It’s 2018. The fake news era is in full gear with your favourite the largest social media network, Facebook getting stick for peddling fake news on their site. Such fake news was reported to have influenced the result of the 2016 US election in the favour of now President Donald Trump. Not just Facebook was under fire for fake news, but other social media platforms like Twitter, YouTube, and even Google through its AdSense network. As a result, they have all taken steps to tackle the rise of fake news on their site.
But for the company, Facebook Inc. their woes lie not just in their initial Facebook-products (Facebook and Messenger) but has extended to their other social media subsidiaries like Whatsapp.
As part of Whatsapp’s plans to tackle misinformation and fake news, they announced changes to the way forwarded messages are handled.
On July 10, they announced that they will be tagging forwarded messages with the label “forwarded”.
They believe by letting you know the origin of messages, one-to-one and group chats will be easier to follow and provide the much-needed context to digest information.
Less than two weeks after, they announced the pilot of a test in India to limit the number of recipients of a forwarded message.
Why India?
The company is spotlighting India for two major reasons; population size and recent events.
Regarding population size, it is common knowledge that India is the second most populated country in the world with over 1.2 billion people. As a result, the probability that they’ll have the largest user base for any global service is high. At least, for Whatsapp that is the case. They have over 200 million of their 1.6 billion monthly active users coming from India. And that’s only about 16.6% of India’s population using the service compared to Saudi Arabia with 73%. So there is room for Whatsapp to deepen its penetration in India by paying more attention to it.
Second, recent events. This year on June 12, CNN reported that two men were killed over false child kidnapping claims propagated via Whatsapp groups. And that was not the first time a rumour spread on Whatsapp was linked to a killing in India.
Good-to-know: As at February 2016, India had the second Whatsapp groups in the world. Currently, they are reported to be sending the most messages, photos and videos than any other country in the world.
Expectedly, the Information Technology Ministry of India is not being silent about this. They issued a warning to Whatsapp stating “in no uncertain terms that WhatsApp must take immediate action to end this menace and ensure that their platform is not used for such malafide activities”.
As an immediate fix, Facebook Inc. bought full-page ads in India’s newspaper and warned about false information on Whatsapp. There they announced the roll-out of a new feature that labels forwarded messages as so.
"Question information that upsets you", says WhatsApp's full-page advertisements. Clearly the solution to declining newspaper ad revenues in India will come from how we tackle our digital fake news crisis. pic.twitter.com/3h5XyJeMIr
— Anuj Srivas (@AnujSrivas) July 10, 2018
New Whatsapp changes
“Today [July 19], we’re launching a test to limit forwarding that will apply to everyone using WhatsApp. In India – where people forward more messages, photos, and videos than any other country in the world – we’ll also test a lower limit of 5 chats at once and we’ll remove the quick forward button next to media messages.”
Beyond labeling forwarded messages as so, they are toying with the limiting of recipients per message forwarded. Meaning, a Whatsapp user will be restricted from forwarding a message to so many people at once.
Also, they’ll be making the quick forward button next to media messages like images more obscure. Where they will place that is yet to be known.
The effectiveness of both measures cannot be ascertained yet, it will take a measure of user-reactionary engagements over a period to determine. Whatever it is, just never forget that:
“Just because a message is shared many times doesn’t mean it’s true”, point 10 in Facebook-ad shown above
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