Get the latest tech news
Mozilla urges WhatsApp to combat misinformation ahead of global elections
Social media companies like Meta, YouTube and TikTok, have promised to protect the integrity of those elections, at least as far as discourse and factual claims being made on their platforms are concerned. Missing from the conversation, however, is closed messaging app WhatsApp, which now rivals public social media platforms in both scope and reach.
Mozilla’s analysis found that while Facebook had made 95 policy announcements related to elections since 2016, the year the social network came under scrutiny for helping spread fake news and foster extreme political sentiments. WhatsApp first started adding friction to its service after dozens of people were killed in India, the company’s largest market, in a series of lynchings sparked by misinformation that went viral on the platform. In 2022, two Rutgers professors, Kiran Garimella and Simon Chandrachud visited the offices of political parties in India and managed to convince officials to add them to 500 WhatsApp groups that they ran.
Or read this on Endgadget
