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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.
"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.
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.
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)