WhatsApp to tackle fake news after intiative by Government of India

ZackCodesAI · July 7, 2018

WhatsApp testing new label as part of steps to tackle fake messages

It all started with a fake video of child abduction from pakistan where two people try to raise awareness on child abduction but was taken out of context.

Quote-

"A CCTV footage of a little boy being snatched away by two motorists has been doing the rounds in TN, ‘alerting’ people about how kidnappers are operating in the city.

The video incidentally is not from India, but was an educational video made in Karachi. The video which is at least a year old was made in Pakistan to warn parents about child traffickers."

Source- https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/child-kidnapping-video-spreading-panic-tamil-nadu-actually-pakistan-81160

This was then said as 200+ traffickers entered the state of Tamil Nadu which enraged people and made them take suspicious looking people as kidnappers and killed them including a 65 old women getting lynched.

This also spread to the city of Bangalore, third major city of India and a man was killed there too.

Bangalore police now also has taken initiative to stop fale news via twitter

Source -

Following the mess, government of India forced WhatsApp to take action against fake news, to which the company replies -

Quote-

“We have been testing a new label in India that highlights when a message has been forwarded versus composed by the sender. This could serve as an important signal for recipients to think twice before forwarding messages because it lets a user know if content they received was written by the person they know or a potential rumour from someone else,” WhatsApp told the government adding that they planned to “launch this new feature soon”.

Source -

https://indianexpress.com/article/india/to-tackle-fake-news-whatsapp-to-govt-new-label-safety-ads-police-interface-mob-lynching-5246199/lite/#referrer=https://www.google.com&amp_tf=From %1%24s

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/horrified-by-terrible-acts-of-violence-whatsapp-tells-government/article24329188.ece

Update -

"RS Prasad, the country’s current Union Minister for Law and Justice, and Electronics and Information Technology, called on WhatsApp to focus on security-related aspects of its service last week, as India is its largest market with more than 200 million users."

Link -

Also, quote -

"WhatsApp responded the same day, saying it wanted to work with the government to tackle the spread of fake news. One of its major initiatives kicked off today, in the form of an ad campaign in national newspapers in various languages, that lists a number of steps people can take to battle misinformation."

Image from WhatsApp update linked below.

WhatsApp is introducing a reward based system where "researchers" will flag messages and if forwarded will have a flag on it saying if it's reliable or not.

Quoute -

"That seems to be different from the upcoming ‘Suspicious Link’ label, which has been spotted in a beta version of WhatsApp’s Android app by WABetaInfo, and labels messages that include links that may redirect you to different sites entirely"

Source -

https://thenextweb.com/in/2018/07/10/whatsapp-begins-its-difficult-battle-against-fake-news-in-india/?amp=1#amp_tf=From %1%24s

Update #2 -

Starting from 11 July WhatsApp rolls out flagging forwarded messages.

Quote -

"Starting today, WhatsApp will indicate which messages you receive have been forwarded to you. This extra context will help make one-on-one and group chats easier to follow. It also helps you determine if your friend or relative wrote the message they sent or if it originally came from someone else. To see this new forwarded label, you need to have the latest supported version of WhatsApp on your phone."

Source -

https://blog.whatsapp.com/10000645/Labeling-Forwarded-Messages