With India already witnessing the deadly consequences of wild rumours going viral through WhatsApp, the Centre has asked the message networking platform to prevent circulation of provocative messages, inflammatory contents and false news that are often leading to lynching across the nation.
A number of incidents of lynching have taken place in this year alone on the “suspicion” of child abduction. With malicious messages in WhatsApp going viral in no time, the trouble brews further.
In June, two young men were beaten to death in Assam with instigating WhatsApp messages saying two men on a black car were roaming around a village to abduct children . Also in Tripura, violence broke out after rumours of child abduction and kidney smuggling were doing the rounds on WhatsApp. Last week, a number of people were killed in Maharashtra too.
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In a statement, the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on Tuesday sternly said, “Deep disapproval of such developments has been conveyed to the senior management of WhatsApp and they have been advised that necessary remedial measures should be taken.”
It further said, WhatsApp authorities will have to take the liability as its their responsibility to ensure the platform is not used for such malicious acts. The ministry asked WhatsApp to take immediate steps to stop such menace.
Although WhatsApp’s parent company Facebook is yet to respond to the ministry’s stern directive, the message networking site earlier said it does not want the platform to be used as a place for spreading fake information. It also said WhatsApp is trying to educate its users to identify fake news.
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