
How WhatsApp Destroyed a Village - gernblanstonne
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pranavdixit/whatsapp-destroyed-village-lynchings-rainpada-india
======
quantummkv
The real problem here is that these services (twitter, fb, whatsapp, etc.) are
designed for use by educated, urban people who know the basics of tech. And
they are then marketed to uneducated people in remote areas to reach growth
metric targets that Zuck and co can fling around at their next meeting.

In the west and in the urban areas of SE Asia, these problems do not occur
because the users are educated enough to understand how this all works and are
less likely to fall for all these fake news and child kidnapping videos.

Now, in remote villages, the people are not educated in technology. People who
don't have access to electricity and TV suddenly find themselves using Social
Media. These people don't have an idea that videos and images can be faked
using Photoshop and such. So they take these at face value.

In real world communications, people have developed a system of verification
and trust. When someone speaks about such things, you generally ask questions
like the source for the information. Then you decide whether it is a source
that you trust.

Whatsapp has no such system to find and verify the source of information.
There is no trust model. The basic assumption is that the person in your trust
zone is sending you this information.

Combine this with the fact that the videos hit the base instincts of humanity
(safety, especially of your children) and you have a recipe for disaster.

~~~
wtmt
> The real problem here is that these services (twitter, fb, whatsapp, etc.)
> are designed for use by educated, urban people who know the basics of tech.
> And they are then marketed to uneducated people in remote areas to reach
> growth metric targets that Zuck and co can fling around at their next
> meeting.

I'm deeply disappointed that your comment is on the top in this discussion! As
one of the "educated and urban" people, I take umbrage at this completely
ridiculous and nonsensical statement. The fact that you can even make such a
statement as an "educated and urban" person says a lot about the pathetic
thinking in urban circles. FWIW, I have seen many so called "educated and
urban" people also falling for various WhatsApp scams and fake news. While
knowledge of technology may be poorer among uneducated people "in remote
areas", it's not unique to them alone. You'd know that urban dwellers aren't
immune by any means to these things if you had followed the news on lynchings
and other mob attacks in cities.

Before you start arguing further, are you even aware how many urban people
fall for all the sensational and fake debates on TV that are just meant to get
ratings up, create controversies and tensions? Where is your (or anyone's)
focus or acknowledgment on those?

~~~
vijaybritto
Not really. Almost all of WhatsApp related lynchings are from villages. The
OP's point is that one app cannot fit all. To give you one silly point to
understand; These are the people who are online for the first time. They still
are in the 'click here to talk to online hotties in your area' level scam. A
regular internet user would know that this is fake. Not them!

~~~
iamshs
Patently false and just a way to whitewash the crime. Here are lynching/mob
attack examples from Indian cities:-

1\. Gurgaon : [https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/muslim-meat-
selle...](https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/muslim-meat-sellers-
beaten-up-forced-to-flee-gurgaon-village-on-delhi-border/article6323033.ece)

2\. Hyderabad: [https://www.firstpost.com/india/mob-lynching-telangana-
polic...](https://www.firstpost.com/india/mob-lynching-telangana-police-
arrests-journalist-for-sharing-false-news-on-child-lifting-gangs-charges-him-
with-murder-4698561.html)

3\. Jaipur: [https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/jaipur/25-year-
old-...](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/jaipur/25-year-old-lynched-
in-city-over-child-lifting-rumours/articleshow/63022011.cms)

4\. Chennai: [https://indianexpress.com/article/india/two-beaten-in-
chenna...](https://indianexpress.com/article/india/two-beaten-in-chennai-
passersby-had-no-idea-why-who-they-were-beating-up-say-locals-5243231/)

5\. Ahemdabad: [https://www.news18.com/news/india/woman-beggar-lynched-on-
su...](https://www.news18.com/news/india/woman-beggar-lynched-on-suspicion-of-
child-lifting-in-ahmedabad-1791631.html)

~~~
vijaybritto
I specifically said almost. Look at the number of lynchings and count how many
in cities. Even in cities it's not in the upper sections of the society.
That's the point

------
jasonlfunk
This is terrible but blaming WhatsApp is misplaced. If it wasn't WhatsApp, it
would have been another service. Either it will be easy to communicate or it
won't be. If it is, it can be used as a force for good or a force for evil.
The real problem is so much more difficult that it's easy to try to find
something you can do, block the technology, so you feel like you are doing
something even if it's completely ignoring the root of the issue.

~~~
gooddelta
That's the entire problem with this industry – we make the assumption that
someone less ethical than us will come along and build the shitty product
anyway, and use that as justification to do something we likely shouldn't.

Blaming WhatsApp is misplaced, in some sense – the blame lies with startup
culture, and with each of us that choose to make that excuse.

