WhatsApp has outlined how it is tackling abuse and spread of fake news on the messaging platform. The company said that they have built a machine learning system to detect users with abusive behavior and those sending bulk messages and creating multiple accounts with the sole purpose of spreading false and abusive content.
WhatsApp also assured that such accounts are barred from the platform at various stages; at the time of registration while messaging, and when they are reported by others, the company’s executives said. The company bans a total of around two million accounts on its platform each month. The machine learning system used by WhatsApp leverages on the past learnings with such accounts and specific scenarios that engineers followed to eventually take down some accounts.
That machine learning system has reached a level of sophistication and it is able to ban 20% of accounts at the time of registration itself. The company looks at various factors including the IP address of a user, and the country of origination for phone numbers they use to sign up for the service, how old is the account, whether that account started to send a lot of texts as soon as it was created.
WhatsApp said that it had identified various ways users were abusing the platform, including the usage of special software that allowed users to run multiple instances of different WhatsApp accounts on the same smartphone. The company says it has separate channels and teams and APIs in place to keep a check on businesses that use WhatsApp.
To counter the spread of false content, the company has put a limit on the number of texts a user could forward to people among a handful of other product changes. The company is also running educational campaigns and advertisements on radio, television, and web to guide users that they should be more cautious about the texts they share with people on the messaging platform.
WhatsApp has also partnered with fact checkers Boom Live and Alt News local organizations, as well as Ekta, a news consortium. The company says it is also working with the law enforcement and ramping up its local team. All these changes and moves come ahead of the general elections in India which commences in April 2019. WhatsApp executives further said they have held conversations with political parties in India to note that they should not abuse the platform.