WhatsApp Will Help Indian Govt To Stop Dangerous Hoaxes, But Refuses To Show Private User Data

Recently, the Indian government has been putting pressure on social media companies to tackle the fake news problem, especially WhatsApp.

After the app was used by hoax perpetrators to cause chaos, they now seem more agreeable to the government¡¯s demands.

Last month, the IT ministry demanded that WhatsApp crack down on miscreants spreading hoaxes and misinformation on their platform. ¡°While the law and order machinery is taking steps to apprehend the culprits, the abuse of platform like WhatsApp for repeated circulation of such provocative content are equally a matter of deep concern,¡± the ministry said in a statement at the time.

Also Read: Four Ways WhatsApp Can Learn From Other Apps & Add Features That Can Stop The Spread Of Rumours

Now, WhatsApp says it will indeed cooperate with the IT ministry in every way it can, in order to prevent things like this happen again. However, it has (rightfully) refused to add a feature they demanded that could help trace the origin of a message. The Facebook-owned company stated that it has no access to user data, being encrypted end-to-end, and that tampering with that fact could compromise the entire privacy system.

Also Read: It Doesn't Matter How Many Anti-Hoax Tools WhatsApp Implements, There's A Much Bigger Problem

Aside from that however the appmaker has agreed to work with the government and authorities to ¡°block sources that generate objectionable content.¡± This is in addition to other recent measures the company took, like limited the number of forwards you can send, as well as tagging forwarded messages so you can look out for them.