~~~
closeparen
"The shitty product" is text chat. We "likely shouldn't" build text chat?
Startup culture is morally defective because it built text chat, and we share
in the moral capability by "making excuses" for text chat?

~~~
p1necone
Exactly. This is the tired old pattern of "humans do human things and
technology is coincidentally involved because we live in the 21st century,
_obviously_ it's the technologies fault."

~~~
user111233
In many cases is genuinely is the technologies fault when it uses UI patterns
to shape behavior and algorithmic sorting to selectively show ideas to the
user. But that is not the case here.

------
wtmt
WhatsApp didn't destroy a village. People did, like they have always done when
they've believed some random threat to be true, without checking the facts or
doing some investigation. All that technology, be it WhatsApp or any other
platform, has done is made it easier and quicker for such rumors to spread.

What's required is a government initiative like on the lines of this
educational video in this article. [1] There's no point trying to control
WhatsApp or block it. If not WhatsApp, something else will take its place, and
it'd be like an endless game of whack-a-mole. Hope the government focuses on
awareness initiatives more than anything else. In India, we don't need further
censorship, Internet shutdowns and such. We have too much of those already. (I
know this statement will offend many people, but please examine facts first,
starting with a search online)

[1]:
[https://www.buzzfeednews.com/e28058d5-13d9-4752-98a1-d8bba84...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/e28058d5-13d9-4752-98a1-d8bba849426f)

~~~
restlessmind247
I agree with you on the People being responsible for lynching, but I do not
think awareness initiatives will be sufficient in the short term. As they will
take generations to come into full effect.

Instead greater respect for the law is more important. No matter what the
people had thought about the five strangers they didn't have the power or the
right to punish them.

It will be a lot more viable to educate them to respect certain non ambiguous
laws, such as murder being a crime regardless of what you think about the
other person. While judging authenticity of a piece of information can be
ambiguous and will take time to become affective.

------
RyJones
I was in Made, Netherlands, this summer and saw they had per-neighborhood/per-
street signs for WhatsApp groups that the police monitored. I thought that was
a little rich for such an isolated berg - the biggest crimes there probably
deserve harsh looks and muttering.

Next day, walking around Leverkusen, I saw the same thing. I asked around but
my ability to ferret out who paid for these signs was exceeded by my desire to
be anonymous.

~~~
RLN
They had a group for this when I was living in Hoofddorp. From memory they
called it "Buurtpreventie" which I suppose translates into "Neighbourhood
Watch" really. It's just a new evolution of what has existed for ages. It
allows faster communication rather than Jan calling Sanne who calls Peter to
inform that someone isn't taking their bins out on the correct day.

~~~
kaffeemitsahne
Technically it means "prevention of neighbourhood" which is obviously kind of
silly.

------
isuckatcoding
This is an India problem more than a Whatsapp problem and its been going on
long before Whatsapp existed. Rural india and even Pakistan have a serious mob
justice mentality.

------
projektir
I'm pretty sure things like this happened in villages waaaay before WA came
about. This is more old world than new word. WA is a very simple application
that doesn't really, in itself, encourage anything specific.

~~~
toomanybeersies
I would think that it's greater access to mobile phones and mass communication
than Whatsapp itself that's the problem.

Intrinsically, the same thing could happen with SMS.

------
rosege
Its funny how sometimes you get a juxtaposition between 2 articles hitting the
front page. This one reminded me of this article
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17947264](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17947264)
and in particular the author's comment > do not underestimate the destructive
power of lies This seems to be much more of an issue than the fact they used
Whatsapp to spread lies.

~~~
gooddelta
The platform is what spread those lies – without the platform, those lies
wouldn't have had the reach they did.

~~~
bhadra
As mentioned in the article "Mob lynching isn’t a new phenomenon in India.
According to some reports, there were more than 2,000 lynchings in India
between 2000 and 2012 — well before WhatsApp was around."

I agree that WhatsApp has the potential to exacerbate such issues.

------
int_19h
"“Messages about child abductors sent over WhatsApp can be misleading and we
request you to not fall for them,” it said in Marathi. “Anyone caught
indulging in violence or spreading these messages will be arrested and
prosecuted.”"

