Are Tech giants doing "how to identify fake news" well?

One Word To Describe What Tech Giants Are Doing To The Fake News War

Powerlessness!

Shreya Ganguly, a staff of Inc42 Staff, reported that:

The Indian government has raised its concern regarding the fake news in view of reports that stated at least 31 people being killed in different Indian states such as Assam, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tripura, and West Bengal by lynch mobs due to rumours of child kidnapping that were spread over WhatsApp.

Following this incident, the Centre had issued a warning letter to Whatsapp to devise a technological solution to track the source users.

To this, the platform had turned down the demand stating that it cannot build a software to trace the origin of a message as it would weaken the end-to-end encryption of messages.

However, it had taken steps such as, it restricted its forward message limit to five chat and also launched the forwards label, aimed at helping users to identify if a text or video has been forwarded by another user and not originally composed.

Why is "five chats"?

Why not "ten chats" or "twenty chats" or "more chats"?

Whatsapp, owned by Facebook, is trying to restrain fake news, rumors from spreading over the platform.

In fact, they are 'hurting' themselves by having their services limited to users.

As I said in my 4th letter about solving fake news problem, "The more Tech giants become afraid of the fake news, disinformation problem, the more they trap themselves and only make a fool of themselves."

In this case, "restricted its forward message limit to five chat" cannot solve the problem and I think they knew this well.

Have you ever thought: "Will they ever destroy themselves someday?"

A Defective Ladder

To the problem of fake news and misinformation, You cannot climb the higher side step if the current one is broken or pieced.

When fake news, disinformation, hate speech, propaganda, rumors are visible, in front of their eyes, they still can't deal with those evil things.

So, how can they (Tech giants) solve fake news, disinformation, etc...that is obscured?

According to cjr.org's report "Fact-checking groups working to debunk hoaxes and conspiracy theories in India say the spread of misinformation is increasingly happening on WhatsApp rather than Facebook or Twitter, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. “More than 90 percent of the stuff we are debunking is on WhatsApp,” said Govindraj Ethiraj, a journalist and founder of a fact-checking group called Boom. And because WhatsApp allows for anonymous accounts and uses end-to-end encryption, it can be almost impossible to determine where a rumor or hoax originated or how it spread so widely."