WhatsApp working with state agencies to curb 'sinister' messages
23 Aug 2018
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Facebook-owned WhatsApp had pledged to develop tools that would combat fake messages, to help the country crack down on people whipping up public anger through mass message forwards on social media.
WhatsApp chief executive officer Chris Daniels is reported to have given the assurance to information technology minister Ravi Shankar Prasad during a meeting in New Delhi.
The IT ministry has asked the company to work out ways to trace the origin of “sinister” messages, like those that led to a series of mob lynchings across the country this year.
“It does not need rocket science to locate a message,” Prasad said after his meeting, adding that the US tech giant had agreed to name a grievance officer to deal with issues in India.
Since India is WhatsApp’s biggest market with more than 200 million users, the social media platform is bound to oblige the government.
India is where people forward more WhatsApp messages, photographs and videos than any other country.
Besides, anti-social elements, political parties are reported to misuse WhatsApp and other platforms to spread false messages with sinister intent. With national elections due next year, the government cannot also afford opposition to misuse the social media platforms.
WhatsApp had last month offered to limit the number of message and chat forwards to five at a time among individuals and groups as also remove the quick forward button placed next to media messages. But that has not happened so far.
Ravi Shankar Prasad also said WhatsApp was working with law enforcement agencies to tackle the problem and was planning a big campaign to educate consumers about fake messages.
Meanwhile, internet companies like WhatsApp will also comply with the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) directive of April that said all payment firms operating in the country should start storing data locally for “unfettered supervisory access”, Prasad said.
The central bank is currently working on guidelines related to the directive, which has drawn protest from companies such as Mastercard, Visa and American Express who fear it would lead to higher costs of setting up data centres in the country and weaken analysis of global fraud detection patterns.
