In recent India's general election. A deepfake video of a leading politician costed a massive vote shift and they almost lost an election. The damage was done by the time they have clarified it is fake.
Most of the West? WhatsApp groups in South Asia seem to work like Telegram groups in Russia, and I don’t know that I’m aware of a European or American equivalent
That was what I was getting at. I've read of a few (literal) witch hunting stories from India and Africa, and they all seem to start on WhatsApp groups. A similar phenomenon occurs in South America, as well, though in that case the killings tend to resemble lynch mobs hunting down suspected killers.
I've seen similar things happen in Western countries (e.g. when Reddit identified the wrong guy as the Boston Marathon bomber, local Facebook groups where seniors jump at their own shadow, etc), but I've only ever heard of it resulting in an actual death in non-western countries, and the common vector seems to be WhatsApp.
My working theory is that unmoderated peer-to-peer platforms like this are naturally conducive to witch-hunting (e.g. 4chan used to have a real problem with it), and that perhaps the groups being comparatively private might prevent law enforcement from becoming aware of the issue before it gets out of control.
But the other factor here is that these are all areas of the world where the rule of law is not particularly effective when compared to western countries, so WhatsApp might just be the means by which an old problem is manifesting, rather than being the cause of the problem itself.
I think anonymity removes the social cost of instigating and failing to form a mob. Also you can use alt. accounts to give the impression of a lynch mob forming.
Larger populations are hurt the most of this. Think of some small town with say 10 people in it and a local election. Someone puts out a deepfake. If it converts 10% of people to believe it that is just one crazy person in the town of ten people. Easily ignored. Now if you have an indian city of 10 million and convert 10% to believe your deepfake, now that is 1 million people on your side and that can’t so easily be ignored.
Propaganda spreads faster and affects more people in denser and larger population sizes. And when propaganda affects more people it starts feeling less like propaganda and starts feeling believable.