WhatsApp, a popular online messaging platform, on Tuesday rolled out a new ‘Forwards Label’ feature, which it has been testing to curb the dissemination of spam and fake news on the application. The move follows the ongoing debate across the world on tackling the spread of fake information on the Facebook-owned platform. The Indian government too had written to WhatsApp that it ‘cannot evade accountability and responsibility’ when its facilities are used to spread rumours. Last week, the Election Commission of India, too, took cognisance of this challenge and said it is working to establish a mechanism to prevent fake news from influencing poll outcomes and vitiating the atmosphere during the democratic exercise.
The Internet has led to the democratisation of information but curbing the misuse of these platforms remains a puzzle. Such rumours have a distinctive life cycle: they are first floated by a fringe group or a fringe website before unfortunately, becoming, public wisdom. These fringe groups often derive legitimacy by mocking the mainstream media, claiming that their ‘bias’ suppresses the ‘real’ news. The much touted ‘wisdom of crowds’ concept rarely works on social media because fake news often conforms to the biases of one user group. This is also because clicks and content sharing generates revenue for the host irrespective of genuineness of the user content.
The world, however, has realised the dangers of such fake news, and companies have tried to tackle the problem: Facebook has hired fact-checkers, including in India, where they have over 240 million users. Twitter India has recently started blocking profiles that allegedly spread fake information, and is in the process of building tools to identify bots that spread fake news. WhatsApp, too, ran full-page ads in Indian newspapers earlier this week after the outcry over a spate of deaths from mob lynching.
These are good steps but may not be enough because a large number of users of these social media sites lack tech literacy. For example, the ‘forwarded tag’ message of WhatsApp may not be an effective tool because one can easily circumvent that measure by making a small change in character of the message or by copy-pasting it. Moreover, fact-checking measures — either manual or AI-based — have their own set of problems.
Users on their own should have a healthy scepticism towards the content they share on social media but expecting this to happen is being overly optimistic. At the same time, putting the blame entirely on social media will be a stretch. In such a scenario, American inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns may offer some consolation: the rate of technological change tends to increase exponentially. Perhaps technology will find a solution to a Frankenstein it unleashed. By Hindustan Times
