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<br /><ul><li>Social networking companies like Google, Twitter and WhatsApp are initiating new measures to combat fake news in India ahead of the general election 2019.</li><li>Other countries around the world have implemented stringent anti-fake news laws to monitor activity on social media platforms. </li><li>These laws are often criticised for curbing the human right to freedom of speech.</li></ul>The Indian election is around the corner and social networking giants are increasing their efforts to fight off the menace of fake news after <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/nationalism-main-causes-of-fake-news-in-india/articleshow/66591404.cms">mounting pressure</a> from the Indian government. <br /><br />While measures like the WhatsApp <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/whatsapp-facebook-put-up-more-defensive-measures-in-the-face-of-increasing-fake-news/articleshow/68704503.cms">‘tip line’</a> and the tagging electoral campaign posts is a step in the right direction, curbing fake news in India has mostly been a ‘reactive’ process so far — with social media giants jumping into action only when prompted by regulators.<br /><br />Given that misinformation spreads so quickly, there are some countries -- such as Singapore and Malaysia -- that have put far more stringent laws in place to curb the menace. However, many of these steps have been strongly criticised for being a potential threat to free speech and an infringement on civil liberties. <br /><br />In France, the law even backfired on the government when it resulted in Twitter blocking their voter registration camp. The company claims that since they couldn't find a way to obey the letter of the law, the decided to avoid any potential problems altogether.<br /><br />Here’s a look at some recent laws on fake news around the world:<br />

WhatsApp and Facebook are ‘reacting’ to curb fake news — some countries enact prohibitive laws

<br /><ul><li>WhatsApp will play a crucial role in the Indian general <keyword id="3383007" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Election-2019">election 2019</keyword>.</li><li>Aside from misinformation, the primary concern is that WhatsApp groups will be used to exploit personal for political gain.</li><li>Users in rural India, in particular, have increased since the last general election in 2014. </li></ul>As the world’s largest democratic exercise kicks off in India, the influence of social media on general election in 2019 may be <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/general-elections-2019-election-commission-to-closely-monitor-social-media-regulate-all-political-ads/articleshow/68351473.cms">even bigger</a> than it was in 2014. <br /><br />WhatsApp, in particular, is a concern considering that India is its largest market with over 200 million monthly active users and 52% of smartphone users reported using it as a news source in one week. <br /><br />
  
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<br />Not only does that usage outrank <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/snapchat-partners-with-tinder-to-avoid-facebook-like-catastrophe/articleshow/68735964.cms">Snapchat</a> and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/facebook-is-reportedly-bringing-in-local-it-firms-to-moderate-fake-news-in-india/articleshow/67344852.cms">Facebook</a> Messenger, but it’s also much higher <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2019-03/India_DNR_FINAL.pdf">compared</a> to other countries around the world as per the India Digital News Report by Reuters. Officials from the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/bjps-5-year-challenge-follows-facebooks-10-year-challenge/articleshow/67586112.cms">Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)</a> have even <a href="https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/book-extract/india-whatsapp-election">dubbed</a> the upcoming elections as the ‘WhatsApp Elections’.<br /><br /><strong>The issue with ‘<keyword id="2479020" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Fake-news">fake news</keyword>’ on WhatsApp<br /></strong><br />In a country where people generally <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/india-has-more-fake-news-than-any-other-country-in-the-world-survey/articleshow/67868418.cms">don’t trust</a> the news anyway, the increase in the circulation of fake news has 57% of Indians are concerned about what is real and what is fake on the internet.<br /><br />Even their reasons for being concerned range from facts being manipulated to suit a particular agenda to unwittingly being duped by satire content.<br /><br />
  
