How a Startup Fought against WhatsApp Fake News to Prevent Two Disasters in Chennai

December 24, 2021

06 August 2018, New Jersey (Newswire Online): When Verify.Wiki LLC – a start-up that fights Fake News through a methodology called “reverse virality” by combining crowdsourcing with social networking- saw the recent lynching incidents in India due to False WhatsApp messages, it immediately got into action. The company shortlisted Chennai as a pilot city to test if it could prevent another tragedy.

The company found two suspected False and misleading News stories going viral on WhatsApp on July 13th, 2018, one asking people to punish a school teacher in Perambur, Chennai for hitting and kicking little children, and another disseminating a young female doctor’s photo, claiming she was treating patients for free in Chennai. Both these posts rolled out on WhatsApp and Facebook in Chennai.

According to Siva Nadarajah, an adviser and investor at Verify.Wiki who took the step forward and requested the company to help with the deadly False News crisis in India, “The team immediately kicked off the pilot. They first made it clear that the video that was going viral was from a school in Egypt, which was recorded in 2014, not from Perambur, Chennai. They also quickly came through on the other story about the doctor was also false, propagated by a person who steals profile photos of young women from Facebook.”

Once the stories were verified to be false and misleading through the process of crowdsourced research, Verify.Wiki said its “reverse virality” approach ensured the propagation of the False News was stopped within hours. With reverse virality, the corrected version of the False News, was propagated back through the same path the story originated, via WhatsApp and Facebook, targeting those who might have consumed the False News.

“We were able to put a break on both the False News stories within a few hours. We also noticed the propagation of those two fake news got completely stopped within 24 hours”, added Siva Nadarajah.

“Imagine if Wikipedia and Facebook had a baby. You combine crowdsourcing with social networking. It’s so powerful when it comes to transparency and credibility in fighting False News. We were successful in stopping seven False News stories just within a fortnight of our pilot in Chennai. Some are harmless and some are very dangerous. The good thing is the company provides freedom to each and every person on this planet to submit a suspected False News and everyone can participate in the verification activities. It’s a democratic process to fight False News”, added Siva Nadarajah.

Facebook, the parent company of WhatsApp recently took full page newspaper advertisements to warn people of False News propagating via WhatsApp, after lynching incidents killed dozens of people across India.

About Verify.Wiki:

Verify.Wiki uses the power of collaboration and crowd-sourcing technique to fight unverified content shared across various social media networks likes Facebook, WhatsApp, Youtube etc. Every contribution goes through a crowd-sourced verification process to ensure further accuracy and transparency. Users receive badges and industry certifications for contributing and verifying content.

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