“Facebook’s WhatsApp Fights Fake News by Curbing Message Forwarding,” The Wall Street Journal, January 22, 2019. After problems with the spread of fake news and rumors that may have led to violence in India, WhatsApp will now reduce the number of individuals (including groups) you can forward a message to, from 20 to 5.
The service was also being used as an alternative pathway for political parties to reach their bases.
So, one way to fight fake news is to restrict how many people you can send it to. Is that Governance or Information or both? Maybe to avoid new Indian legislation that would exercise more control over the app, which would be Governance and Compliance. This change doesn’t address the content, just the breadth of the broadcast. Could this be applied to other sources of fake news?
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