India: Google engineer latest victim of mob lynchings fueled by WhatsApp rumors

It&#x27;s great WhatsApp took steps to prevent the spread of false information but that isn&#x27;t the root of the problem. The root of the problem is of a cultural nature.<p>At present there is no law that criminalises mob killings. For that reason, the perpetrators are often not prosecuted by the police. A law that makes clear mob killings are unacceptable would go a long way in changing the cultural stance towards such acts.<p>Thankfully, the Manav Suraksha Kanoon (law to protect humans) could close this legal gap soon.

I have been thinking about this a bit. [0] covers it in more detail at the local level with a map of the places it has happened. This is something which has been happening in India and is not limited to a particular state. There was a recent article about how the cops discovered one of the videos responsible for lynching to be fake and taken out of context of a NGOs promotional video.<p>Makes me wonder the motives of persons involved - what do they gain by inciting this violence. These are not your vote banks. But considering its pan-India nature, this activity is somehow organized.<p><i>This is not a law and order problem</i>. In the sense that it is beyond that. Those who say it do not understand the scale of mobs in India. You cannot police this, especially in places where this is occurring. The police have been helpless, even threatened.<p><i>The real problem is indeed the people of India. WhatsApp is just a medium</i> - though it makes it very convenient. I would even say this outcome of whatsApp usage is inevitable in a country like India where you will find abundant people ready to go berserk and people who want to exploit it for no apparent reason.<p>Frequent reading about this really makes me loose faith in humanity. I don&#x27;t know how to change a billion people.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;indianexpress.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;india&#x2F;murderous-mob-lynchings-accused-whatsapp-rumour-investigation-child-lifting-5249318&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;indianexpress.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;india&#x2F;murderous-mob-lynchi...</a>

This pretty much highlights how important education is and the effort that needs to go toward educating the poor in India.<p>The coming wave of technology and tools is only going to exacerbate these problems further.<p>One small thing that whatsapp could potentially do is to make it a little bit harder to forward messages to everyone. force people to wait a couple of seconds before adding another person.

Surely the real problem here is that there are a great many people who are both gullible and prone to violence.

A very similar thing happened in Bucharest a couple of weeks ago: a bunch of people from a “poor” neighborhood attacked an ambulance-looking vehicle which was being used by a 50-year old lady writer to promote books and reading among the kids living in those poor neighborhoods. The mass hysteria reguarding said lady was also spread through social media (FB and WhatsApp) and what’s even more disconcerting is that even after the police cleared everything up and explained the situation (thankfully the lady escaped with only some bruises) there were still people commenting on said lady writer’s FB page accusing her of being a child-kidnapper.<p>I’m afraid democracy and the idea of universal vote will start to be influenced more and more by these people, no matter how much some other people will try to “regulate” some communication channels.

The solutions provided seem quite poor. What whatsapp needs is a reporting button for hoaxes and disturbing content…

I got curious about the role of Whatsapp in this whole incident and googled the actual incident:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;in.news.yahoo.com&#x2F;google-engineer-beaten-death-over-081518270.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;in.news.yahoo.com&#x2F;google-engineer-beaten-death-over-...</a><p>From this story it looks like Whatsapp was only used as a communication medium and not really the rumor mongering one. While I can understand some of the examples given the linked dw.com article, I don&#x27;t see what could Whatsapp do in such cases? Should they block every offensive message?<p>So, for me this story sounds more like a low quality effort on part of the media. Once upon a time there used to be similar stories about how SMSes were being used for rumor mongering and spreading propaganda. And the major issue has always been ignored - education.

I&#x27;m sure Whatsapp has access to what encrypted message was sent by who, to whom.<p>Simple would be to crowdsource reporting a post as &quot;incendiary or fake&quot; in a group and it wont be visible to the rest of the users in the group. or hide the message and show only after informing the reader that the message may be fake, as reported by others in the group.<p>Twitter does a better job than facebook in this matter. And I thought FB was way ahead with all the buzzwords like AI, ML, Neural Networks. If FB cannot add this simple feature to Whatsapp, or something similar to this, not sure it&#x27;ll manage to help the lynching situation in India and world over.

Ever since Narendra Modi came to power - India has become Lynchistan. The Hindu supremacist leader and his organisation RSS that stands for ‘Cultural Nationalism’ is imposing ‘Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan’ - a monoculture which advocates ‘One Nation, One Language, One Religion’ for a country as diverse as India. The hate that is unleashed is consuming democracy slowly but surely. Future is indeed bleak for India.<p>Many Hindutva Organisations affiliated to RSS raise large amount of money from US tech sector each year. I request everybody to put pressure on their companies and colleagues not to donate money to racist and supremacist organisations.

Why can&#x27;t these sites implement a &#x27;are you sure?&#x27; check before letting users repost fake news? Do a lookup on Snopes or similar and provide that along with information that informs the user of legal consequences of participating in the sharing of false information if harm results from it.

Sounds like the US practise of swatting transplanted to India

Perhaps WhatsApp should do some PSAs, via the app itself, to places that seem to be affected by this problem. They could be colour prioritised for seriousness.

Casteism is worse than Racism;<p>Casteism = Racism + Slavery<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dailymail.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;article-2325502&#x2F;Map-shows-worlds-racist-countries-answers-surprise-you.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dailymail.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;article-2325502&#x2F;Map-shows-wo...</a>

<i>WhatsApp needs to recognize India offers a huge market for them. They are making good money out of India operations,&quot; Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said earlier this month. &quot;Therefore they must focus on the security related aspects of people of India.&quot;</i><p>What is WhatsApp’s monetisation strategy in India? Is it susceptible to regulation or is the government powerless in these situations?

There is an uncomfortable fact: many people only notice harm when there’s a victim similar to them involved, but are typically oblivious or unconcerned with the troubles not in their purview: impetus for mass-migration to Europe, genocides (ie Hutus &amp; Tutsis), East Timor, PNG, nationless people (ie Rohingya, Kurds, Uyghurs, Palestinians, Catalans), terrorism in Africa and neglect&#x2F;poisoning of poor people in rural areas.

Just wanted to present an observation that Deutsche Welle (DW) has an extremely biased opinion of India and presents only the bad and sensationalized articles about things in India. As an Indian living in Germany, I have seen firsthand how misrepresented India is in foreign publications.<p>Although, I don&#x27;t doubt the article, I would suggest you take the article with a pinch of salt. Yes, there are problems in some parts in India, but the foreign media portray it like people are running around killing and raping people, which is definitely not the case.

This reminds me of the “Foxconn suicides” story... sure the absolute numbers were high, but Foxconn has like a million employees, so the suicide rate was actually completely “normal”.<p><i>&gt; 25 people have been killed since May</i><p>So 150 people per year, or 0.000015% of India’s population. Sure, it’s <i>a</i> problem, but I’m pretty sure there are bigger problems that are easier to solve (rape and acid attacks come to mind).