Fake news can spread through various mediums, such as social media. It can also be spread through messaging apps such as WhatsApp, where users can simply forward and pass along fake news to their contacts at a touch of a button. This has presented a problem in the past in countries such as India, where it now appears that the government has had enough.According to the Indian government’s Union Minister of State for Home Hansraj Ahir, it looks like they are now asking WhatsApp to come up with ways to curb the spread of fake news. “Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology issued notices to WhatsApp conveying that they need to come out with effective solutions that can bring in accountability and facilitate enforcement of law in addition to labelling forwards and weeding out fake news.”
WhatsApp has in the past come up with several different ways to try and curb the spread of fake news and spam. One of those ways was to limit the number of people that a message could be forwarded to. This would in theory prevent rumors and fake news from being spread too quickly, although at the same time not a 100% solution.
They have also introduced the “forwarded” label where messages that have been forwarded are labeled as such so that users know where the message might have come from, and thus hopefully treat it with a bit more skepticism. It is unclear if there could be a permanent or more effective way of dealing with fake news spread through messaging apps, so we’ll just have to wait and see.
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