Recently a group of
Bollywood stars visited Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A photo of their meeting
was widely circulated on WhatsApp. But there was a problem. Those who went to
meet Mr Modi were not wearing any head strap or tilak on their forehead. On the
contrary, the stars in the photo that went viral had a head strap with Jai Sri
Ram written on it and a tilak on their forehead.
The general elections
in the country are to take place in April-May. The Election Commission is yet
to come out with the poll dates. But, WhatsApp ‘got the dates’ as early as the
first week of January and a list of States with election dates has gone viral.
It is another matter that the State that sends the maximum number of Members of
Parliament was missing from the list; instead a new State ‘Simon’ found place
in it.
Let us take our
memory back to June 8 last year when two young men
were on their way to a picnic
spot in Assam when they stopped at a village to ask for direction. A few days
prior to this, the villagers had been told, in a fake video on the WhatsApp,
that child kidnappers were roaming the State. They mistook these strangers and
beat them to death.
An analysis by a
global agency had found that
the most widely shared fake news stories in 2016 were about “Pope
Francis endorsing Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton being disqualified from holding
federal office, and the FBI director receiving millions from the Clinton
Foundation.”
When
Donald Trump was caught retweeting fake statistics about race and crime, he had
reportedly told
Fox News: “Am I going to check every statistic? All it
was a retweet. It wasn’t from me.”
The above examples
are just a tip of a gargantuan ice-berg of fake news circulating in various
social media. It tarnishes the image of people; it lynches people; it paints
the innocent as culprits; it leads to people fleeing their home and hearth; it
creates upheavals in societies around the world. Hence it is important that
this ‘genie’ is not let out of the bottle.
The dictum ‘prevention
is better than cure’ is equally applicable to preventing fake news. Check
before you share. Take a few seconds to verify the source. Discerning persons
can make out what is genuine and what is fake. In most cases, application of
common sense can nail the lie. In other cases, one can check the genuineness of
the news or images through numerous ways like taking recourse to google or
calling up the person/s who forwarded it.
The WhatsApp company,
in the wake of the irretrievable damage done by social media, has done its part
to contain the damage.
It has removed the ‘quick
forward’ button from the app. It now labels ‘forwarded’ messages, and limits
Indian users’ ability to forward messages, photos or videos to only five groups
at once, instead of the earlier 20. The key to prevent spread of fake news is
with the users of social media themselves. They can desist from forwarding,
retweeting patently suspicious posts. They should use the delete button more
often than not. That will end the menace of fake news to a great extent.
