Taking heed of
the growing incidents of unsolicited messages being shared on whatsApp, the
Facebook-owned company is all set to roll out a new feature which will help in
checking the misuse of the platform. The
feature, called ‘Suspicious Link Dectection’, is currently in testing
and will be rolled out in the near future.
The feature is
presently available on the 2.18.204 beta version of whatsApp. Whenever a user receives a link to a third
party website, Whatsapp will conduct a background check to verify the
authenticity of the website and will alert the user if it identifies something
suspicious.
Upon identifying
a dubious website, whatsapp will mark it with a red label, which will highlight
that the message is either spam or will redirect to a fake website. Nevertheless, if the user still proceeds to
open the link, whatsapp will alert him/her one final time that the link is
possibly a suspicious link.
Additionally,
there are other measures whatsapp is taking to curb the misuse of the platform,
namely:
a) A
user can block an irksome contact. Upon
receipt of a message from an unknown source, whatsapp provides an option to
either block or add the contact.
b) Group
administrators can allow or restrict or other members from sending messages in
a group.
c) The
“Forwarded” label allows users to
identify whether the message has been written or forwarded.
Whatsapp will
also be awarding $50,000 to independent researchers who study the spread of
false propaganda on the communication platform and highlight measures for
curtailing the same. The company has
established a ‘ Whatsapp Research Awards
for Social Science and Misinformation’ Which states, “Whatsapp is commissioning a competitive set of awards to researchers
in interested in exploring issues that are related to misinformation on
whatsapp. The whatsapp Research Awards
will provide funding for independent research proposals that are designed to be
shared with whatsapp, Facebook, and wider scholarly and policy communities.” The monetary award is unrestricted, which
implies that the awardee may utilize the prize amount for any cause.
Recently, the
Government of India has instructed whatsapp to take swift measures to prevent
the spreading of “Irresponsible and
explosive messages” through its platform.
On July 1, five people were lynched to death in Dhule district of
Maharashtra by villagers who suspected the deceased of being
child-lifters. Whatsapp responded to the
Government by stating that it is horrified by the terrible acts of violence
perpetrated by people influenced by false messages shared on the platform. It further outlined steps to curtail such
abuse, which include product controls, digital literacy, and fact-checking.
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