When WhatsApp texts spark lynchings
A WHATSAPP text circulating in some districts of India’s central Madhya Pradesh state ended up inflaming a mob of 50-60 villagers into savagely beating up two innocent men last week on suspicion that they were going to murder people and sell their body parts.
The essence of the message, written in Hindi, was that 500 people disguised as beggars were roaming the area so that they could kill people to harvest their organs. The message also urged recipients to forward it to friends and family. Police say the message was fake.
Police officers who joined several local WhatsApp groups, found three men circulating the message and they were arrested, said Jayadevan A, the police chief for Balaghat district, where the incident occurred.
This happened just weeks after a WhatsApp text warning of 400 child traffickers arriving in the southern Indian technology hub of Bengaluru led a frenzied mob to lynch a 26-year-old man, a migrant construction worker from another Indian state, on suspicions that he was a kidnapper.
So far this year, false messages about child abductors on Facebook Inc-owned WhatsApp have helped to trigger mass beatings of more than a dozen people in India — at least three of whom have died. In addition, fake messages about child snatchers on Facebook, as well as some texts on WhatsApp, also led to the lynching of two men in eastern India this month.
With more than 200 million users in India, WhatsApp’s biggest market in the world, false news and videos circulating on the messaging app have become a new headache.
In India, a country with over a billion phone subscribers with access to cheap mobile data, false news messages and videos can instantly go viral, creating mass hysteria and stirring up communal tensions.
WhatsApp said it is aware of the incidents in India.
“Sadly some people also use WhatsApp to spread harmful misinformation,” WhatsApp said in a statement. “We’re stepping up our education efforts so that people know about our safety features and how to spot fake news and hoaxes.”
Group texts, where fake news spreads most easily, are still a minority: 90 percent of messages are between two people, and the average group size is six people, according to the messaging platform.
WhatsApp also said it is considering changes to the service. For example, there is now a public beta test that is labelling any forwarded message.
The company is not planning any changes to its encryption, which ensures messages are not read by anyone except the sender and the recipient.