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Most of the writers are villagers and many are using for the first time smartphones that are incited to violence by rumors suggesting that some people are organ or child traffickers. Local authorities have tried to fight the dissemination of false news by warning the population and even paying street artists and "rum drinkers" to visit villages and preach caution. While he was addressing a crowd, one of these died Thursday at the hands of a crowd.
It's far from the first violence caused by spreading fake news online. But it is alarming to see so many deaths caused by newcomers on social networks who do not know how to be skeptical about scams and deception. Growing public sentiment and the deadly violence that drove 650,000 members of the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar out of the country were fueled by a hate speech that spread like wildfire, mainly via Facebook. Less than one percent of its population had access to the Internet in 2014, but today, a quarter of the country's 53 million inhabitants use Facebook. Given its rapid adoption and its use by the government to convey public messages, it is no wonder that UN human rights experts believe that the social network has played a role in the spread of hate speech Reuters . In recent days, WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, has given group administrators control over who can post messages. But it's harder to monitor what users say about these messages, given the end-to-end encryption of the service.
"WhatsApp strives to specify when users receive transmitted information and provide controls to group administrators to reduce the spread of unwanted messages in private conversations," said WhatsApp spokesman Carl Woog The Washington Post . "We have also seen people use WhatsApp to combat misinformation, including police in India, news agencies and fact checkers. We are working with several organizations to intensify our education efforts so that people know how to spot false news and hoaxes circulating online. "
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