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At the moment the project has been launched in India, where the elections will take place on April 11 in the first round, ending on May 23 if everything goes as expected. And it has been running since this very Tuesday, when WhatsApp users in India have been able to start forwarding messages to Checkpoint Tipline An information confirmation service to avoid hoaxes, fake news and misinformation related to the country's elections.
The service depends on WhatsApp and a startup or young company called Proto, which is in charge of classifying the messages sent by users as true, false, misleading or debatableOf course, all the information is collected to generate a database and thus better understand the misinformation surrounding this event, according to Reuters.
It is curious that this initiative arises from WhatsApp itself, when it has been the ideal platform to contribute to this aforementioned misinformation and the proliferation of hoaxes and fake newsin the past. A good campaign for Facebook, owner of the messaging application, to clear both names and finally face this problem.
Of course it's not just WhatsApp's fault. In fact, it is the very leaders of the different parties that are going to start the electoral struggle in India who accuse the opponents of using fake news.According to Reuters, a senior WhatsApp executive has already claimed that parties were trying to use the app “in ways it was not intended for”
It seems that this way Indian citizens will have an opportunity to generate a cleaner and more contrasted opinion of their own just by forwarding a message to their new trusted contact Checkpoint Tipline. Of course, the service not only supports text messages, it also allows videos and photos It also understands five languages spoken in the region: English, Hindi, Telugu, Bengali and Malay.
Although according to media such as The Verge the system would be giving problems in its first hours of operation due to work overload (there are 200 million WhatsApp users in India), the idea is to collect as much information as possible better. In fact, the reports and results will be shared with the International Center for Journalists, or so the Proto startup wishes.So it will be useful not only for citizens.
Other similar experiences
Actually, WhatsApp is not the first company to fight disinformation. It was already present in the past elections in France and Mexico with similar initiatives together with the support of organizations such as Dig Deep Media and Meedan. The latter was in charge of verifying information in the aforementioned elections, and is already an inherent part of the business tool WhatsApp Business.
???Ueeee we are already 200,000
And we celebrate by launching @labuloteca
A collaborative space to fight together against lies.https://t.co/ATpCVhnEXF
Tell us about hoaxes, help us deny them. Look for a hoax, learn tools, teach…
Collaborate; do damn pic.twitter.com/mEbZ6kT7co
- MALDITO BULO (@malditobulo) February 28, 2019
Could a similar service be applied in Spain for the 28A elections? In reality, there are already services underway that seek to contrast, confirm and deny different chains, hoaxes and fake news that circulate on the Internet and, more specifically, social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and the WhatsApp application itself. One of the best known is @MalditoBulo (on Twitter), where they echo the discoveries by comparing recent hoaxes with the newspaper library.
In this case it is enough to contact your team through WhatsApp at the telephone number 655198538 With the information in hand, They are launched to verify if the data is correct and if it is a hoax, real news or a misinterpretation. The confirmed hoaxes are collected in its sister Twitter account @laBuloteca to actively review them if we wish.
