Last Monday (3) the WhatsApp announced a new “fact checking” feature for the messaging app, which will allow s to quickly search Google whenever they receive a message with topics that could be linked to disinformation campaigns — the known as “fake news”. 6g6i55
Whenever the receives a message that has already been forwarded to five or more people before him (whether it is a joke, a meme, a link to a news site or an image with data and information on any subject), the application will display a “magnifying glass” to the right of the message. By clicking on this “magnifying glass”, the message content will be sent to an online search, which will throw the text in search engines (for example, Google) and return results that will help the understand if it is something real or not. whether it is “fake news” — something invented to deceive people.
The company guarantees that this feature will not break the end-to-end encryption of the application - that is, at no time will Facebook (the company that owns the WhatsApp) will have access to the content of your messages. This will be possible because the entire operation of copying the content of the message and sending it to search engines will be carried out within the 's own smartphone or computer (in the case of WhatsApp Web), and at no time is this content sent to WhatsApp providers.
This new tool against fake news is now available in versions of WhatsApp for Android, iOS and WhatsApp Web for s in Brazil, United States, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, United Kingdom and Spain.
WhatsApp and Fake News 6d2oe
It is not today that the WhatsApp and Facebook has been concerned about the app's use for the spread of disinformation campaigns, and since the scandal involving Facebook and Cambridge Analytica was revealed, the app is one of the main targets of investigations that try to solve the problem of fake news — especially those with political motivations.
Recently, Graphika (an online information mapping and analysis agency) revealed that over the past six years, a mysterious group has used various forged documents and fake s to spread a worldwide fake news campaign favorable to the Russian government, and this campaign used some of the major social networks and messaging apps to propagate its faked “revelations”,
Therefore, investment by WhatsApp in tools to try to prevent the application from being used to spread fake news is nothing new: last year, the company even tested a tool very similar to the one being implemented now, and which allowed s to compare a received image with Google search results to find out if the photo they sent him is real or if it was a montage.
This year, in the face of the new coronavirus pandemic, the company has already taken other actions to try to reduce the reach of fake news, such as limiting the number of times a person can $1 million dollars for the Paynter Institute’s International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), money that is being used to “cures” and other fake news that may arise in relation to COVID-19 in several countries.
Source: WhatsApp
