New Delhi: WhatsApp unveiled Tuesday its ‘Checkpoint Tipline’, where people can check the authenticity of information received as the messaging giant looks to crack down on fake news ahead of the general elections in India.
“”Launched by PROTO, an India-based media skilling startup, this tipline will help create a database of rumours to study misinformation during elections for ‘Checkpoint – a research project commissioned and technically assisted by WhatsApp’, the Facebook-owned company said in a statement.
It added that starting Tuesday, people in India can submit misinformation or rumours they receive to the ‘Checkpoint Tipline’ on WhatsApp (+91-9643-000-888).
Once a WhatsApp user shares a suspicious message with the tipline, PROTO’s verification centre will seek to respond and inform the user if the claim made in message shared is verified or not.
“The response will indicate if information is classified as true, false, misleading, disputed or out of scope and include any other related information that is available,” the statement said.
This centre is equipped to review content in the form of pictures, video links or text and will cover English and four regional languages – Hindi, Telugu, Bengali and Malayalam.
Facebook, which counts India as one of its largest markets with over 200 million users, had faced flak from the Indian government after a series of mob-lynching incidents, triggered by rumours circulating on WhatsApp, claimed lives last year.
Under pressure to stop rumours and fake news, WhatsApp had last year restricted forwarding messages to five chats at once. It has also been putting out advertisements in newspapers and running television and radio campaigns offering tips to users on how to spot misinformation.
It should also be stated here that the Indian government — through proposed changes in IT rules — is seeking to make social media platforms more accountable by mandating them to introduce tools that can identify and disable ‘unlawful content’.
One of the amendments being mulled in the IT intermediary rules (meant for online and social media platforms) will require them to enable tracing out of such originators of information as needed by government agencies that are legally authorised.
However, WhatsApp has so far resisted the government’s demand for identifying message originators. It has argued that that such a move would undermine the end-to-end encryption and the private nature of the platform, creating potential for serious misuse.
PTI