WhatsApp looks for middle ground to quell govt's fear on fake news

With the privacy argument falling flat in the face of extreme pressure from the government which wants to trace the source of fake news, the world’s biggest chat messenger, WhatsApp, is trying to find a middle ground to its demands.

From training people to spot fake news to running advertisement campaigns creating awareness about the effects of misinformation, Facebook’s chat app, which has over a billion users globally, is trying every way possible to ensure the flow of fake news and messages goes down in the run-up to the 2019 general elections.

The last couple of months have been tough on WhatsApp, which has been at loggerheads with the government on the issue of fake forwards. The government has time and again alleged that the chat app is now being used to run misinformation campaigns which it believes is causing major law and order problems as well as pose a threat to national security.