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India: Google engineer latest victim of mob lynchings fueled by WhatsApp rumors

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Re: India: Google engineer latest victim of mob lynchings fueled by WhatsApp rumors

#31

Post by inapis »

jopsen wrote: post #8
tomp wrote: post #5

This reminds me of the “Foxconn suicides” story... sure the absolute numbers were high, but Foxconn has like a million employees, so the suicide rate was actually completely “normal”. > 25 people have been killed since May So 150 people per year, or 0.000015% of India’s population. Sure, it’s a problem, but I’m pretty sure there are bigger problems that are easier to solve (rape and acid attacks come to mind).

Similarly, one could ask if this is something new? Or have WhatsApp merely replaced another media platform.

These issues have existed for a while. WhatsApp, unfortunately, accelerated the pace. Messaging a person or a group of persons earlier was expensive and required a lot of effort (selecting individual people to message and each message had a price) and there was no guarantee of message delivery or even timely delivery. WhatsApp made it free and almost instantaneous to inform a much larger set of people reliably.

Re: India: Google engineer latest victim of mob lynchings fueled by WhatsApp rumors

#33

Post by sumedh »

Chickenosaurus wrote: post #10

It's great WhatsApp took steps to prevent the spread of false information but that isn't the root of the problem. The root of the problem is of a cultural nature. At present there is no law that criminalises mob killings. For that reason, the perpetrators are often not prosecuted by the police. A law that makes clear mob killings are unacceptable would go a long way in changing the cultural stance towards such acts.…

> For that reason, the perpetrators are often not prosecuted by the police.

You also have to talk about the other side, in most of the cases the Police dont take any action if a local thug has the support of some big politician or bribes the police.

Lynching is the only solution people are left with.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akku_Yadav

Re: India: Google engineer latest victim of mob lynchings fueled by WhatsApp rumors

#34

Post by [deleted] »

mcny wrote: post #14
joeyspn wrote: post #4

The solutions provided seem quite poor. What whatsapp needs is a reporting button for hoaxes and disturbing content…

And do what, exactly? What do you do once a user reports me as relaying fake news? Ban me? I strongly disagree. I am responsible for my actions. If I kill someone, I can’t say “well, I thought this man ate beef”. This is a law and order problem and not something we can fix from outside India.

[deleted]

Re: India: Google engineer latest victim of mob lynchings fueled by WhatsApp rumors

#35

Post by anuraj »

Ever since Narendra Modi came to power - India has become Lynchistan. The Hindu supremacist leader and his organisation RSS that stands for ‘Cultural Nationalism’ is imposing ‘Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan’ - a monoculture which advocates ‘One Nation, One Language, One Religion’ for a country as diverse as India. The hate that is unleashed is consuming democracy slowly but surely. Future is indeed bleak for India.

Many Hindutva Organisations affiliated to RSS raise large amount of money from US tech sector each year. I request everybody to put pressure on their companies and colleagues not to donate money to racist and supremacist organisations.

Re: India: Google engineer latest victim of mob lynchings fueled by WhatsApp rumors

#36

Post by shreyanshd »

wheresvic1 wrote: post #7

This pretty much highlights how important education is and the effort that needs to go toward educating the poor in India. The coming wave of technology and tools is only going to exacerbate these problems further. One small thing that whatsapp could potentially do is to make it a little bit harder to forward messages to everyone. force people to wait a couple of seconds before adding another person.

Indian here. Based on my observations, in India, the ‘whatsapp group’ feature has become a medium for spreading fake news, political propaganda, religious propaganda, pornography and other such activities that have a negative impact at a massive scale. Whatsapp is the most prominent messaging service in India, and though the ‘groups’ feature has many positive usecases, its mainly used for influencing the (huge) illiterate population of the country. IMO, Whatsapp should step in, and temporarily turn off the groups feature in India ASAP, atleast until the deaths due to such fake news have stopped completely.

Re: India: Google engineer latest victim of mob lynchings fueled by WhatsApp rumors

#37

Post by srean »

sumedh wrote: post #33
Chickenosaurus wrote: post #10

It's great WhatsApp took steps to prevent the spread of false information but that isn't the root of the problem. The root of the problem is of a cultural nature. At present there is no law that criminalises mob killings. For that reason, the perpetrators are often not prosecuted by the police. A law that makes clear mob killings are unacceptable would go a long way in changing the cultural stance towards such acts.…

> For that reason, the perpetrators are often not prosecuted by the police. You also have to talk about the other side, in most of the cases the Police dont take any action if a local thug has the support of some big politician or bribes the police. Lynching is the only solution people are left with. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akku_Yadav

To a certain extent you are right. If the only way to get at some semblance of justice is by street violence, that is what you will get. This is essentially the failure of governance, a government that is selectively absent because it suits them that way.

That said, the Indian populace needs to grow up and not behave like insolent children throwing a tantrum. It should not be the job of the media companies to control what they read or don't. The more one acts towards them like protective parents shielding there eyes and ears, the more they will continue to act like tantrum throwing children -- they have nothing to lose that way, only to gain.

Catch a few, and make them public examples by throwing the book at them, they will fall in line -- but no the government will not do that because they have vested interests.

Re: India: Google engineer latest victim of mob lynchings fueled by WhatsApp rumors

#38

Post by ryanlol »

shreyanshd wrote: post #36
wheresvic1 wrote: post #7

This pretty much highlights how important education is and the effort that needs to go toward educating the poor in India. The coming wave of technology and tools is only going to exacerbate these problems further. One small thing that whatsapp could potentially do is to make it a little bit harder to forward messages to everyone. force people to wait a couple of seconds before adding another person.

Indian here. Based on my observations, in India, the ‘whatsapp group’ feature has become a medium for spreading fake news, political propaganda, religious propaganda, pornography and other such activities that have a negative impact at a massive scale. Whatsapp is the most prominent messaging service in India, and though the ‘groups’ feature has many positive usecases, its mainly used for influencing the (huge) illit…

>has become a medium for spreading fake news, political propaganda, religious propaganda, pornography and other such activities that have a negative impact at a massive scale

One of these is not like the others.

Re: India: Google engineer latest victim of mob lynchings fueled by WhatsApp rumors

#39

Post by [deleted] »

shreyanshd wrote: post #36
wheresvic1 wrote: post #7

This pretty much highlights how important education is and the effort that needs to go toward educating the poor in India. The coming wave of technology and tools is only going to exacerbate these problems further. One small thing that whatsapp could potentially do is to make it a little bit harder to forward messages to everyone. force people to wait a couple of seconds before adding another person.

Indian here. Based on my observations, in India, the ‘whatsapp group’ feature has become a medium for spreading fake news, political propaganda, religious propaganda, pornography and other such activities that have a negative impact at a massive scale. Whatsapp is the most prominent messaging service in India, and though the ‘groups’ feature has many positive usecases, its mainly used for influencing the (huge) illit…

[deleted]

Re: India: Google engineer latest victim of mob lynchings fueled by WhatsApp rumors

#40

Post by throwaway_009 »

Just wanted to present an observation that Deutsche Welle (DW) has an extremely biased opinion of India and presents only the bad and sensationalized articles about things in India. As an Indian living in Germany, I have seen firsthand how misrepresented India is in foreign publications.

Although, I don't doubt the article, I would suggest you take the article with a pinch of salt. Yes, there are problems in some parts in India, but the foreign media portray it like people are running around killing and raping people, which is definitely not the case.

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