[ryandrake]

There's no shortage of ignorance and gullibility offline--it's not something that was just invented with social media. It's easier to blame "startup culture" than have a hard look at the unpleasant parts of one's own culture.

> "Mob lynching isn’t a new phenomenon in India. According to some reports, there were more than 2,000 lynchings in India between 2000 and 2012 — well before WhatsApp was around."

I don't know, crazy idea: Maybe the blame should fall on... the people who think it's OK to lynch strangers.

[sterlind]

The article makes it clear that the people of Rainpada are extremely uneducated, many lack literacy and tend to trust their tight-knit social groups. They don't see many locals, and they genuinely believed the strangers were harvesting organs. Try hard, and imagine being completely naive to internet hoaxes, and not even knowing how to read and write (note that the video had audio dubbing, precisely to target unsophisticated viewers.)

Western businesses don't have an inherent right to market their products in India. Group messenger apps, at least those lacking in sovereign moderation powers, are clearly causing harm in illiterate/hoax-naive demographics. Is India getting a deal that outweighs the human costs of violence, or should they develop their own?

[user111233]

If the government thinks the locals are unable to handle the internet then it should either educate them or restrict the usage.

[sterlind]

they cut off internet access for 24 hours following the murder, and within two hours ordered the local news channel to air an admonishment about the misinformation on repeat, along with a warning for prosecution for further spreading it.

the village is now a ghost-town; most of the men fled, and the women and children stay inside. elders are ashamed to mention their hometown.

there are two educational efforts: the police have posted numerous warning signs in public areas, and a group of students are traveling around giving a play to demonstrate how spreading rumors on WhatsApp caused a lynching.

in addition to those efforts, what can WhatsApp do to keep this from happening? India is doing their part. If WhatsApp thinks it's unable to handle the situation, they should turn administrative control of their service over to the government.

[davchana]

WhatsApp already took some actions after getting forced by government. Now, in India, a user can not forward a message on WhatsApp to more than 5 contacts in one go. Earlier it was select as many as you wish, but now you can choose only 5 contacts.

[sterlind]

That change only affects the latest version of the app. Only a single phone among those surveyed in the village by BuzzFeed was running the latest version. I'm not sure what Facebook can do about it technically, but the change won't be effective any time soon.

[gooddelta]

You're not wrong – part of the blame obviously lies there.

But even if it is simply enabling and perpetuating an existing problem, why haven't we asked ourselves why technology isn't addressing the issue? How is this future we've created any better? Because it's faster? Because the UI is nicer?

It's rare to see startup culture produce anything that I would call true innovation. Maybe I just have a higher bar than most folks. That could be what I'm arguing here, and that doesn't change the fact that you have a point – I just believe we have to do better.

[ryandrake]

Yea, I happen to agree with that too. Although I don't think WhatsApp is necessarily an unethical software, far too often, we see stories here of startups and bigger technology companies, totally tossing ethics aside in search of their "engagement" or "reach" or whatever stupid metric they're chasing. As software engineers "on the inside", we have both an obligation and unique opportunity to stop these things before they start. Or at the very least not contribute toward it.

For every unethical piece of software that gets written, there's at least one engineer... one of us, maybe even someone reading this very post... who said "Sure, boss, I could totally write that!"