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<br />Not only is the spread of misinformation a concern, there’s also the burgeoning issue of personal data being exploited for political ends — an issue that has only gotten more grave after the Cambridge Analytica data breach <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/facebook-was-warned-about-cambridge-analytica-issues-months-earlier-than-previously-disclosed/articleshow/68529933.cms">scandal</a> took place in 2018 where data was used to influence the outcome of the 2016 US Presidential election.<br /><br />Last year, BBC Research found that nationalism was the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/nationalism-main-causes-of-fake-news-in-india/articleshow/66591404.cms">driving force</a> behind a lot of the fake news in India. Rather than verify facts, content sharers assert that they’re only bringing the ‘right version’ of the story into the light. <br /><br />BJP <a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/bjp-plans-a-whatsapp-campaign-for-2019-lok-sabha-election/story-lHQBYbxwXHaChc7Akk6hcI.html">reportedly</a> assigned some 900,000 people to the specific task of localised WhatsApp campaigning. Amit Shah, the party president, apparently asked state units to compile a list of voters who have smartphones for every polling station. <br /><br />Congress, the opposing party, is focusing on Facebook to uploading their campaign content but even for them, distribution is <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/advertising/battling-bjps-mainbhichowkidar-congress-to-enter-social-media-campaign-arena-next-week/articleshow/68506320.cms?from=mdr">dependant</a> on WhatsApp.<br /><br /><strong>Rural India<br /></strong><br />More than half of the Indian population resides in rural India, And, since 2014, the usage of WhatsApp by rural India has boomed in particular alongside more and more people coming online. The Digital Empowerment Foundation <a href="http://defindia.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/WhatsApp-Rural-Study_V3.pdf">found</a> that nearly half of the respondents report that almost everyone in their village is a WhatsApp user. <br /><br />
  
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<br />The issue is not that more people are online but that increased usage of WhatsApp has made it a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/India-threatens-WhatsApp-with-legal-action-after-hoaxes-on-the-app-led-to-lynchings/articleshow/65062390.cms">tempting 
  
platform</a> to disseminate misinformation, even though most rural users believe that other platforms are more trustworthy as a news source.<br /><br />
  
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<br />That being said not many question the sender of forwarded messages and one fourth of users even pass along forwards after reading them.<br /><br />
  
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<br />Even so, the majority of the rural population doesn’t trust information received via WhatsApp too easily.<br /><br /><div type="javascript" title="Custom" contenttype=""><cdata><![CDATA[
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<br />Despite WhatsApp putting in a 5 message <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/whatsapp-restricts-message-forwarding-in-an-attempt-to-reduce-fake-news-lynchings/articleshow/65073335.cms">restriction</a> on forwards and running a number of awareness <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/whatsapp-has-a-new-radio-campaign-to-counter-fake-news-in-india/articleshow/65606213.cms">campaigns</a> around fake news, the issue remains that due their <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/indian-government-wants-to-tap-into-your-whatsapp-messages-other-social-media/articleshow/64979461.cms">end-to-end encryption</a> of messages it’s difficult to find out where a message may have originated. <br /><br />A lot of the time, the information isn’t even shard by official political party accounts, but unofficial groups that have an indirect political affiliation.<br /><br />They also recently <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/whatsapp-facebook-put-up-more-defensive-measures-in-the-face-of-increasing-fake-news/articleshow/68704503.cms">introduced</a> their own tipline called Checkpoint that can let users know if a particular piece of news is true, false, misleading or disputed. Technically, it’s a research project to ‘study the phenomenon of misinformation’ so not everyone will get a response.<br /><br />All in all, despite all the new rules, experts believe that they will have a <a href="http://time.com/5512032/whatsapp-india-election-2019/">negligible effect</a> on the group chats that already exist on the platform where propaganda of all colours flourish, often, at the expense of facts.<br /><br /><strong>See also:<br /></strong><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/facebook-twitter-instagram-whatsapp-2019-elections-india/articleshow/68264695.cms">Social networking sites may have more to answer for ahead of the elections in India</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/whatsapp-group-new-feature-asks-for-user-consent/articleshow/68708123.cms">Finally, WhatsApp will demand ‘consent’ before adding people to random groups</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/heres-whats-up-with-kimbho-the-indian-messaging-app-that-wants-to-take-on-whatsapp/articleshow/64506716.cms">Here’s what’s up with Kimbho, the Indian messaging app that wants to take on WhatsApp</a><br />

One messaging app is affecting voter opinions in India more than other media put together

