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News > India

India Gov, Whatsapp Execs Discuss Tracing Texts for Fake News

  • India is the company’s largest market with over 220 million users.

    India is the company’s largest market with over 220 million users. | Photo: Reuters

Published 7 December 2018
Opinion

Since last year more than 30 people were lynched in the country after misinformation spread through users on the app.

India’s tech ministry officials met this week with senior WhatsApp executives over a plan to trace messages containing misinformation to their source, a government official said Friday.

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Misinformation on the app has led to the lynching of more than 30 people since January last year, according to data portal IndiaSpend. The killings prompted India’s technology minister Ravi Shankar Prasad to call on WhatsApp to trace the origins of such messaged.

"We have been asking them for traceability," an official at the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said. He added that the company has been “non-committal,” but that the government is forcing the matter.

WhatsApp has maintained that building traceability into its messaging service would undermine its end-to-end encryption. It would also invade people’s right to private and create an opportunity for misuse, which could be particularly alarming if that power were in the hands of a government.

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