I feel this is a worthwhile piece. It spends considerable time exploring the issues of end-to-end encryption and enhanced privacy and their relationship to the problem of lynchings. It details how whatsapp became more than a mere P2P messaging service in this community. It was the primary source of news, like Facebook but completely private and impervious to intervention. Thus all the negative stuff we've heard about how FB affected our elections, which everybody is ok with "blaming FB" for.. imagine that 10X and actually facilitating lynchings.
Often we've heard that "terrorists will just use another service" but lynch mobs are a different case much more closely tied to the popularity of a social network. WhatsApp has become that and it has also led the charge to make everything super private and impervious to law enforcement.
To be clear, I completely see the positive aspects of E2E encrypted systems and welcome them in my life. But I think it we should support journalistic explorations of the consequences of these systems, especially as they grow beyond simple P2P communication and become the primary source of news in a community, which is the case here.
This will keep on happening whether they police whatapp or block it altogether unless these people are educated and are allowed to develop a modicum of trust in the law enforcement agencies.
But WA could certainly help with this education, maybe in the same sense it educates you that a conversation is E2E encrypted. The app could easily provide a clear warning and an additional page with concrete examples of abuse/misuse and dangers.
What is it when white Americans invade an Italian restaurant in search of child abuse or harass firefighters and grieving parents while accusing them of being "crisis actors"?
When the current culture of "hyper growth at all costs" promulgated by the unholy trinity of goo-face-azons came along they were the first to be made to feel unwelcome.
[0]: to the point where I've encouraged (or rather tried to convince) groups moving to other channels.
But ease-of-use is only one product dimension. Different tools encourage different modes of communication. The kind of discourse and the use cases of tool A and tool B will be different and which is better depends on what outcome you are trying to achieve - substantive debates for the good of humanity, or “engagement”.
Blaming WhatsApp is misplaced, in some sense – the blame lies with startup culture, and with each of us that choose to make that excuse.
While in general I agree that everyone should share responsibility for maintaining a safe society that very feeling seems to be what these murderers were operating on. Given the lack of remorse I think it is clear that there is a deeper issue than unfiltered efficient communication in these communities.
> "Mob lynching isn’t a new phenomenon in India. According to some reports, there were more than 2,000 lynchings in India between 2000 and 2012 — well before WhatsApp was around."
I don't know, crazy idea: Maybe the blame should fall on... the people who think it's OK to lynch strangers.
But even if it is simply enabling and perpetuating an existing problem, why haven't we asked ourselves why technology isn't addressing the issue? How is this future we've created any better? Because it's faster? Because the UI is nicer?
It's rare to see startup culture produce anything that I would call true innovation. Maybe I just have a higher bar than most folks. That could be what I'm arguing here, and that doesn't change the fact that you have a point – I just believe we have to do better.
For every unethical piece of software that gets written, there's at least one engineer... one of us, maybe even someone reading this very post... who said "Sure, boss, I could totally write that!"
Western businesses don't have an inherent right to market their products in India. Group messenger apps, at least those lacking in sovereign moderation powers, are clearly causing harm in illiterate/hoax-naive demographics. Is India getting a deal that outweighs the human costs of violence, or should they develop their own?
the village is now a ghost-town; most of the men fled, and the women and children stay inside. elders are ashamed to mention their hometown.
there are two educational efforts: the police have posted numerous warning signs in public areas, and a group of students are traveling around giving a play to demonstrate how spreading rumors on WhatsApp caused a lynching.
in addition to those efforts, what can WhatsApp do to keep this from happening? India is doing their part. If WhatsApp thinks it's unable to handle the situation, they should turn administrative control of their service over to the government.
This is fundamentally very very simple functionality - there's no social media algorithms surfacing different content to different people or anything like that.
Are you seriously advocating that we should just disallow digital communication. (Not to mention advocating it using digital communication)
The larger conversation seems to be revolving around the question of “While we continue to build these infrastructures, are we currently—in a serious way— searching for ways to mitigate against these types of things from happening? And if not, why not?”
Which, from what we’re seeing— with how vulnerable many segments of populations seem to be, with misinformation and these types of mob behaviors—this is a timely and important question.
“each said they’d done so after watching shocking videos on WhatsApp warning of outsiders abducting children.”
Blocking WhatsApp would be a perfectly justifiable solution! Regulating it would be as well. Facebook and Google want to airdrop their products into all of these emerging markets for growth, ignoring all the negative externalities until someone holds them accountable. None of these countries need to be fatalist about technology or these companies.
If you're actually serious I'd love to hear your justification, but I feel like you just haven't thought about this very hard.
EDIT: Sorry, I realize that I was speaking condescendingly here. I'm just trying to get the point across that asking us to actually solve the hard problem of platforms before unleashing them on the world shouldn't be too big a burden to bear. Some (myself included) would argue that our entire society is destabilizing because of the lack of ingenuity in solving this problem. It gets frustrating.
Free speech != the right to a platform, which is synonymous with saying that, just because you have a voice doesn't mean your message has immediate merit, or that it is the truth, or that people have to give your voice equal weight to others, or that people have to listen to you.
Restricting the messages a platform may carry according to the state's view of merit or truth, on the other hand, is exactly "regulating speech."
EDIT: To be clear, I am responding in the context of the upthread "Blocking WhatsApp would be a perfectly justifiable solution! Regulating it would be as well." Your argument seems less puzzling in the context of the very different assertion that Whatsapp itself should exercise editorial control. Apologies if this is what you meant.
Shall we block or regulate the printing press? Hold its inventors and users accountable for its negative externalities? After all, none of these countries/churches need to be fatalistic about the printed word or these heretics...
If you'd review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
I know it pails in comparison, but the London riots of a few years ago were (in part) organised over BlackBerry Messenger. I don't recall many on HN advocating for blocking BlackBerry Messenger. I feel this comment from the time applies as much here as it did there:
> Neither Blackberry, Twitter, nor Facebook fuelled the fire under London's riots, any more than the internet, radio waves, or electricity did. Violent, hateful people did that.