by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, News, Politics, Social Media, Technology
New Delhi : Taking cognisance of the Indian government’s concerns over the misuse of its platform for repeated circulation of provocative content, Facebook-owned WhatsApp on Wednesday wrote to the IT Ministry saying the company is horrified by terrible acts of violence.
Reacting to the growing instances of lynching of innocent people owing to large number of irresponsible messages filled with rumours and provocation circulated on WhatsApp, the IT Ministry on Tuesday asked WhatsApp to take immediate action and ensure that the platform is not used for such malafide activities.
“Thank you for your letter dated July 2. Like the Government of India, we’re horrified by these terrible acts of violence and wanted to respond quickly to the very important issues you have raised. We believe this is a challenge that requires government, civil society and technology companies to work together,” WhatsApp said in the letter sent to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).
WhatsApp which has over 200 million monthly active users in India, listed a number of measures it has taken in the recent past to control the spread of misinformation and abuse on its platform.
“We have been testing a new label in India that highlights when a message has been forwarded versus composed by the sender.
“This could serve as an important signal for recipients to think twice before forwarding messages because it lets a user know if content they received was written by the person they know or a potential rumor from someone else. We plan to launch this new feature soon,” the company informed.
According to media reports, over 30 people have been killed in the past one year by lynch mobs after rumours of child lifting triggered via messages on WhatsApp.
In Mid-May, said WhatsApp, it added new protections to prevent people from adding others back into groups which they had left — a form of misuse we think it is important to correct.
“Last week, we launched a new setting that enables administrators to decide who gets to send messages within individual groups. This will help reduce the spread of unwanted messages into important group conversations – as well as the forwarding of hoaxes and other content,” the popular messaging platform noted.
WhatsApp has also announced a new project to work with leading academic experts in India to learn more about the spread of misinformation.
“The fact-checking organisation Boom Live is available on WhatsApp and has published some reports on the source of the rumours that have contributed to the recent violence,” the company said.
While WhatsApp messages can be highly viral, the way people use the app is by nature still very private.
“Many people (nearly 25 per cent in India) are not in a group; the majority of groups continue to be small (less than 10 people); and nine in 10 messages are still sent from just one person to another,” WhatsApp informed.
The company also asked to Indian government to talk further about the actions it is taking and its plans going forward.
“With the right action we can help improve everyone’s safety by ensuring communities are better equipped to deal with malicious hoaxes and false information — while still enabling people to communicate reliably and privately across India,” it noted.
WhatsApp also announced to soon start an engagement programme with the law enforcement officials across the country so “they are familiar with our approach and how we can be helpful”.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Social Media, Technology
Los Angeles : Verified Facebook pages of SpaceX and Tesla disappeared on Friday, minutes after Elon Musk responded to a comment on Twitter calling for him to take down his rocket company SpaceX, electric carmaker Tesla and his own official pages in support of the #DeleteFacebook movement.
“What’s Facebook?” Musk on Friday morning sarcastically replied to a tweet from WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton urging his followers to delete Facebook by tweeting “It is time.”
Musk, CEO of both SpaceX and Tesla, Inc, replied to a comment on Twitter calling for him to take down the SpaceX, Tesla and Musk official pages in support of the #DeleteFacebook movement by saying “I didn’t realize there was one. Will do.”
Less than half an hour, the verified Facebook pages of SpaceX and Tesla, Inc are no longer accessible, Xinhua reported.
Prior to the deletion, both the two pages had over 2.6 million Likes and Follows, and super high engagement rates.
The boycott “#DeleteFacebook” started after the US and British media reported that the data of more than 50 million Facebook users were inappropriately used by a British data analysis company, Cambridge Analytica, in activities allegedly connected with US President Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted on Wednesday that his company had made mistakes in a data leak that caused grave concern about user privacy possibly abused for political purposes.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : WhatsApp is testing a new feature called “block revoke request” to prevent people from misusing the “Delete for Everyone” feature.
According to WABetaInfo, a fan site that tests new WhatsApp features early, in order to stop such bad users, the messaging platform has implemented the new feature.
“A new WhatsApp for iOS update (2.18.31) is available on Apple AppStore. It is a bug fixes update but it has the new ‘Delete for everyone’ limit, that is one hour, eight minutes and 16 seconds,” read the information on the website on Monday.
“When the user deletes a message for everyone, WhatsApp sends to the recipient(s) a new message having the same ID of the message that the user wants to revoke,” the post added.
Earlier, when a recipient received this particular message containing the revoke request, WhatsApp checked if the ID of the message was present in the database and if the original message was found, it directly deleted it without checking any other important information.
The platform has decided to choose 24 hours as time reference because a user can delete a message for everyone and the recipient’s phone might be turned off at that moment.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : WhatsApp now has 1.5 billion monthly active users (MAUs) who are exchanging nearly 60 billion messages on a single day, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Thursday.
In an earnings call after announcing the fourth quarter results, Zuckerberg said that Facebook-owned Instagram is now the most popular Story-sharing product, followed by WhatsApp.
Both Instagram “Stories” and WhatsApp “Status” features now have 300 million daily active users (DAUs) — compared to 178 million Snapchat users, TechCrunch reported.
On February 19, 2014, Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion, its largest acquisition to date.
WhatsApp currently has over 200 million monthly active users in India.
To help businesses communicate better with their customers in India, WhatsApp last month officially rolled out “WhatsApp Business” — a free-to-download Android app for small businesses — in the country.
The new app, available on Google Play Store, will make it easier for companies to connect with customers and more convenient for its users to chat with businesses that matter to them.
In India, 84 per cent of SMBs think that WhatsApp helps them communicate with customers and 80 per cent of SMBs think that WhatsApp helps them grow their business.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Marketing Basics, Markets, Medium Enterprise, SMEs, Social Media, Technology
New Delhi : To help businesses communicate better with their customers in India, WhatsApp has officially rolled out “WhatsApp Business” — a free-to-download Android app for small businesses — in the country.
The new app, available on Google Play Store, will make it easier for companies to connect with customers, and more convenient for its users to chat with businesses that matter to them.
“WhatsApp Business”, yet to come on Apple App Store in India, asks for a separate phone number from the one users have for their individual WhatsApp account.
“People all around the world use WhatsApp to connect with small businesses they care about from online clothing companies in India to auto parts stores in Brazil,” the Facebook-owned app had said in an earlier statement.
“WhatsApp Business will make it easier for people to connect with them, and vice versa, in a fast and simple way,” the company added.
“WhatsApp Business” was launched last week in Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, Britain and the US.
The app will help customers with useful information such as a business description, email or store addresses and website.
It will also save time with smart messaging tools — quick replies that provide fast answers to frequently asked questions, greeting messages that introduce customers to your business, and away messages that let them know you’re busy.
“People will know that they’re talking to a business because you will be listed as a Business Account. Over time, some businesses will have Confirmed Accounts once it’s been confirmed that the account phone number matches the business phone number,” WhatsApp said.
People can continue using WhatsApp as usual as there’s no need to download anything new.
“People will continue to have full control over the messages they receive, with the ability to block any number, including businesses, as well as report spam,” the company added.
In India, 84 per cent of SMBs think that WhatsApp helps them communicate with customers, and 80 per cent of SMBs think that WhatsApp helps them grow their business.
—IANS
