WhatsApp has launched a campaign to make aware the dangers of fake news spreading through social media platforms. The company is organizing events as a part of a major effort to combat fake news, due to which there have been many incidents of lynchings in the country. The country has got a total of 200 million people using the service currently and when these figures are compared with other user base of all countries around the globe, it comes out to be the biggest one here.

The events involve actors who invite the crowd to watch them play through which they convey the message that how misinformation and fake news stir up mob violence anywhere, specially on the rural side, where caste and religious prejudices are found mostly.

“Our society is better than theirs and that’s why you should hate them,” says one, by citing one example of an incendiary text circulating on WhatsApp in India. “If you are truly one of us, spread this message.” Another one from them warns the audience that such texts, images and videos are aimed at sowing discord among the masses. And the audience are told to find out forwarded messages and use WhatApp in a more responsible way.

The drive is one of the steps taken by WhatsApp following pressure by the government on it and Facebook to fight the menace of fake news and rumour-mongering on their platforms that have resulted in more than 30 deaths in a total of 70 lynching incidents since the month of January, 2017.

The ongoing campaigns are not completely altruistic in nature, but are being run in collaboration with Reliance Jio, owned by billionaire Mukesh Ambani that recently made WhatsApp available on its Rs. 1,500 Jio Phone.

The events planned to be held in a total of 10 cities across India, also shows instructions on how to install and use the Jio Phone, which has helped in connecting tens of millions of low-income Indians to the Internet for the first time in the history of India.

Several Hundreds of individuals from WhatsApp and Jio companies are steering the campaigns in different parts of the country. Some of those employees have been flown all the way from California, as per the statement given by a WhatsApp spokeswoman, who emailed with regards to that. It further added that the company did not want to reveal the financial details behind the campaigns. According to a source knowing the details, said that the expenses were being paid by the WhatsApp company.

WhatsApp has taken several steps to battle the issue of fake news in India after the government directed pressure on the company among which is the limiting the number of forwarded messages.

The company has also launched newspaper and radio campaigns and is partnering a Delhi-based non-profit Digital Empowerment Foundation to develop curriculum for digital literacy in India.

Presently, the company has also got involved with the police department and law enforcement officials to support them in using WhatsApp to do their jobs.

“Our goal is to drive one of the largest coordinated public education efforts on misinformation to date anywhere in the world,” WhatsApp said.

The company was sought to do more regarding the issue of fake messages spreading on it platform by the technology minister of India. The demands also included the option of tracing the origin of “sinister” messages. But WhatsApp declined to take such a step, for which it said that it would end up the company weakening the encryption and other privacy protections it applies to the system and that would go against the very idea of protecting individual privacy. But the events being taken up by the company does not clear the doubt of whether how many such campaigns would prove to be enough to change the behavior of the public.

“I learnt how to quit a WhatsApp group created by strangers,” said Bhawani Singh Rathore, a 35-year-old teacher, who began using the messaging service just few months ago and attended.

“And I also learned how to identify a forwarded message and to not send it ahead without checking its accuracy,” he told News Agencies.

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