By BK Mishra
Rumours spread like wildfire on instant messaging platforms such as WhatsApp about children being kidnapped from neighboring villages and killed for organ harvesting, leading to mob violence in many parts of the country.
The issue of fake news has become very prominent in recent months. Its power to mislead and misinform has been made evident around the world.
Fake Whatsapp forward have triggered a spate of incidents involving mob fury, the recent case of mob lynching where two Assamese youth were beaten to death by local villagers for being mistaken as child abductors in remote areas of Karbi Anglong district of Assam.
The Assam incident is not an isolated case; it has taken its toll in west Bengal. Jharkhand, Mysore ,Telengana and Andhra Pradesh and the latest being lynching of five men on the suspicion of being child-lifters in Maharashtra’s Rainpada village of Dhule district. It has been reported that Fake Whatsapp forward and Facebook hate messages is also one of the reason for recent unrest in Shillong, thereby prompting the government to ban internet.
Umpteen number of news/information portals are being set up as there are few entry barriers unlike in traditional media.
In addition, growing polarization of society on ideological lines has made the job of spreading fake news easier. Content that denigrates leaders/groups of opposite ideology based on falsehoods, deepens communal polarisation or incites hatred.
While media researchers around the world are investigating the fake news scene, little credible information is available on the creators and their intention behind it. But if what has been found is true, it is purely a way to make advertising money through click baits, enticing people to click and continue reading, and is organised by political or other social groups.
Both Google and Facebook, as the largest platforms for content distribution, are said to be creating systems that will filter fake news. But these efforts are relatively new. The biggest vector of fake news in India — WhatsApp — is still grappling with compromising mechanisms for privacy like encryption.
No accountability
Users creating hate content and sharing it can be booked under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). But the sheer expanse of the Internet and the anonymity it grants makes it difficult to track down people.
Unlike mainstream media that falls under comprehensive regulation, online platforms have scope for wrongdoing due to the lack of binding rules. In the absence of such crucial information, there is no understanding of the liability and credibility of information that is being hosted on their respective sites.
Most digital media outlets do not have basic information regarding editors, publishers or the physical address of the registered entity. We could do well to begin with some basic regulation for digital media outlets like compulsory and online registration of details.
How to help ourshelves
Has our insatiable desire to share unverified news turned Whatsapp into a killer APP? Well how do you find the truth on Whatsapp ?
Most people don’t want to; if it suits their ideology they want to believe it. It is called confirmation bias ,and its one if the reasons why fake news becomes so popular .
Whatsapp now has 1.5 billion monthly users, 200 million users in India and everyday more users are signing up ,the App has emerged as a big black hole of unchecked ,unverified news
How do these hoax-slayers dig out the lies? While software tools are used to trace videos on YouTube, key words are reverse googled to find the original context.
Data analytics can show us the ethnicity and gender profile of those forwarding a certain piece of news that help us determine whether it is false or not, but the nature of WhatsApp encryption makes it difficult to counter it. Google reverse image search is favored by all of the Indian myth-busters. It allows you to upload an image online and then search for where it may have appeared.
Tin Eye also allows readers to check if images have been manipulated. The free video-to-jpg converter transforms video into images that can then be searched separately. InVid has developed a browser application that allows people to add video links into it. It then provides detailed analysis about the video in question. The Quint has also started a section called Webquf that debunks fake news.
(The author can be contacted at [email protected])