WhatsApp unveils 'tipline' to tackle fake news
New Delhi: WhatsApp Tuesday unveiled 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 election in the country.
"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.
PROTO will also look at working with organisations at grassroot level to submit misinformation circulating across different regions in India during the election period.
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.
With ensuing general elections, the Indian government had warned social media platforms of strong action if any attempt was made to influence the country's electoral process through undesirable means.
Interestingly, 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, arguing that such a move would undermine the end-to-end encryption and the private nature of the platform, creating potential for serious misuse.
In its statement on Tuesday, WhatsApp said Dig Deeper Media and Meedan - which have previously worked on misinformation-related projects around the world - are helping PROTO to develop the verification and research frameworks for India.
Meedan has developed the technology to support the verification of rumours and will maintain the database of such content that have been processed.
To do so, they have expanded their check platform (developed for recent elections in Mexico and France) and integrated it with the WhatsApp Business API, to receive and respond to messages at scale.
"The goal of this project is to study the misinformation phenomenon at scale natively in WhatsApp. As more data flows in, we will be able to identify the most susceptible or affected issues, locations, languages, regions, and more," PROTO founders Ritvvij Parrikh and Nasr ul Hadi said.
The verification reports PROTO sends back will encourage grassroots-level "listening posts" to send more signals for analysis, they added.
Following the project, PROTO also plans to submit learnings to the International Center for Journalists to help other organisations learn from the design and operations of this project.
"The research from this initiative will help create a global benchmarks for those wishing to tackle misinformation in their own markets," Fergus Bell, founder and CEO, Dig Deeper Media, said.
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NEET aspirant from Haryana hangs self in Kota; parents suspect murder, demand fair probe
Kota (Rajasthan), Apr 29: A 20-year-old NEET aspirant was found hanging from the ceiling fan of his hostel room in Kunhari area here, with his parents suspecting he was murdered, police said on Monday.
This is the eighth case of suicide by a coaching student in Kota since January. The number of student suicides in Kota stood at 26 in 2023.
Sumit Panchal, who hailed from Haryana's Rohtak, had been preparing for NEET at a coaching institute here for over a year, the police said.
His parents have demanded the registration of a murder case against unidentified persons and an impartial investigation into the matter.
On demand of the student's parents, a medical board was constituted to perform the autopsy, said Assistant Sub-Inspector Kaptan, who is investigating the case.
The body was handed over to the family after the post-mortem, they said.
The student had allegedly hanged himself around 9 hours before his body was spotted by the hostel staff, the ASI said.
Panchal's body was found hanging from the ceiling fan of his room at the hostel in Landmark City under the Kunhari police station limits on Sunday night, they said.
However, his parents suspected Panchal was murdered, citing that the injury on his neck from the rope was too deep to be caused by hanging, the police said.
A case of unnatural death under section 174 of the Criminal Procedure Code has been lodged for initial investigation in the matter, they said.
No suicide note was recovered from the student's hostel room and the reason behind his extreme step is yet to be ascertained, Arvind Bhardwaj, Circle Inspector (CI) at Kunhari police station, said on Monday.
Panchal was supposed to take the NEET-UG exam next month, the police said.
He allegedly hanged himself sometime on Sunday noon but the matter came to light only around 9.30 pm when the warden spotted the body and informed the police, the CI said.
A police team rushed to the spot and recovered the body and shifted it to the mortuary of MBS Hospital for postmortem, he added.
In gross violation of safety norms, the hostel room did not have an anti-suicide device installed with the ceiling fan, which could have averted the tragedy, the officer added.
Meanwhile, the deceased's father, uncle and grandfather who reached Kota on Monday morning to claim the body suspected foul play and claimed Panchal did not commit suicide but was murdered.
"Sumit was good at studies and would always assure us of securing a rank among the top ten. He cannot commit suicide," his uncle Surendra Panchal told PTI outside the mortuary.
The wound on his neck is so deep that it couldn't have been caused by hanging, he claimed and demanded autopsy by medical board.
The student's family has also demanded the formation of a SIT for investigation in the matter, CI Bhardwaj said.
