By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, JULY 20, 2018: THE government today issued a fresh directive to the operators of the popular messaging app WhatsApp, to implement more effective solutions to bring in accountability and facilitate enforcement of law in addition to their efforts towards labeling forwards and identifying fake news being spread by mischief mongers & anti-social elements. The Government also underscored the seriousness of the situation and asked the company to give an equally sensitive response.

It may be noted that on July 03 2018 the Government had written to Whatsapp exhorting them to take immediate steps to tackle the menace of misuse of their platform wherein inflammatory messages were circulated that led to unfortunate incidents. On the same day, Whatsapp had responded indicating their initiative to mark forwarded messages and to step up efforts to detect fake news.

Subsequently, an unfortunate incident has occurred in Bidar where a 32 year old software engineer Mohammed Azam was killed and this was preceded by viral circulation of rumours on Whatsapp about child lifters. It is regretted that the enormity of the challenge and the rampant abuse happening in the country leading to repeated commissioning of crimes pursuant to rampant circulation of irresponsible messages in large volumes on their platform have not been addressed adequately by Whatsapp.

Reports in the media resonate the general sentiment that there is much more that needs to be done by Whatsapp. There is a need for bringing in traceability and accountability when a provocative or inflammatory message is detected and a request is made by law enforcement agencies.  When rumours and fake news get propagated by mischief mongers, the medium used for such propagation cannot evade responsibility and accountability. If they remain mute spectators they are liable to be treated as abettors and thereafter face consequent legal action.