Managing the spreading of fake news on WhatsApp

The recent events in India whereby dozens of people, usually outsiders or travelers, were maimed or killed in villages across the country because of false rumors spread on WhatsApp have reminded us of the potency of this messaging app in helping to incite senseless murdering of innocent people.  Indian villagers became suspicious of strangers in […]

The recent events in India whereby dozens of people, usually outsiders or travelers, were maimed or killed in villages across the country because of false rumors spread on WhatsApp have reminded us of the potency of this messaging app in helping to incite senseless murdering of innocent people. 

Indian villagers became suspicious of strangers in the past few weeks because of messages going around on WhatsApp about child abductors roaming the villages. In one particular incident, two innocent men were pulled out of their car and beaten to death by a mob who falsely accused them of stealing children. A popular fake video spread via WhatsApp shows a child abduction scene captured on security camera. The video displays two men on a motorcycle snatching a small boy from among a group of children playing on the roadside. The video may be fake, but the consequences are real.

It’s obviously not just India that is experiencing an exploding fake-news-spreading phenomenon on WhatsApp. WhatsApp has also been implicated for a yellow fever outbreak in Brazil after the app was used to spread anti-vaccine videos and audio messages. WhatsApp group administrators in Kenya have been described as a major source of politically motivated fake news during recent elections. The messaging app has also been blamed for massive misinformation campaign in the UK.

One of the traits of homo sapiens (human beings) is the tendency to gossip, and WhatsApp, more than any other app, enhances this in an easy-to-do and cheap way. With WhatsApp, we can embellish our gossip with texts, pictures, and videos. Gossiping can be quite serious especially in many under-employed communities. WhatsApp also facilitates gossiping and the spread of fake news by virtue of the speed at which messages can be spread with the app. There are approximately 1.5 billion users of WhatsApp in the world, with 200 million in India alone. So, messages can spread all over the place in real time. Because of the efficiency with which communicating can be accomplished with WhatsApp, consumers around the world are reading their news less and less on Facebook and are increasingly turning to WhatsApp. Another attractive feature of WhatsApp, at least from the perspective of consumers, is the privacy that you get in the app. Consumers want some protection when they put something out there; protection that they really don’t get on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

You should be aware that unlike Facebook or Twitter, WhatsApp, at least as of writing this article, has no algorithm to decide which content is shown to you and no facility for interrupting, for example, via advertisements, the communications within your private groups.

The end-to-end encryption of all messages sent through WhatsApp is a boon to consumers, though a huge source of headache to governments around the world. You see, when you send or receive messages (texts, pictures, videos) in WhatsApp, no one can read them when they are intercepted. Not even the developers of WhatsApp!  So, even if a government intercepts your message on WhatsApp, it cannot read it because the message is encrypted and the code to decrypt is not known to anyone. Thus, only the intended recipient can read the contents sent through WhatsApp. Many users may not be aware of this privacy feature of WhatsApp.

The end-to-end encryption in WhatsApp, although a God-sent for consumers in terms of their privacy, aggravates governments all over the world, who perhaps need to be able to intercept messages for the purpose of controlling crimes. I remember in the aftermath of the event of January 2015 in Paris in which seventeen people lost their lives due to terrorist acts, Britain’s then Prime Minster, David Cameron, wanted messaging apps banned if the vendors would not empower the government to intercept and read the messages that pass through the apps. 

As a WhatsApp user, you have some responsibility in managing the spread of fake news on the app. In the aftermath of the WhatsApp-inspired killings in India, WhatsApp developed a small program to educate users. It reportedly took out full-page advertisements in Indian newspapers penultimate week offering “easy tips” to identify fact from fiction. It suggests that users “cross-check information against reputable news sources and not share messages further if they doubt their authenticity.” WhatsApp 10-item bits of advice are available online, for example, at www.hindustantimes.com. 

The messages are: i) Understand when a message is forwarded, ii) Question and don’t share information that upsets you, iii)  Stories that seem hard to believe are often untrue, iv) Look for spelling mistakes and grammatical forms, v) Look online to see where photos in messages come from , vi) Check other links too,  vii)  Look at other news websites or apps to see if the story is being reported elsewhere (when a story is reported in multiple places, it’s more likely to be true), viii) Don’t share what you don’t believe, ix) You can control what you see in WhatsApp, x) Fake news often goes viral, so just because a message is shared many times, does not make it true.

As I have advised many times before in this column, using high tech comes with some responsibility on your part.