Slashdot Mirror
How Facebook's WhatsApp Destroyed A Village (buzzfeednews.com)
The proliferation of affordable smartphones, dwindling data prices, and apps and services that are designed to work swiftly on such patchy infrastructure have changed how people in developing markets marred with poor literacy level such as India communicate, do business, and get their education. But it has also come at a cost. In the recent months we have learned about Facebook's struggle to contain violence in Myanmar, BuzzFeed News has a chilling story on how rumors circulated through WhatsApp, which is also owned by Facebook, are causing real violence in India, the world's second largest internet market. From the report: WhatsApp, a Facebook-owned messaging service, is used by more than 200 million people in India, its largest market. It's become an inextricable part of the country's culture and social fabric, widely used by younger and older generations alike. It's one of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's crown jewels, an app he acquired for $19 billion in 2014 that began as a messaging platform but is now evolving into something more, with a new payments feature already being tested in India.
Lately, however, WhatsApp has been getting Indians killed. In June, rumors about child kidnappers shared on the service inspired a mob of hundreds to lynch a 29-year-old man and his friend who were passing through a village in Karbi Anglong, a district in the eastern part of the country. In July, two weeks after the Rainpada incident, hundreds of people hurled stones at an IT worker who was visiting the South Indian village of Murki, killing him. Since May, there have been at least 16 lynchings leading to 29 deaths in India where public officials say mobs were incited by misinformation on WhatsApp. As Facebook wrangles an ongoing crisis of public confidence over its role in spreading misinformation throughout the 2016 US presidential election, the company is grappling with a different kind of problem in places like Rainpada, where its products have abetted flesh-and-blood harm. In attempting to fulfill Facebook's current mission -- to "give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together" -- Zuckerberg and his team of Silicon Valley-based executives failed to foresee its malignant applications: misinformation, propaganda, rumor, hate.
Lately, however, WhatsApp has been getting Indians killed. In June, rumors about child kidnappers shared on the service inspired a mob of hundreds to lynch a 29-year-old man and his friend who were passing through a village in Karbi Anglong, a district in the eastern part of the country. In July, two weeks after the Rainpada incident, hundreds of people hurled stones at an IT worker who was visiting the South Indian village of Murki, killing him. Since May, there have been at least 16 lynchings leading to 29 deaths in India where public officials say mobs were incited by misinformation on WhatsApp. As Facebook wrangles an ongoing crisis of public confidence over its role in spreading misinformation throughout the 2016 US presidential election, the company is grappling with a different kind of problem in places like Rainpada, where its products have abetted flesh-and-blood harm. In attempting to fulfill Facebook's current mission -- to "give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together" -- Zuckerberg and his team of Silicon Valley-based executives failed to foresee its malignant applications: misinformation, propaganda, rumor, hate.
Let face it. These people are doing this to themselves. Its not facebooks problem if they can't learn to not let themselves be trolled in to violence. In this case someone told them to walk off a cliff and they did. Sounds like this country has many deep seated problems that the tech is just shining a light on.
I hate Facebook, and there are many problems being caused by it so I'm going to join the political lynch party on this one and call it their fault. The end will justify the means.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
When poorly educated, non tech-literate people encounter a technology like Whatsapp for the first time, the experience feels so "high tech" and "revolutionary" to them, that they are psychologically incapable of understanding that stuff that is messaged to them over said new technology to them may be "malicious, and completely untrue" in nature. They open WhatsApp, somebody on that glitzy high-tech service tells them "pedophiles and rapists are coming to your village - defend your women and children", and these people genuinely think that they need to act to "protect the village". Who is primarily at fault here, of course, is the fucking no-good troll-maniancs who are putting these hoaxes on WhatsApp in the first place. But mark my words as someone with experience of the developing world - not only can undereducated people rarely tell whether what is told to them is factually true or not, whether on TV, internet or in newspapers, but when they encounter fake-information or fake-news on high tech digital messaging services, they are even less able to discern what is true and what is not. Their instinct is to trust what they hear, see or read on digital communication platforms.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
Poorer societies with lesser access to education are prone to violence and unrest. This has nothing to do with malfunctioning humans. You're making a very attractive and popular mistake of attributing behavior all humans are capable to to the intrinsic nature of .. a country? Something in the water? Surely you're not saying it's a racial thing, right?
Everyone on earth was happily doing stuff like this not so very long ago. Those "witches" weren't doing it to themselves anymore than the victims of social media fueled violence in India are doing it to themselves - and frankly it's stupid to expect everyone in the entire world to behave the way you do, to use technologies in the same ways you do, given the stark differences in the environment, resources, education, political and economic stability in which people grow up and live.
