WhatsApp, giving the scope of its service, and given the proximity of the electoral period in India, has launched for this same market a new news verification service.
With more than 200 million users available in India, WhatsApp claims that through Checkpoint Tipline, which is what their new service is called, those who receive news through their platform, whether in the form of text, image or video, can verify their veracity.
This new service, launched in collaboration with local company Proto, which also have the help of two other specialized companies, classify the messages that users send them, with the following classifications: true, false, misleading or disputed. Supported languages are English along with the four regional languages of India.
In this way, the users of this messaging platform in that market can no longer be misled to be influenced in the choice of their vote towards one political party or another.
It so happens that, as noted in Reuters, the main political parties reproach each other for spreading false information about their opponents through WhatsApp while denying to do the same.
In addition, the WhatsApp parent company, Facebook Inc, pointed out this past Monday that they had deleted 712 accounts and 390 pages in India and Pakistan for what they call non-authentic behavior.
With this initiative, WhatsApp hopes to stop being at the center of the debates that accuse its service of allowing the spread of what is already popularly known as fake news.
