People getting killed by fake news on Watsapp | Hacker News Reader

People getting killed by fake news on Watsapp

washingtonpost.com

26 pointstaherchhabra12 comments

The logical solution is to focus on how to stop lynchings, not how to stop "fake news". At the end of the day, these are still murders and treating them as anything else, especially for the purpose of smuggling censorship into law, is disgusting.

Yes, the angle of the article and what the government/authorities are doing is so weird it’s crazy.

> [local authorities] hiring street performers and “rumor busters” to visit villages to spread public awareness. One such “rumor buster” was killed by a mob Thursday in the eastern state of Tripura.

Their ground problem is clearly not fake news and people being misinformed.

I'm in complete agreement that the bigger problem is the lynchings and mobs. These happen without phones and fake news, and blaming it entirely on phones and fake news ignores the bigger issue.

That said, I think fake news is a lesser issue that still needs addressed. I very highly doubt it will be stopped completely, but I do think the world could do a much better job of educating its citizens along with having competent police forces that respond adequately and investigate such rumors and fake news. Between education and gaining trust from the people, I think these will lessen the effect. Weirdly, some of this stuff might help stop the mobs as well, but maybe not.

Agreed, from the end of the article, even the person sent in to warn of fake news was beaten to death. Don't forget these are the same areas where honor killings happen all too frequently.

It's a deeply rooted societal problem and it all seems a bit easy to hide under the skirts of 'fake news' and blame whatsapp for these instances.

it's a societal problem but the big social media platforms amplify that social behaviour. I am sure we still dont know the effects of social media on society, so simply thinking of it as a societal problem is also a bit easy. Its more of a societal+technology problem

This seems strikingly similar to another Indian story from a few years ago in which a man was lynched by a mob after a rumor falsely alleged that he had eaten beef. (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/09/indian-mob-kills-man-...)

That time Whatsapp was not involved at all, yet the rumor spread just the same. This seems to be a case of treating the symptom, and not the problem. For example:

>Sukanta Chakraborty, 33, a tabla musician with a sonorous voice who was paid about $8 a day to travel from village to village in a van equipped with a loudspeaker, warning about the dangers of fake news. He and two others were beset by a mob wielding bricks and bamboo sticks in a crowded market Thursday.

In this case, the mob attacked him for trying to get the mobs to question their accepted beliefs (that child traffickers are rampant, and can be identified through Whatsapp), which is a pattern of behavior found in similarly situated groups through history, for example, the witch trials. Much like the witch trials, there are likely causal explanations for these villager's behaviors. For example, the witch trials are suspected to be a reaction to the citizen's fears of brutal native attacks that were happening around that time.

Perhaps the Indian gov't should look to identify and fix the situation making these people fearful and violent, not just plug up the tubes with legislation that will cause them to revert back to old-fashioned rumor spreading.

> For example, the witch trials are suspected to be a reaction to the citizen's fears of brutal native attacks that were happening around that time.

The vast majority of witch trials were in Europe, and not New England.

edit: Change "Britain" to "Europe"; citation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_the_early_mode...

Mandatory informational session before sims can be sold? The owner of the phone, not the person who buys the sim, must demonstrate knowledge that rumors spread via whatsapp?

And only let people who agree to enforce this sell sims?

Or police mob violence and prosecute murderers regardless of being inspired by rumours?

This won't happen, the ruling coalition and PM have a long history of Hindu nationalist mob violence. Before modi became PM he was banned from the US for addicted that happened while he was governor of an Indian province with tacit approval. The RSS, the paramilitary wing if the BJP, openly takes inspiration from Nazis and Hitler's violent nationalism.

Please cite sources for the Hitler reference.

"Germany is the other Nation most in the eye of the world. Germany tried to unify its nation via taking over Austria. Germany’s religion is not what it should be. “German race pride has now become a topic of the day.

To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic Races – the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifest here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.” - Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar We, or Our Nationhood Defined

https://sanjeev.sabhlokcity.com/Misc/We-or-Our-Nationhood-De...

M. S. Golwalkar was the second supreme leader of the RSS

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