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How WhatsApp Destroyed a Village
141–150 of 158 posts
Re: How WhatsApp Destroyed a Village
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
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!
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... 2. Hyderabad: https://www.firstpost.com/india/mob-lynching-telangana-polic... 3. Jaipur: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/jaipur/25-year-old-... 4. Chennai: https://indianexpress.com/article/india/two-beaten-in-chenna... 5…
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Re: How WhatsApp Destroyed a Village
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
What exactly is "growth hacking" in a chat app? WhatsApp is a fairly direct clone of BBM and BBM’s growth hack for want of a better term was to make its users feel like part of an exclusive in-group.
Yes, to the extent that every chat app is a clone of every other chat app, WhatApp is a clone of BBM. Other than that, what exactly are the similarities?
The whole point of WhatsApp is having a primary key that is your phone number. And they launched on literally all kinds of OSes that developing countries were using, including Symbian as late as 2012. So please tell me, how exactly is a service where you can message each other by their phone numbers and that was probably supported on the most number of platforms for its time "exclusive" and "in-group".
Sorry but you don't seem to have any idea what you are talking about.
Re: How WhatsApp Destroyed a Village
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> "They said that as long as their children are safe, they have no regrets." [The lawyers of the murderers] While in general I agree that everyone should share responsibility for maintaining a safe society that very feeling seems to be what these murderers were operating on. Given the lack of remorse I think it is clear that there is a deeper issue than unfiltered efficient communication in these communities.
In the next village, the grown up child will be a dangerous outsider.
Re: How WhatsApp Destroyed a Village
#145The 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 u…
> 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" peop…
>FWIW, I have seen many so called "educated and urban" people also falling for various WhatsApp scams and fake news
How many have you seen beating people into a bloody dead pulp over a rumor?
It was basic savagery in these people that got those poor devils killed, not WhatsApp.
Re: How WhatsApp Destroyed a Village
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
My parents are far from being uneducated, but even they believe that any forward sent through WhatsApp is actually from the authority figure mentioned in the message. Messages usually exploit this by mentioning how "XYZ warning" is according to scientists at NASA/MIT/IIT. My parents - who are both in their 70s - believe that these messages actually originated from NASA/MIT, etc. I don't know how to fight this. I've t…
The only way to stop this quick is to remove forwarding systems. If people have to make some non trivial effort to share stuff, that effort and time will be saved only for important stuff. No will spend time typing all this click bait for every single recipient. We can try education but that will take at least a generation or two to take effect.
That’s a bit of a heavy club. I forward dozens of messages every day and it would really suck to lose these features in software because some psychos are misusing it. Why not root out and eliminate the psychos?
Re: How WhatsApp Destroyed a Village
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
What exactly is "growth hacking" in a chat app? WhatsApp is a fairly direct clone of BBM and BBM’s growth hack for want of a better term was to make its users feel like part of an exclusive in-group.
Yes, to the extent that every chat app is a clone of every other chat app, WhatApp is a clone of BBM. Other than that, what exactly are the similarities? The whole point of WhatsApp is having a primary key that is your phone number. And they launched on literally all kinds of OSes that developing countries were using, including Symbian as late as 2012. So please tell me, how exactly is a service where you can message…
Sorry but you don't seem to have any idea what you are talking about.
Perhaps you are unaware that BBM and hence WhatsApp are really about their group chat features?
Re: How WhatsApp Destroyed a Village
#148The 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 u…
The Pizzagate gunman is from a supposedly educated country. Let's not pretend that this problem only affects faraway villagers. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/22/533941689...
Re: How WhatsApp Destroyed a Village
#149WhatsApp 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] Ther…
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.
Re: How WhatsApp Destroyed a Village
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
> we're exacerbating the "broken human beings" side of this issue. There is no other side of this issue. This could and probably have happened with sms. This is 100% the mob's fault.
SMS costs a lot in 3rd world countries. We are probably seeing these issues now because this is the first time these people have had access to cheap and easy communication. The rest of the world was eased in to it with email and the web but these countries are being dropped in to the deep end.
Subtext: You primitives aren't mature enough to communicate in groups without supervision.
Don't you find that an offensively paternalistic thing to tell whole societies?