Nidhi,* a 26-year-old from India's capital, New Delhi, was once very close to her uncle. But after he started forwarding anti-Muslim messages containing misinformation in their family's group chat, their relationship soured.

They always got into healthy political debates during family dinners, but his posts on WhatsApp were becoming "intolerable," she said.

"He would forward what was clearly false information, twisted historical facts to fit a certain kind of propaganda," she told DW.

Nidhi said her uncle never showed any open hate toward Muslims, but on WhatsApp, it was a different story.

"Some of us would call him out for it and fact-check him. But that seemed to make no difference. He once sent a message calling people from the Muslim community 'infiltrators' and that was it for me."

Nidhi said she exited the family group chat and has not reconciled with her uncle since.

"He was someone I respected a lot, but it's difficult to do that now in person because of how he was online," she said.

'Toxic' chats

Another young Indian, 19-year-old Armaan* from Mumbai, was thrown out of his family group chat for pointing out disinformation. He said family fights sparked by WhatsApp messages began to affect him mentally.

"The chats had become toxic. I was exposed to them almost daily and that made me feel a lot of anger," he said.

"There would be messages signed with the line 'forwarded as received.' If you didn't fully trust the information yourself why would you send it ahead? Sometimes the messages would also be suffixed by a long list of names to show that these many people had given their assent to the authenticity of the information and therefore it was bound to be true, when in reality it was almost always fake," he said. 

WhatsApp becoming a source for misinformation

India is WhatsApp's largest market. The messaging application has over 530 million users in the country, making it one of the most popular social media platforms across age groups.

WhatsApp is a leading platform for news and information in India. However, it is also becoming a medium for misinformation.

"WhatsApp University," for instance, has become a buzzword in colloquial Indian vocabulary in recent years, referring sarcastically to the widespread dissemination of misinformation and fake news on the platform.

"There is a lot of information or misinformation, which is being put out through WhatsApp. Information is education. Where you get information from, makes your world view," Pratik Sinha, co-founder of India fact-checking website Alt News, told DW.

"If your information ecosystem is completely corrupt" depending on the source or group, then that information is not going to reflect a "real world view," he added.

When looking at India, types of misinformation range from politics and history, to science and medicine.

"A lot of political misinformation or sociopolitical misinformation is aimed at creating divisions, aimed at vilifying the Muslim community that has led to deep polarization in the society. It has led to attacks on minorities," Sinha added.

What has WhatsApp done to counter misinformation?

The misinformation crisis on WhatsApp groups in India first came to the fore in 2018 when child abduction rumors circulating on the platform led to over a dozen people being killed in mob lynchings. 

There was also a wave of disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fake news has also spread on the platform during elections. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence and deepfakes have made matters more complex.

WhatsApp has said it is tackling misinformation through a multipronged approach. This includes constraining viral sharing by limiting forwards, building a network of fact checkers in India and running user awareness campaigns to educate people on how to identify and stop the spread of misinformation.

"WhatsApp is the only messaging service that has intentionally constrained viral sharing on our service by limiting forwards," a WhatsApp spokesperson told DW. "WhatsApp labels messages that have been 'forwarded' and 'forwarded many times' so you know it has not come from a close contact. Our limits imposed on 'forwards' have reduced the spread of 'highly forwarded messages' on WhatsApp by over 70%.

"In 2022, we added new limits to forwarding messages on groups, where messages that have the "forwarded label" can only be forwarded to one group at a time, rather than five," the spokesperson added.

The statement also said that a fact-checking tip line on WhatsApp has been launched in partnership with The Misinformation Combat Alliance in a bid to fight the spread of AI-generated misinformation in India.

"We also have many fact-checking organizations on WhatsApp Channels that help provide people with accurate information," the WhatsApp spokesperson said.

Balancing privacy and control

Some analysts stress that WhatsApp is a tricky space for content moderation because of its end-to-end encryption, where a difficult balance emerges between privacy and the harms caused by misinformation.

"WhatsApp's hands are a bit tied. Any sort of moderation could be misused and overused in a direction towards compromising privacy and breaking encryption. That's not something they want to do," Kiran Garimella, an assistant professor at the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University in New Jersey, told DW. 

Garimella also warned against the risk of governments seeking to break encryption.

"Encryption is great. We should all accept that. One thing to be wary of is that we don't want the wrong actors, let's say the government, to misconstrue this and say that there's a lot of misinformation on WhatsApp and that's why you should break encryption," he added.

How are young Indians responding?

At a time when there are policy gaps in dealing with the problem of misinformation in India, some young Indians are taking on the challenge to address trust in the digital age.

One such example is theater artist Karen D'Mello's interactive tabletop roleplaying game: "Trust Me, it's a Forward!"

Players take on characters in a fictional world and receive an overload of information. They then have to navigate the influence of instant messaging platforms, the changing nature of public opinion and the ideas of trust and truth.

"I wanted to come up with a fun way of addressing the serious issue that is misinformation. Something that was more visceral because this is a digital medium and there is nothing to hold," D'Mello told DW.

"I was thinking of what is really trust in the digital world, where you are engaging with a lot of people behind the screen and probably not even seeing faces. I was thinking of the role of WhatsApp, especially this idea of mass forwards, which is such a big phenomenon in India and continues to grow," she said.

D'Mello added that with the game, she wanted to go beyond people who were tackling misinformation professionally, like fact checkers or those in policy and technology, and focus on misinformation problems encountered by everyday users.

Fact checker Sinha believes that misinformation is a larger social problem that warrants a long-term solution.

"The world was not made where 6 billion people can talk to each other. That creates a different problem altogether and to deal with that problem you need some very serious measures," he said.

He added that a road map toward a solution begins at the school educational level.

"Our educational system has to have a component of how to look at information critically. There should also be widespread awareness programs in society. The issue starts at the very top. None of the political parties are interested in combating misinformation. There have to be multiple stakeholders who sit and think about how to deal with this issue," he said.

* First names have been used upon request to protect identities.

Edited by: Wesley Rahn