<br /><ul><li>WhatsApp has introduced a ‘tip line’ number that users can report misinformation.<br /></li><li>Facebook is also combating misinformation by pulling down 687 pages that exhibited ‘coordinated inauthentic behaviour’.<br /></li><li>But, by the time companies realise that fake news is going viral, it often already reaches a substantial amount of people.<br /></li></ul>Social networking platforms in India have been told by the Indian government to be <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/india-sets-up-a-panel-to-monitor-fake-news-ahead-of-the-general-elections/articleshow/65386960.cms">vigilant</a> in their measures to curb fake news ahead of the <keyword id="3393746" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="General-Election-2019">general election 2019</keyword>. In an effort to do so, WhatsApp has launched a ‘tip-line’ where users can report misinformation and Facebook is pulling pages for ‘coordinated inauthentic behaviour’.<br /><br />Both platforms have a massive amount of users in India with more than 200 million on Whatsapp and 300 million on Facebook. Both of these figures are considered to be on the conservative side according to <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/elections/lok-sabha/india/87000-groups-on-whatsapp-targeting-voters/articleshow/68544565.cms">analysts</a>, indicating their actual actual may be a lot more.<br /><br />The WhatsApp tipline is a great solution for users who are actually interested in the authenticity of a post that’s shared with them. It requires the user to message the designated WhatsApp number (+91-9643000888) where the platform will respond by classifying information as ‘true’, ‘false’, ‘misleading’, ‘disputed’ or ‘out of scope’.<br /><br />This doesn’t only pertain to messages in English but also Hindi, Telugu, Bengali, Malayalam and English.<br /><br />But, at the end of the day, how many users have the time to separately verify every piece of information that they get on WhatsApp across the many groups?<br /><br />Facebook, on the other hand, pulled down 687 pages and accounts that were linked to one of the leading political parties in India, Congress for trying to push their election agenda under the radar.<br /><br /><strong>The issue of authenticity<br /></strong><br />WhatsApp, currently owned by Facebook, has had its fair share of bad press in India where a series of lynching incidents were reported to be a result of a video that went viral on the platform.<br /><br />Facebook’s <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/general-election-2019-facebook-war-room-in-india/articleshow/68371097.cms">battle against fake news</a> has been a tough one as well. Despite having on boarded <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/facebook-is-reportedly-bringing-in-local-it-firms-to-moderate-fake-news-in-india/articleshow/67344852.cms">local partners</a> for fact checking and tweaking their algorithm to focus on family and friends, Facebook’s response time leaves a lot to be desired. <br /><br />In India, a Facebook user called Avi Dandiya posted a video of conversation allegedly between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president, the home minister and an unidentified woman which was later exposed as fake news by BOOM, one of Facebook's fact checking partners. <br /><br />But, by that time the post already had 2.5 million views and 150,000 shares.<br /><br />Not to mention the New Zealand mass shooting where the rampage was live-streamed for 17 minutes before being cut off. By the time Facebook could go around pulling the footage, a lot of people had already downloaded their own copy or were watching snippets reposted on YouTube.<br /><br />Recognising the increasing incidence of fake news, the Election Commission of India asked the social networking giants to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/facebook-twitter-questioned-by-indian-government-ahead-of-elections-2019/articleshow/68183865.cms">present</a> The “Voluntary Code of Ethics for the <keyword id="43573" type="EVENT" weightage="20" keywordseo="General-Election">General Election</keyword> 2019.” It has been <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/general-elections-2019-code-of-ethics-for-social-media-platforms/articleshow/68502882.cms">implemented</a> in India ahead of the world’s largest democratic exercise to ensure that confidence in the electoral process does not wane.<br /><br /><strong>See also:<br /></strong><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/google-facebook-twitter-reveal-political-ad-spending-ahead-of-the-lok-sabha-2019-polls/articleshow/67651472.cms">Here's how global tech giants are tackling 'fake news' ahead of elections in the world's largest democracy</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/nationalism-main-causes-of-fake-news-in-india/articleshow/66591404.cms">Hyper-nationalism behind India’s fake news menace: Report</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/general-election-2019-facebook-war-room-in-india/articleshow/68371097.cms">The Indian election might be Facebook's last chance to prove that it can fight fake news and political bias</a><br /><br /><br />

WhatsApp, Facebook put up more defensive measures in the face of increasing fake news

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WhatsApp and Facebook are ‘reacting’ to curb fake news — some countries enact prohibitive laws

Prabhjote Gill

One messaging app is affecting voter opinions in India more than other media put together

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WhatsApp, Facebook put up more defensive measures in the face of increasing fake news

Prabhjote Gill

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