WhatsApp recently made another change to the app in its efforts to clamp down on fake news and hoaxes on its platform. You can now only forward a message up to a maximum of five times at once. The question is, how helpful really is this?
Amidst all its efforts, WhatsApp is forgetting one crucial thing: people were forwarding messages long before we had easy buttons to share with multiple people at a time. Heck I remember sending season¡¯s greetings forwards to friends and family on my first phone, the Nokia 3310. And that involved manually forwarding the message to each recipient, one at a time.
In fact, WhatsApp¡¯s other measures have been focused on the end user as well, like the tool the labels a message that¡¯s been forwarded a number of times. The idea is to let you know when you see it that it¡¯s probably a hoax. The key phrase here being ¡°when you see it¡±, but there¡¯s a possibility that doesn¡¯t happen at all.
In fact, we previously wrote about a few other non-intrusive methods the company could use to police its platforms. The feasibility of some of those is a little dicey, but they¡¯re still better than current attempts. However, it still doesn¡¯t fix the problem.
At the end of the day, the troll faking news isn¡¯t the problem. The easy and accessible communication WhatsApp offers is a boon more than a bane. The real problem is sitting with their thumb hovering over the Forward button in the app.?
Politicians weaving tall tales to drump up political capital create the situation. Decades of ingrained racial and communal bias create the situation. Other factors also come into play to create a climate where a mere WhatsApp can spark violence and hatred between entire communities. But at the end of the day, it¡¯s the ignorant user that¡¯s the real problem.
School teachers frown down at you as they tell you ¡°Google is not a synonym for research¡±. They¡¯re right, it¡¯s not, but it is a valuable research tool. Like any other tool, you have to know how to use it to get the right results, otherwise you can cause more harm than good. In the same way, the Internet, smartphones, instant messaging, these are all tools to dispel ignorance. But if you treat everything you read online like holy scriptures instead of suggested reading material, you¡¯re going to end up failing the class. It¡¯s just that in this particular case, everyone around bears the consequences too.
So here¡¯s a personal activity to try out next time you¡¯re sent a juicy forward. Take five minutes to do a quick Google search. And if you find conflicting answers, it¡¯s probably not worth forwarding that message and looking like an idiot. #ReadingIsGood