WhatsApp: WhatsApp will bring fake news verification model to India

Bengaluru | New Delhi: WhatsApp senior executives at its US headquarters and operations in India have met with the Electoral Commission as part of what the courier says is its efforts to prevent misuse of the platform in the electoral cycle in India. The courier service told EC that it would be looking for spam messaging techniques in preparation for the state surveys scheduled for the end of 2018, from the time the code of model is involved, and in particular 48 hours before the survey.

WhatsApp will also bring a false model of news verification that he recently used in Mexican general elections in India.

A person familiar with developments within WhatsApp who did not want to be identified confirmed that these meetings took place and that the team includes researchers and executives in charge of public policy, client operations and commercial development.

EC officials who also did not want to be identified told ET WhatsApp that she was in agreement to remain vigilant during the period when the code of conduct is in force and will redouble 48 hours before the beginning of the election.

The electoral campaigns in India stop 48 hours before the beginning of the election.

WhatsApp also told EC that it was committed to end-to-end encryption and privacy.

The WhatsApp team currently in India will also meet major Indian banks, which must be its partners in its peer-to-peer digital payment solution. EC officials and WhatsApp leaders said the lessons learned from the monitoring efforts in late 2018 state elections will serve to frame a broader approach to the general elections scheduled for 2019.

WhatsApp counts India as its largest market, with more than 200 million active users in February 2018. Based on voter data from 2014, this equates to roughly 24.1 % of the overall electorate. According to experts, this proportion will be considerably higher in the run-up to the 2019 polls.

Facebook representatives met EC in June and offered similar commitments.

Facebook and WhatsApp have both been under review in India and in many other countries for what regulators and critics have described as insufficient efforts to eliminate the false news and rumors.

India saw a wave of lynchings that followed rumors circulated in WhatsApp groups. The Center asked WhatsApp to take action and ET reported that a team of government officials has been set up to deal with the problem. The WhatsApp payment solution has not yet received any regulatory blessings.

WhatsApp intends to bring the Verificado model to India. Verificado was a collective fact-checking exercise by WhatsApp during the recent Mexican elections. The courier is undertaking a similar exercise in Brazil, where 24 media gathered to check facts and rumors.

A meeting between the WhatsApp team and BJP did not materialize. However, its leaders met with Congress representatives.

Divya Spandana, head of the Congress IT unit, said: "WhatsApp has assured us that they are taking every measure to detect spam behavior" and that "we have highlighted fake news by BJP ".

WhatsApp assured political party representatives that he "would not allow" spamming techniques on the platform, and no automated messages, "said the person quoted earlier at ET.

Another person familiar with developments at WhatsApp said that the company is now focusing on "preflighting" – eliminating "suspicious" users when registering.

The machine learning will be used to detect the sequential numbers used to create groups, said this person.

Sequential numbers usually come from the purchase of multiple SIMs at once from a telecommunications company. WhatsApp, say these people, will use tools to "distinguish good and bad users".

EC's efforts to combat the misuse of social media in the election campaign began in January 2014, with the formation of a 14-member committee. Several rounds of meetings were held, including with representatives of major social media platforms.