Can WhatsApp benefit from debunked fact-checked stories to reduce misinformation?

Abstract

WhatsApp was alleged to have been widely used to spread misinformation and propaganda during the 2018 elections in Brazil and the 2019 elections in India. Due to the private encrypted nature of the messages on WhatsApp, it is hard to track the dissemination of misinformation at scale. In this work, using public WhatsApp data from Brazil and India, we observe that misinformation has been largely shared on WhatsApp public groups even after they were already fact-checked by popular fact-checking agencies. This represents a significant portion of misinformation spread in both Brazil and India in the groups analyzed. We posit that such misinformation content could be prevented if WhatsApp had a means to flag already fact-checked content. To this end, we propose an architecture that could be implemented by WhatsApp to counter such misinformation. Our proposal respects the current end-to-end encryption architecture on WhatsApp, thus protecting users' privacy while providing an approach to detect the misinformation that benefits from fact-checking efforts.

Research note: Bolsonaro’s firehose: How Covid-19 disinformation on WhatsApp was used to fight a government political crisis in Brazil

“…In addition, our findings show how WhatsApp groups function as spaces that incite the spread of disinformation to other, more closed groups. This suggests that the only way WhatsApp could limit or avoid the spread of disinformation from is by flagging disinformation as such through debunked fact-checking stories, similar to what Reis et al (2020) have also proposed.…”

“…2 Brazil's case demonstrates how disinformation can undermine public health strategies used by authorities and create a context in which people may choose not to follow scientific evidence and recommendations due to their political views. Political groups on WhatsApp may have played a central role in promoting the defiance of Covid-19 guidelines and regulations, since they already had part in spreading disinformation during elections and other key political moments (Reis et al, 2020). WhatsApp is the most popular communication app in Brazil and an important space for users to find and share information (Resende et al, 2018).…”

Research note: Tiplines to uncover misinformation on encrypted platforms: A case study of the 2019 Indian general election on WhatsApp

“…Hashes can thus be used to develop on-device solutions that work in encrypted settings. For instance, Reis et al (2020) examine images and propose an on-device approach to alerting users to content that has been fact-checked on WhatsApp. Their solution focuses on PDQ hashes for images and requires a list of hashes for known pieces of misinformation.…”

Towards Automatic Fake News Detection in Digital Platforms: Properties, Limitations, and Applications

“…The main results of this thesis appear in the following publications: [Reis et al 2020b, Reis et al 2019b, Reis et al 2019a, Reis et al 2017] and [Reis et al 2016] best paper honorable mention. Further, this thesis opens a novel dataset to the research community containing fact-checked fake images shared through WhatsApp during the 2018 Brazilian presidential election [Reis et al 2020a], as aforementioned.…”