India: Google engineer latest victim of mob lynchings fueled by WhatsApp rumors • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by sifar » Sun, Jul 15, 2018, 2:22 PM UTC

sifar wrote: post #49

I have been thinking about this a bit. [0] covers it in more detail at the local level with a map of the places it has happened. This is something which has been happening in India and is not limited to a particular state. There was a recent article about how the cops discovered one of the videos responsible for lynching to be fake and taken out of context of a NGOs promotional video. Makes me wonder the motives of p…

WhatsApp/Social Media have just begun to realize the nature of the beast they have unleashed. Like the US fake news uproar. However adding technical fixes to the way we communicate via Social Media is like applying band-aid & treating the symptoms. We as individuals and society need to realize that the cognitive and social costs of these communication mediums are increasingly outweighing the benefits.

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

#52

Post by xkcdefgh » Sun, Jul 15, 2018, 2:40 PM UTC

ryanlol wrote: post #38

shreyanshd wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

maybe he meant illegal pornography. I've witnessed whatsapp groups where people share secret cam vids which were most likely taken without consent.

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

#53

Post by rohit2412 » Sun, Jul 15, 2018, 2:50 PM UTC

wheresvic1 wrote: post #24

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.

On second thought - let's get rid of this forwarding feature altogether. Personally, I've only ever received jokes an memes that were forwarded...

People will only copy and paste. You're just making it inconvenient

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

#54

Post by calvinbhai » Sun, Jul 15, 2018, 3:27 PM UTC

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…

Indian here.

"until deaths due to fake news have stopped completely" will/should never happen.

You are asking for censorship by state. Not sure how/why anyone would ask for such a measure, instead of asking the responsible state govts in India to improve the Law and Order situation.

When there's is a hint of crime or a need for medical attention, in the US, first thing a person thinks of is calling 911.

In India, first thing a person thinks of is, how he/she can address the situation, because will never reach on time nor be of any help.

Most riots in India flame up due to false news. Whatsapp is just a medium that is super efficient in spreading such false news.

Dont shoot the Messenger/Whatsapp etc. Ask for better reforms!

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

#55

Post by calvinbhai » Sun, Jul 15, 2018, 3:27 PM UTC

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.…

Lack of law enforcement, or even the capability to enforce the basic laws, leads to this lynching behavior.

India can bring in N number of laws, but without addressing enforcement, all it helps is to give a false sense of achievement to activists asking for such laws.

Also, saying "Google Engineer" and "India" really distorts what actually led to this lynching since Law and Order is the responsibility of the State Govt, and the location where this happened, is not really urban. (Police in rural areas are not equipped to handle situations like this).

I'd rather not discuss it on HN, since my knowledge of this incident is based on the front page headline on Times of India, but the gist of it is one of those 3 who was lynched, forcefully offered a chocolate/candy to a girl. Girl started crying. Now, any male stranger offering chocolates to kids forcefully, is suspicious anywhere in the world isn't it? So villagers took law into their own hands.

The OP news report on dw.com seems to be distorting the main issue here and trying to blame the central govt of India, for an issue that is purely under the jurisdiction of the state govt of Karnataka (which is in fact the opposition party in the center).

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

#56

Post by calvinbhai » Sun, Jul 15, 2018, 3:34 PM UTC

anuraj wrote: post #35

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 Hin…

This happened in the state of Karnataka, ruled by Congress, which is the opposition in the center.

So whoever is blaming Modi for this crime, has no idea how the Indian political system is structured, nor do they know how the Law and Order is the responsibility of the state, or despite knowing all that they are either feigning ignorance or spreading false propaganda.

Such lynchings have happened in India across states ruled by different political parties.

If you really want to find a solution to this problem, tone down your politics based hatred (at least on HN), and hold the respective state govts responsible for such law and order issues.

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

#57

Post by calvinbhai » Sun, Jul 15, 2018, 3:39 PM UTC

I'm sure Whatsapp has access to what encrypted message was sent by who, to whom.

Simple would be to crowdsource reporting a post as "incendiary or fake" in a group and it wont be visible to the rest of the users in the group. or hide the message and show only after informing the reader that the message may be fake, as reported by others in the group.

Twitter does a better job than facebook in this matter. And I thought FB was way ahead with all the buzzwords like AI, ML, Neural Networks. If FB cannot add this simple feature to Whatsapp, or something similar to this, not sure it'll manage to help the lynching situation in India and world over.

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

#58

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jul 15, 2018, 4:53 PM UTC

rohit2412 wrote: post #53

wheresvic1 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On second thought - let's get rid of this forwarding feature altogether. Personally, I've only ever received jokes an memes that were forwarded...

People will only copy and paste. You're just making it inconvenient

[deleted]

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

#59

Post by ap3 » Sun, Jul 15, 2018, 5:20 PM UTC

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.…

>At present there is no law that criminalises mob killings

No law against murder?

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

#60

Post by inapis » Sun, Jul 15, 2018, 5:41 PM UTC

srean wrote: post #42

inapis wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is a law and order problem and not something we can fix from outside India. These lynchings are not solely a law and order problems. Indian law enforcement definitely has issues with maintaining peace and harmony but WhatsApp has considerably added to the problem. A lot of these lynchings have taken place within minutes. Before WhatsApp, it usually took a good amount of time to collect a group and target someon…

No, we should actually thank WhatsApp for exposing an old problem that all have preferred to ignore or deny. WhatsApp isn't the problem, we Indians are and that needs fixing, not WhatsApp.

I get that it's trendy to shit on India especially by Indians itself but I absolutely can't wrap my head around your argument.

India has its problems but asking a company to do something to remedy the problem a little is too much? Lynchings happened before and they will probably continue to happen but now they are happening much more frequently and the common messaging medium is WhatsApp but somehow your argument is that the culture and government should get its shit together? In other news, water is wet.

It hasn't gotten its shit together for the past 70 years but please don't save the lives of a couple dozen or hundred people because instantaneous group chats are super precious. Let's not build a bicycle because we are busy getting to the moon! Let's pursue the utopia and not pluck the low hanging fruit!