in particular are inundated with information and are unable to distinguish what is real from what does not happen. is not, they tend to believe everything sent to them, "he added. Pratik Sinha, the founder of the fact-finding site Alt news, told the BBC in a previous interview.
Copyright of the Image
Getty Images
The Scene of the Recent WhatsApp Lynch Attack in Tripura
With about 200 million users, India is the largest market of WhatsApp. It is also the largest internet-based service available for people in the country. This means that it has a considerable reach, allowing not only messages to spread exponentially, but also allow crowds to gather quickly.
Because it's all about a personal email app, people are more inclined to believe the information they receive, because it comes to them through the internet. 39, intermediate of family and friends. As a result, the trend towards double control is very weak.
This will only worsen when India adds its 300 million Internet users in the next three years, said technology analyst Prasanto K Roy in the BBC. They will be non-English speaking, and most will be lower in the socio-economic pyramid with lower levels of literacy, he says. They will mainly consume video and music.
"Video is the easiest platform for fake news. It's so easy to misrepresent: just find an old video of a fight or a brutal murder on the internet, to describe it as something new and incendiary.minutes, it becomes viral, run on Facebook and WhatsApp. "
And the technology that he uses has made the situation even more complicated.
"WhatsApp is encrypted end-to-end, on the smartphone itself, which means that there is not even metadata – information like who sent a message and when it is so easy to get calls and text messages. "Even to WhatsApp itself," says Mr. Roy.
The company itself says this: "Only you and the person with whom you communicate can read this. who is sent – and no one comes in, even WhatsApp. "
that the service uses end-to-end encryption, it differs from services like China's WeChat, which must comply with the Chinese law that allows the company to do business. State to monitor messages.It is more similar to applications like Signal or Telegram, but these are not used by many people in India.
The government seems to be out of reach. law and order are apparently not sure how to handle viral messages on What sApp, or how to engage with technology companies to get them to do something.
The company told the government that it was "horrified by these terrible acts of violence", calling the situation a "challenge that forces the government, civil society and technology companies to work together".
Although he refused to make changes to the way he encrypts messages because "the way people use the application is still very private," he described several steps it takes to fix the problem. Media playback is not supported on your device
This allows users to leave groups and block people more easily. WhatsApp also plans to launch long-term advertising campaigns on public safety in India, the statement said, adding that it has already been linked with local organizations to help dispel the rumors circulated on its website. platform.
The company also announced that it planned to launch a program of engagement with law enforcement officials, helping them to share best practices on how the local police uses WhatsApp as a resource for their community.
It is also labeled messages that have been transferred from elsewhere. But Mr. Roy says it does not show you how much a message has been conveyed.
Should WhatsApp do more?
It depends on who you are talking to.
Nikhil Pahwa, the founder and publisher of the Medianama website, says that WhatsApp needs to evolve to help stop the problem. "Of course, platforms like WhatsApp are facilitators of freedom of expression and should not be censored, but that does not mean that they have no responsibility in situations like this one, "he told the BBC.
million. Pahwa says that there are several practical steps that the platform can use.
"For example, all messages should be treated as private, which means that people will no longer have the ability to copy and paste or forward messages, everything that is transferred will have to be made public, which could generate a message.
Getty Images
Law and order officials are ill-equipped to deal with rumors circulating on WhatsApp.
His other suggestions are: to allow users to report objectionable content and to have new users watch a mandatory video explaining how the platform works.
million. Roy says, however, that simply targeting the "messenger", when the biggest disinformation broadcasters on WhatsApp are political parties, is hypocritical. "Political parties, especially the ruling party, Bharatiya Janata [BJP] must adopt a more disciplined stance on the use of WhatsApp, as a nuclear policy of non-use, perhaps the answer for all parties From a legal point of view, while a message like this from the government worries WhatsApp, it is protected by the interim guidelines of the Indian IT Act, which recognize that these platforms are intermediaries and Mr. Roy says that although these guidelines specify a "removal" process for websites to remove objectionable content, it is unclear what needs to be done with email platforms encrypted as WhatsApp., where traditional "takedowns" are not easy to implement.
