
The Era of Whatsapp Propaganda Is Upon Us - kawera
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/the-era-of-whatsapp-propaganda-is-upon-us/?page=full
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thisisit
This is getting boring. People are writing left and right about each new
app/social media site they can find. But the fact is: _Rumor mongering_ has
existed since the first human could talk.

There were _Hoax messages_ even during the email era. Surely, there are(were)
politicians mining the email data to send messages to their prospective voters
and surely there were people who were spreading hoaxes about 9/11 or the
Kennedy assassination.

The only thing which has changed is the ease of data collection and fine
tuning of these targeted hoaxes. But, unless Whatsapp is providing some sort
of targeted data for people to send hoax, this article is nonsensical.

India for example, had issues with mass messaging and rumors. There was a ban
on mass messaging in 2012, way before all of this became such a big issues,
because precisely this issue:

[https://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2012/08/17/indian-
bans-m...](https://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2012/08/17/indian-bans-mass-
sms-to-counter-panic/)

[https://www.medianama.com/2012/08/223-india-sms-
ban/](https://www.medianama.com/2012/08/223-india-sms-ban/)

Interestingly, found this old article from techcrunch:

[https://techcrunch.com/2012/08/23/indias-sms-hoax-panic-
coul...](https://techcrunch.com/2012/08/23/indias-sms-hoax-panic-could-it-
happen-in-the-u-s/)

It says:

> Pulling something like this off isn’t easy — otherwise those quit Facebook
> day protests would have worked. The conditions have to be right.

