WhatsApp Faces Misinformation Problem in Nigeria, Reports Say (cnet.com)

Fake news is being spread on WhatsApp in some of Africa's most populous countries, according to two new reports, raising concerns over coming elections in Nigeria. From a report: Photoshopped images and false claims about politicians have been circulating on the Facebook-owned messaging service in Nigeria, which holds election in February next year, according to a report from The Poynter Institute on Friday. Many of the false claims are in local languages and exploit ethnic friction. One set of false claims focuses on how politicians will address clashes between a group of semi-nomadic herdsmen and farmers, Poynter said. Another rumor claimed a presidential candidate couldn't enter the US because of a corruption charge, Poynter reported.

Comments

how can we just ban people from communicating!!

[0xdeaddead]

Obviously only state approved media should be the only source of any and all messages.

Re:how can we just ban people from communicating!!

[Dutch Gun]

You know, the same sort of thing used to happen by e-mail. Anyone remember the ridiculous urban legends and scams propagated by e-mail? It occurs for at least two reasons, IMO: people love to gossip and spread rumors, and people were (are?) more naturally predicated to believing anything in print, as it seems more authoritative than someone saying "Hey, I heard from my cousin Frank that..."

And of course, it's not like it started there either. I've been reading WW2 history recently, and noticed many accounts at least touch on how rampant rumor-mongering was among both the homefront as well as on the battlefront. People gossip, and that likely goes back to the dawn of civilization.

It doesn't even go away under totalitarian authority, in which you can ban Winnie-the-Pooh, due to an unfortunately association with Dear Leader. That just pushes the rumors underground, and makes the authorities look trite and desperate (hello Streisand Effect).

I think people are also more apt to believe rumors from a new source, until they understand that source is just as fallible as any other, maybe moreso. Generally speaking, I think this problem will tend to partly mitigate itself over time (although never go away completely), as people learn a healthy skepticism for the new medium. I think eventually most people can only get burned by rumors so many times via a given source before they start looking at the source with a more jaded eye. Some idiots never learn, of course, but I think in general, many or even most eventually do.

Re:how can we just ban people from communicating!!

[Anne Thwacks]

Do Whatsapp and Facebook really need to be selling political advertising space?

Do they even employ people who can read Hausa, Yoruba or Ibo? or any of the other 25 or so languages used in Nigeria?

America may be ok with "The Right to lie your head off" but it is hard to argue they have the right to force this on others who do not have a similar culture.

I personally had a Nigerian woman say to me "Did you know Michelle Obama is a man? It says so here on Youtube!" - which it did, with Photoshopped pictures as evidence. The woman who said this in in her 60's. has a degree in business administration in the UK, and speaks perfect English with no obvious accent. On looking at her Youtube "home", I could see she was being targetted with a continuous stream of propaganda against other Nigerian ethnic groups than hers while here in the UK. Yes, Youtube IS trying to incite genocide in Nigeria. Even if they are blaming it on "the algorithm", Putin or Trump - it is still shit stirring at the level of inciting murder.

There's no way around it.

[fredrated]

The problem is people. There is no technology that can keep us honest.

Re:There's no way around it.

[PopeRatzo]

The problem is people. There is no technology that can keep us honest.

I am an old man, and even though I'm inclined to cynicism, I still believe most people are honest. And gullible, unfortunately.

Re:There's no way around it.

[AmiMoJo]

The problem here is lack of education. People don't learn to spot fake news or properly evaluate information they receive.

A few simple tools could really help fix this issue. Social media and chat apps could have a little button next to widely posted images that links to a reverse image search or fact checking site. They could use image analysis or AI to add warnings to photoshopped images (wouldn't that be great for airbrushed fashion models too).

Web browsers could add known fake images and fake news to a database of fake news, just like they have a database of malware sites.

People will now start screaming about censorship and putting companies in charge of determining the truth (because in the past newspapers were all non-commercial and totally unbiased), but it's worked pretty well for malware. There is the occasional false positive but 99.99% of the time malware protection is a net benefit to the user. Plus if it was going to be abused then political web sites would get added to the malware lists anyway.

Re:Where's my sarcastic face?

[quenda]

I'm sure fake news never happened before the Internet was widely available. I can't find my sarcastic face. Maybe (/s|s\)

In 2010, I hear there were faxes and drums circulating around the country that Goodluck Jonathan (real name) was actually born in the Unites States, not Bayelsa.

(Nigeria is one of the few countries where a president has to be a citizen by birth.)

Democracy and low-information voters

[bradley13]

Dunno what you can do about "low information voters". Allow me to digress...

Just recently I somehow came across an article from the US, where a biologist had discovered retroviruses in vaccines, and these viruses were responsible for everything from autism to dementia. Having angered the powerful pharma cartels, the researcher was in jail, and all of her data had been confiscated.

Curious, I did a bit of research. As always, there was a kernel of truth. The researcher had, indeed written a paper about retroviruses. She had been fired from her job, and had taken company data (apparently paper files) with her. The company charged her with theft. She handed the data back, and the charges were dropped.

So you get conspiracy theorists who read more into this, in support of their pet paranoia - in this case, clearly anti-vaxxers. They make use of technology - like WhatsApp - to spread their nonsense. In the US, this isn't a huge problem, because enough of the population has enough of an education, and the "low information voters" ultimately don't dominate the voting population.

So...Nigeria... A country where most of the population has little education, and hence few critical thinking skills. The West has given them high technology, but they lack the general level of education to go with it. So the fruits and nuts can spread their nonsense far and wide - and it has a massive influence.

Democratic institutions can only work, when the population has a minimal level of education. The purists pushing democracy as some sort of panacaea? They are indirectly responsible for a lot of death and misery. It's not PC to notice, but the continuous warfare in much of Africa has not been an improvement over colonialism.

Re:Democracy and low-information voters

[Anne Thwacks]

A lot of what he says is actually reasonable. Nigeria probably has a similar proportion of illiterates to America, however, they are not evenly distributed among ethic groups - in some groups it is over 90% literate, while in others, probably less than 20%, and Boko Haram, are by definition, terrorist illiterates fighting for everyone else to be as illiterate as they are.

Illiterates may not lack critical thinking, but they certainly lack the tools to check on facts - in many cases, they probably do not understand the concept of checking.

There is a further problem: the concept of truth is connected with the concept of "one God" - they truth is what God sees. Nigeria has a significant proportion of people who believe in Many gods, and they do not have the concept of a constant truth that Christians and Muslims do. They are often taught the "truth" is what the oldest person present says (challenging an older person generally ends badly). If different elders report different stories, they may believe that the "truth" has changed.