WhatsApp on Tuesday released its ”Checkpoint Tipline”, where users can check the authenticity of information that they receive, as the messaging app looks to remove fake news circulation on its platform ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
“Launched by Proto, an India-based media skilling startup, this tipline will help create a database of rumors to study misinformation during elections for Checkpoint – a research project commissioned and technically assisted by WhatsApp,” the Facebook-owned company said in a statement.
The statement added that starting Tuesday, users in India can submit misinformation or rumors received by them to the Checkpoint Tipline on WhatsApp (+91-9643-000-888).
Once the tipline receives a complaint from a user regarding the authenticity of the message they received, Proto’s verification center will respond and inform the user if the claims made in the message is verified or not.
“The response will indicate if the information is classified as true, false, misleading, disputed or out of scope and include any other related information that is available,” the statement said.
The center is able to review content in the form of images, video links or text and will be covering English along with four other regional Indian languages: Hindi, Telugu, Bengali, and Malayalam.
Organizations working at grassroots levels are also expected to team up with Proto in order to spot and stop misinformation circulating across different regions in the country during the election period.
As the elections in India is inching closer, the government has warned social media platforms of repercussions if their platform was reported to be involved in attempts made to influence the polling.
The Indian government has proposed a new IT rule that requires social media sites to take more accountability of the information that is shared on their platforms by introducing tools to identify unlawful content.
One of the requirements that the government is expecting from social media platforms is to enable tracing of such originators of misinformation so they could be legally tried.
WhatsApp, however, has so far restricted to give in to the demands of the government arguing that taking such a step would make the end-to-end encryption pointless.
In the statement on Tuesday, WhatsApp has said that Dig Deeper Media and Meedan are working with Proto to develop the verification and research frameworks for India. Dig Deeper Media and Meedan have previously worked such projects around the world.
“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.
As Proto sends back the report, the grassroots-level organization will be encouraged to send more signals for analysis, they added.
Once the project is over, Proto plans to submit the learnings to the International Center for Journalists so they could gain some insight into the design and framework of this project.
“The research from this initiative will help create a global benchmark for those wishing to tackle misinformation in their own markets,” Fergus Bell, founder and CEO, Dig Deeper Media, said.
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