But damn you seem worried that Facebook is being accused of killing people. That's reductio ad absurdum - but engineers and makers of technology should be expected to have a social responsibility to try and limit the ways in which different societies may abuse their work. That's nothing new. Engineering programs the world over include social science courses teaching us Engineers as much, and those responsibilities are part of the values professional engineering organizations seek to uphold.
"Old man yells at systemd"
"How living in a society where people think it's okay to stone people based on rumour, and the police are unable to stop or prosecute them Destroyed A Village"
being the more accurate headline.
Whatsapp did nothing more than allow people to communicate, no different to a book, radio, post-it notes or anything else.
But if you live in a community where people will stone you to death without consequence, no amount - or absence - of technology can save you.
Who is primarily at fault here, of course, is the fucking no-good troll-maniancs who are putting these hoaxes on WhatsApp in the first place.
Well of course.
But the reality is that anybody can tell anybody anything. So it's imperative that people learn to take stuff with a grain of salt.
Either way, when someone gossips over the fence, the fault is not the fence's ...
Are they publishers and therefore responsible for their content and obligated to remove offensive and inaccurate information, etc?
Or do they fall more into the Common Carrier definition, which largely absolves them of any obligation regarding the content they carry, except for marketing and public relations issues, and invalidates their arguments for selectively squelching speech of viewpoints they don't like?
They need to decide or the Feds will end up doing it. And we all know the Feds will likely get it wrong.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
they are psychologically incapable of understanding that stuff that is messaged to them over said new technology to them may be "malicious, and completely untrue" in nature.
Please don't turn this into a poor, dumb 3rd world problem vs a smart, educated 1st world. Some idiot in the US shot up a pizza parlor because of that stupid PizzaGate stuff. There continues to be lots of moronic conspiracy theories that float all over the western "educated" world too. Large amounts of people in the US have convinced themselves freaking gluten, which we've eaten for a few thousand years, is now suddenly a poison. Many people think the moon landings were faked. In the 70s people believed all kinds of weird stuff about how there were "ancient astronauts", and the Egyptian pyramids were constructed by Aliens. Ben Carson, a former neurosurgeon and the current the secretary HUD thinks the pyramids were built to store grain!
People are stupid and don't care about finding truth, and it doesn't matter if they're "educated" or not. Different people are just susceptible to different bullshit. The only difference is that now it's even easier to spread BS. BS is just easier to spread because it doesn't have this unfortunate property of being limited to what's actually real. BS can be anything, and that's what's appealing about it.
But mark my words as someone with experience of the developing world - not only can undereducated people rarely tell whether what is told to them is factually true or not, whether on TV, internet or in newspapers, but when they encounter fake-information or fake-news on high tech digital messaging services, they are even less able to discern what is true and what is not. Their instinct is to trust what they hear, see or read on digital communication platforms.
Developing world? How, exactly, is this different from America?
Wow, the pot calling the kettle black!
What about the man who show showed up armed at a supposed pizza joint owned by Hillary to rescue human trafficking victims? Or how about the pee video Russia held as blackmail against Trump?
No, the US isn't any better. There is no defense of mob mentality in India or the US. If you think someone has committed a crime, report it and give all the evidence you can, then let the judge and jury calmly make a decision about guilt.
On a side note, I really wish reporters here in the US would stop trying to incite action and do their job of reporting facts, not opinions.
49% of America believed the same claims about the Mexicans.
52% Britain believed the same claims about the Europeans.
Stupidity is not, apparently, terribly territorial. And whilst there are good reasons for thinking good education would help, nobody is willing to pay for it. It's like vaccines, unless 95% or more are inoculated against ignorance, there's no herd immunity and everyone becomes infected with stupid. And that requires a total rejection of the theory that people should be responsible for their own education, it has to be collective and most societies can't handle that.
But it's not just that. I suggest reading through Tacitus' book A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, or the Causes of Corrupt Eloquence.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I can remember reading a well reasoned post on slashdot, back around 2000, where the author basically said, the future of the internet isn't a Muslim and a Jewish person having a reasoned debate online (a la Locke and Demosthenes from Ender's Game), it was actually going to be one trolling the other with a picture of their prophet swathed in bacon, and honestly that's clearly come to pass.
I understand why the people building the internet in their ivory towers though it would enlighten and uplift the human race. They were so wrong. I've long since deleted my Facebook and recently my Twitter account, but I'm still wary as I walk around town that I might say or do something "wrong" and have my picture taken and posted online for community shaming. Worse yet, someone who's ticked off at me might make an unsubstantiated claim against me and thanks to the court of public opinion, my career and family life could be ruined.
We've certainly succeeded in empowering the rabble. The uplifting that was supposed to happen turn out of be opposite.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain