August 30, 2018:
The campaign will focus on North India's Hindi Belt.
In order to crack down on spread of fake news on its platform, WhatsApp has said that it is rolling out a radio campaigns across various Indian states, asking people to check the veracity of information received as a forward before they share it with others.
The Facebook-owned company has been on the receiving end after it faced severe criticism from the Government of India over circulation of fake news on its platform that incited multiple incidents of mob-lynching across the country.
"The radio campaign will air across 46 Hindi-speaking stations of All India Radio (AIR) across Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand," a WhatsApp spokesperson told PTI.
The company spokesperson added that while the current campaign is available in Hindi, there are plans to offer the same in other regional languages as well over the next few weeks.
These campaigns launched advise users to verify authenticity of messages before forwarding them and to report content that they might find to be inflammatory.
Campaign also cautions users to be careful about forwarding messages that contain misinformation and said doing so, could have serious repercussions.
Source ET
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