WhatsApp must do these three things to ‘protect’ elections, says Mozilla

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With the first phase of voting on April 19, Lok Sabha elections are now in full swing in India. Not just India but 2024 will see elections in many parts of the world, including US. In fact, in 2024, elections for about half the world’s population take place in 2024, according to Mozilla Foundation.

As per a report by Engadget, the foundation, however, believes that the integrity of these elections is under threat. Why? Because WhatsApp, as per Mozilla Foundation, isn’t doing enough to detect and stop networked disinformation and hate speech on its platform. The fallout can be quite disastrous, according to Mozilla.

Keeping in mind that WhatsApp is one of the biggest messaging platforms in mind, Mozilla is urging WhatsApp to make some important changes. “Mozilla is making an urgent call for WhatsApp to implement three simple changes in its product to slow the spread of political disinformation and other harmful content on its platform,” said Mozilla Foundation.

According to Mozilla, WhatsApp should “add friction to forwarding messages”. Mozilla believes that it is way too easy to forward messages on WhatsApp. Its solution? Add one more step before users can forward WhatsApp messages. A couple of years back, Twitter — that’s what it was called back then — had introduced a feature which urged users to pause and read any article before retweeting or resharing it. Mozilla wants WhatsApp to do the same. “Reduce the ease with which messages can be forwarded on the platform by adding one additional step which nudges users to pause and reflect before they forward content,” Mozilla said.

Secondly, Mozilla wants more disinformation warning labels to viral content. “Automatically add clear “Highly forwarded: please verify” warning labels to viral messages, in addition to the “forwarded many times” label currently in use,” Mozilla said as people will be told to verify content before forwarding it.

Lastly, Mozilla says that WhatsApp should reduce broadcast capabilities on its platform. Mozilla said that the Communities feature must be disabled and WhatsApp must “also limit the size of broadcast lists to 50 people and cap their usage to twice a day.”

According to Mozilla, without decisive action from WhatsApp, disinformation attacks will likely scale up in 2024, “aimed at manipulating and undermining elections affecting half of the world’s population”. WhatsApp must act to change its product to protect election integrity, Mozilla said.

A WhatsApp spokesperson told Engadget “WhatsApp is one of the only technology companies to intentionally constrain sharing by introducing forwarding limits and labelling messages that have been forwarded many times. We’ve built new tools to empower users to seek accurate information while protecting them from unwanted contact." It is unlikely WhatsApp will implement any of these major changes, especially disabling Communities feature.

Also read: WhatsApp rolls out chat filters to help users find messages easily

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