"... be warned: If you spread them, the police will arrest you!"

That sounds like an awfully good way to make sure that people believe in all
that stuff without saying it out loud. After all, if it wasn't true, why are
"they" trying to crack down on it? It's a very common line of thought,
unfortunately.

~~~
linkregister
I suspect that the culture there has different norms regarding police
censorship and control.

Australians see no problem with invasive police searches of cars and
breathalyzers being administered without probable cause. Americans see no
problem with a murder suspect's photo and name being broadcast on television,
while the same act would horrify Dutch people.

Different cultures are different.

~~~
int_19h
It's not about acceptance of censorship. Even cultures that don't necessarily
see it negatively (I'm from one myself) still exhibit this mode of thinking -
i.e. yes, some things need to be censored, but when something that _you
believe in_ is being censored, that just proves that it's true (and
important).

------
upofadown
>The videos, whose origins are impossible to trace because of WhatsApp’s
strong encryption, ...

So? The problem isn't that the videos exist but that people are spreading them
without knowing they are true in any sense. Each and every person that
forwarded the video is responsible for the results of their entirely
deliberate action. In many countries, spreading hate is straight up illegal.
Why should people be let off the hook just because it is done on the internet?

------
clear_dg
> Nobody in my village reads or watches TV. They only get updates from
> WhatsApp

> two burly police officers marched into the tiny newsroom of AE Vision, a
> __local cable news channel __...Write down this text, and broadcast it to
> your viewers.

Strange strategy from the local authorities if they want to fight this threat
effectively. What happens after the 24 hours Internet ban?

In my opinion, the messages inciting violence should have been countered from
the start (1 month ago?) with factual videos on the same media. If Whatsapp
(or any similar app), can be used for evil, then it can also, as effectively
be used for good. Why wasn't it done? Is the police really unaware of how
things work in these rural areas (no literacy, no tv watching)?

------
iamshs
Blaming WhatsApp is easy, but it is the ideology that should be getting
attacked here. I will bring in viewpoint relevant to Indian minorities here.
They are under exceptional threat in India right now, and they don't have
resources or means to counter the propaganda being rained on them. Current
party ruling India, BJP, is beholden to a group with fascist ideologies, RSS
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. RSS views Muslims and Christians as aliens to India, and
Islam as something which was brought to India by force, and christianity by
forced conversions of missionaries. They want to root out these religions.
Even more sinister is their outlook towards indigenous religions i.e.
Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism. They consider it to be their own branch. In
short, anything not Hinduism is open to be eliminated. They have penetrated
educational institutes, installed Deans in Universities and snubbed out
dissidents and independent voices.

So much so that RSS held a conference in Chicago, World Hindu Congress, where
RSS chief openly called Indian minorites as pests and dogs from outside who
can destroy the lions (Hindus) [6]. This is the sweets box they gave to each
and every participant [7]. They also pointed out how inter-faith marriages is
a danger to Hindus [8]. This outright fascism was aired on US soil. This
fascist organisation has patronage of ex-President of India too. Worse, they
don't like Hindus having interfaith marriages, which is a way of saying don't
marry Muslims.

Another is the incestous relationship between Twitter and WhatsApp. Blue tick
marks on Twitter frequently air bigoted messages that they receive on
WhatsApp. Worse, these messages are screenshotted and then spread back on
WhatsApp, now they carry an air of authenticity because it was tweeted by a
blue tick mark. It is destroying the very social fabric of India and very much
a danger to minorities of India.

1\. [https://www.straight.com/news/877876/gurpreet-singh-
racism-r...](https://www.straight.com/news/877876/gurpreet-singh-racism-rss-
and-narendra-modis-efforts-turn-india-hindu-nation)

2\.
[https://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl1702/17020950.htm](https://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl1702/17020950.htm)

3\. [https://www.ibtimes.com/hindu-nationalists-historical-
links-...](https://www.ibtimes.com/hindu-nationalists-historical-links-nazism-
fascism-214222)

4\. [https://www.huffingtonpost.in/2016/02/23/rss-subramanian-
swa...](https://www.huffingtonpost.in/2016/02/23/rss-subramanian-
swamy_n_9298948.html)

5\. [https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/hitlers-hindus-indias-
nazi-l...](https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/hitlers-hindus-indias-nazi-loving-
nationalists-on-the-rise-1.5628532)

6\. [https://indianexpress.com/article/india/hindus-have-no-
aspir...](https://indianexpress.com/article/india/hindus-have-no-aspiration-
of-dominance-mohan-bhagwat-5346350/)

7\.
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DmqLjkFWwAEvmRZ.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DmqLjkFWwAEvmRZ.jpg)

8\. [https://thewire.in/communalism/world-hindu-congress-
chicago-...](https://thewire.in/communalism/world-hindu-congress-chicago-rss-
vhp-hindu-unity/)

~~~
quantummkv
I am sorry, but how is any political ideology is in any way relevant to the
article? There was no political intention nor any minority/majority religion
behind these lynchings.

