WhatsApp: Fake News, Rumours, Encryption And Other Issues In India

DeCode Staff
Aug 31, 2018 · 3 min read

In 2009, former Yahoo! employee Jan Koum along with former Yahoo! colleague Brian Acton and friend Alex Fishman began a quest to create an iPhone app “… having statuses next to individual names of the people.” By February 2009, with the help of a Russian developer Igor Solomennikov, WhatsApp was created.

In the last 9 years, the app has grown to include 1.5 billion monthly users. Today WhatsApp will let you send messages, images and videos, make audio and video calls, update status and send money to your friend via UPI. Its usage has grown rapidly over the past few years. In India especially, falling data costs and access to cheap smartphones (< USD 100) has led to the direct messaging app building one of its largest user base in India. Further, things have been a little complicated at the company since its acquisition by social media giant Facebook in 2014. While WhatsApp had announced end-to-end encryption for all messages sent through its platform, the privacy policy has undergone changes post the acquisition. Facebook has been trying to tap into additional personal data to strengthen targeting marketing on its platform. Disagreements within the management team regarding extent of personal data sharing between Facebook and WhatsApp finally led Jan Koum to announce his departure from the company he founded.

Another controversy surrounding the direct messaging app has been around the spread of fake news and propaganda leading to mob lynchings in India. The Indian government has expressed concern regarding the messaging app being abused as a broadcast platform. While WhatsApp lets users report as spam or block other users, monitoring users that spread fake news has been an uphill task. Currently, the company is considering setting up an India team to take care of specific cases such as the lynching accidents. At the moment, the team at Facebook will be preparing for election campaigning season in India, Brazil and the EU. Zuckerberg was quoted last month as confirming that Facebook will be careful to clamp down on fake accounts and groups and pages that violate company policy. In India, WhatsApp usage will also be closely monitored, especially by the authorities, for misuse of it’s broadcast and forwarding features.

India represents almost 200 million active users for WhatsApp. This number has been increasing, especially with additions from rural areas in the country. Consequently, the country and its concerns have jumped to the top of WhatsApp’s priority list. As recently as last month, the company had also announced a limit on the number of times a message could be forwarded on its platform. Despite this measure, fake news continues to be circulated.

Other than fake news, WhatsApp is also maneuvering roadblocks to the newly introduced payments feature. The Indian government has asked the company to set up an India office before it is permitted to introduced the service on a mass scale. The RBI is also expected to confirm whether payment solutions controlled remotely violate rules on setting up such financial services in India. Further, there is still ambiguity around data storage following the announcement of India’s draft e-commerce policy which proposes compulsory storage of data locally. WhatsApp payments, built on NPCI’s UPI, uses Facebook’s infrastructure to do so. Further, as the payments feature is open to all users of WhatsApp, Paytm has raised concerns about it being abused as an “open ATM”. Vijay Shekhar Sharma has also accused the company of using its position as market leader to piggy back upon into the payments space in India.

What is worse, WhatsApp has announced that backed-up chats, messages, images and videos on Google Drive are not protected by the former’s end-to-end encryption. WhatsApp’s end to end encryption has been a bone of contention, especially with regards to privacy concerns voiced by governments. This latest revelation by WhatsApp therefore, raises several questions.

The meteoric rise of this revolutionary messaging service seems to have encountered speed bumps. As a priority market for the company, WhatsApp and Facebook executives will not be able to ignore the situation in India for too long.

DeCodeIN

The intersection where technology meets consumers

DeCode Staff

Written by

DeCodeIN

DeCodeIN

The intersection where technology meets consumers

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade