sender. Well, this move comes after immense pressure from the Indian government to the messaging app to take immediate action to curb fake news. In July 2018, the Indian Government warned Whatsapp to take immediate and urgent action to stop the spread of “irresponsible and explosive messages filled with rumours and provocation”
The app is also working on a Suspicious Link Detention feature to curb the spread of spam messages, which they are currently testing on their beta version of the app. The feature will automatically detect and identify suspicious links which will redirect the users to fake news websites. And accordingly, will alert the user with a marked red label.
As Whatsapp groups are where the major problem lies, the app is giving more control to the group admins with the Whatsapp ‘Send Message’ feature. So now, the group admin can decide whether all the participants or only the admin can send messages on the group. This is essentially useful for large groups which are mainly fr broadcasting information. This reduces the chances of circulation of fake news as only those who can be replied upon will be given the control to send messages. The app also announced a grant of $50,000 for social scientists and research groups to propose projects to understand the fake news problem.
Step 3: Involving those whom we trust
Sure, the government does it’s bit by issuing warning, notifications and public announcements. But, do we actually pay close attention to those? Umm…not really! But, if your dad or your office colleague brings it up in a discussion you’ll probably think about it. Thankfully, the UP Police understood this psychology which they are using to curb fake news. Uttar Pradesh has been in the headlines for mob lynching and violence taking place over fake news and messages. To minimize these, the UP Police will be deploying ‘Digital Armies’ or volunteers who will keep a strict check on inflammatory posts and rumor-mongers. All the 1469 police stations in the state will shortlist 250 people from different walks of life including teachers, retired servicemen, retired army/policemen, student leaders, lawyers etc. Accordingly, each police station will have a Whatsapp group with 250 members. So if we multiply 250 into 1469, the state will have approximately 3,67,00 digital volunteers, helping curb fake news. Their role would be to inform the police about any incident or people who are spreading fake news and misinformation on social media.
Step 4: Forming a tech army
While the government is doing its bit to curb fake news, many other professionals have joined in for good. 22-year-old Lyric Jain, who is the founder of a UK based startup called Logically, has developed a machine learning algorithm which can examine fact from fiction. Here’s how it works. After sifting through all the top and biggest news stories, it highlights the features that make them fake. Like the headline, tone of the story, bias, inaccurate statistics etc.
Remember the news headlines which read the 2,000 rupee note being embedded with a ‘nano GPS chip’? Well, that was a fake news story which was first brought to light by Pankaj Jain, the founder of verification site SM Hoax Slayer. He began small by responding to messages to tell people that the message they are passing were not true and then he decided to take his cause further. On average he started getting over 150 messages from people every day, enquiring about the news content they receive on the mobile messaging service WhatsApp. Till date, he has debunked 1,300 fake forwards on Whatsapp. Likewise, a team of computer science experts from IIT, Delhi are developing an app which will be able to flag the fake news messages. The app will be able to colour code the messages – green for legit content and red for fake news.
Step 5: Sensitising the youth
Being a netizen, we’re already a part of the fake news menace and have no choice but to deal with it’s implications. However, we can hope to secure the entire generation ahead by sensitising them about fake news right from their education level.
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