~~~
iamshs
Thanks for your question. That political ideology started the lynching trend
using WhatsApp as a misinformation medium. India witnessed widespread
lynchings of people, mainly minorities, who were simply transporting cows, an
animal considered holy by Hindus. So this modus operandi was used before,
until it percolated further.

------
reitanqild
Wow. That was some dark patterns.

When looking into the cookie dialog most of it says it is required.

There is a "Reject all" button and it seems to be live but doesn't work.

------
gooddelta
I know this is going to be an inconvenient reminder for many folks, but: if
you play any part in bringing software (or technology in general) into the
world, you have an obligation to consider the moral, ethical, and political
ramifications of what you are building at every single step of the way.

What happened in that village wasn't an accident – it was the result of
careful "growth-hacking", design, product work, and engineering. It just
didn't work as intended.

There is no such thing as a neutral line of code, feature, notification,
design, business, or product. Full stop.

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
What exactly is "growth hacking" in a chat app? There were no ads here, no
algorithmic timeline, no perverse incentives, nothing that you could
potentially consider as malicious.

What should WhatsApp have done?

Every single post about WhatsApp here has people pontificating about this and
that but no one offers any suggestion of what should be done.

~~~
gooddelta
Yeah, definitely no advertising, particularly overseas, that could have
contributed to WhatsApp's growth. No features added like large groups that
could be used to spread disinformation. WhatsApp chats _are_ used to influence
advertising, so that goes out the window. This happened because WhatsApp
provided the means for it to happen – and you can speculate all day long about
whether some other app would have made it possible, and whether it would have
happened, but what you're saying is speculation, and what I'm citing are
facts.

None of it was intentionally malicious – but not considering the moral,
ethical, political ramifications of how your product will be used _is_
negligent. This is negligence, not malice.

Platforms aren't neutral.

~~~
stickfigure
The logical conclusion of this perspective is that human beings should not be
allowed to freely communicate in groups. I'd rather not live in your world.

Technology can't fix broken human beings. There is a moral failure here, but
it isn't Facebook's. Blaming WhatsApp at best makes the real problem harder to
fix, and at worst makes excuses for the actors in this horrorshow.

~~~
gooddelta
Speed and reach, my friend. Lynchings happened in the US a while ago, but they
weren't a universal phenomenon. A platform with the speed and reach of
WhatsApp makes disinformation more potent.

Nowhere in my post did I suggest human beings shouldn't be allowed to freely
communicate – what I'm suggesting is that maybe we haven't built the right
tools to enable that _safely_ , and instead, we're exacerbating the "broken
human beings" side of this issue.

~~~
solveit
By that logic we should ban megaphones as well.

You know what? Just ban shouting until people build the right tools to enable
that _safely_.

~~~
mijamo
Well if you start using a megaphone to encourage killing people you will have
troubles in a few minutes. With whatsapp... Not that much. Whatsapp is
probably the first medium of communication that is harf to monitor in many
places. It is much safer to encourage hatred and violence there because you
don't need physical interaction, it scales a lot and authorities cannot
intercept it.

------
lovelearning
I wonder why this has been "flagged". It's relevant to this forum, it's about
technological choices and their unintended consequences, and it's well
written.

~~~
jhoh
Maybe because it is Buzzfeed (News)?

~~~
praneshp
Buzzfeed news is excellent. If you aren't aware of some of them, it's your
loss, IMO.

(It's different from buzzfeed.com)

------
eccbits
Why is this flagged? 1\. negative about India 2\. negative about Facebook 3\.
asks hard questioms sbout ethics & technology 4\. all of the above

~~~
iamshs
Negative about India. I have been receiving quite a bit of attention after
posting India specific comments. And look how quickly it is dropping out from
front page. Concerted effort.

~~~
blindwatchmaker
Could you provide examples?

