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With over 200 million users in India, WhatsApp has a massive fake news and misinformation problem. The platform is now rife with all kinds of misinformation, whether political, religious, historical, medical, social or legal.
Political parties use the platform to rally supporters, and “IT Cells” are believed to be using the platform for spreading misinformation and hate speech. These are then forwarded by their supporters to millions of others, from person to person.
More recently, mobs have attacked and killed people, following the spread of a video clip warning about gangs kidnapping children. This is going to get worse.
This is a complex problem with no single solution: there is no silver bullet here. Solutions include counter speech, user education and debunking of misinformation from both the government administration and media. We need strong law enforcement to prevent mobs, as well as speedy justice for the victims (as a deterrent).
The challenge of enforcement in social media, as it was in the 66A case earlier in this decade, is that messages online are both communication (person-to-person, and hence private) and media (for wider consumption, and hence public).
The solution for WhatsApp as a platform lies in separating the public from the private — give users power over what they make public and allow to be forwarded, and thereby holding them accountable for what they choose to make public.
Here are the changes that I recommend for the platform:
Change #1: Users can make messages either public (media) or private (P2P message). The default setting for all messages should be private. This will impact virality on the platform, but that’s a price it will have to pay for bringing in accountability. This will create a level of friction while forwarding: they will be frustrated when they cannot forward certain messages. WhatsApp could keep a slightly different background colour for public messages.
Change #2: The original sender/creator of the message should have the power to allow for a message to be forwarded (and made public). This ensures that a message that was meant to be private cannot be made public (by forwarding) without consent. It also attributes intent, when an original sender/creator chooses to make a message public. To forward even your own message to multiple people, you would have to make first make the message public.
Change #3: When a creator makes a message public, the message gets a unique ID, which gets tagged with the creator’s ID. This means that the message, when public, is “media” and has proper attribution to the creator, every time the message is forwarded. A log is kept by WhatsApp only if the message is public. This allows both the platform and law enforcement agencies to trace the message back to the creator. From a platform perspective, there are two things: WhatsApp is now in a position to suspend this particular account, and secondly, it can disable the message, wherever it has been forwarded.
Change #4: Allow users to report forwarded/public messages as misinformation, which can then be reviewed by WhatsApp. WhatsApp already reviews spam-related complaints. Users should be able to identify the Sender and/or Message ID by selecting the message and tapping on the information (i) icon which appears.
A few concerns:
Attribution doesn’t do much to address political and motivated messages, as my co-panelists on a CNBC-Awaaz TV show argued yesterday while countering my suggestion. Their recommendations were around introspection from political parties and citizens, as well as user education and training of the police force. I don’t think introspection is a short-term solution. Also to say that the platform isn’t responsible – in the same manner that the Gutenberg Press isn’t responsible for publishing – is ignoring the fact that enabling broadcast without accountability is a design choice made by WhatsApp. Designs evolve with usage.
However, there is no silver bullet, and even this solution could lead to problems, especially those related to privacy. I’m happy to get feedback, and to rework this: please feel free to let me know about potential issues at nikhil@medianama.com. Also do let me know if I can make your comments public (either attributable or not), when I’m updating this solution.
(This article was first published on Medianama. Nikhil Pahwa is the founder of Medianama. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author's own.The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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Published: 04 Jul 2018,10:43 AM IST