WhatsApp Launches First TV Campaign To Fight Fake News

We all know how disappointing and annoying click bais can be. Opening a post and finding out that it is all fake news can get to someone’s nerves.

This experience is entirely relatable while coming across fake news on WhatsApp. Apart from being incredibly irritating, such false news items can cause more harm than one can imagine.

WhatsApp First TV Campaign To Fight Fake News In India

To tackle this issue, WhatsApp initiated the running of a new ad campaign on TV that will curb this problem in India. Notably, during the election time, this step becomes furthermore essential.

WhatsApp has been on the radar for circulating fake news. Resultant it has received an enormous amount of criticism for the same. As a result, the instances of mob lynching have been on the rise, thus, disturbing the placidity of the society.

The Facebook-owned company has initiated a total of 3 campaigns after performing extensive research throughout the country. That’s how one of their campaign videos share the message:

The developers gained an insight to the inconvenience the spread of false news was causing to the common masses.The experience of real users has contributed significantly to the development of these ad campaigns.

WhatsApp Campaigns Are Being Advertising In Different Languages

To expand its reach to a broad audience base, the campaign is available in nine different languages. Users can access the three films on YouTube, Facebook, and TV.

The languages include Hindi, English, Bengali, Telugu, Kannada, Assamese, Marathi, Gujarati, and Malayalam.

Just before the onset of elections in Telangana and Rajasthan, the campaign began to take a form. Users can also count this as an effort to regulate the spread of fake news in the upcoming next year’s elections.

In a statement, WhatsApp said that:

The films of 60 seconds duration had highlighted real-world scenarios of the dangers of believing in fake news.

Over time, dangerous rumours have been making their way through school groups and families which created a lot of unnecessary nuisance.

In each movie, the protagonists make everyone aware of the harmful effects of fake news. And continues to tell them how to protect themselves from their influence.

One way to stay away from the adverse effects of fake WhatsApp news is to make sure to block unknown senders and leave groups in which the problem is rampant.

Print media is all set to extend its support to the Ads by including them in their releases. Various cinema and news channels will also set the stage to raise awareness among the audience of different age groups.

In August, they released a radio campaign persuading users to double check the information before believing blindly.

The app is designed to facilitate secure communication among friends and family and help people in business carry out professional conversations.

WhatsApp is all set to educate people about the circulation of misinformation as it profoundly cares for the safety of the users.

This also includes robust spam detection. The government has warned WhatsApp regarding the fake information epidemic.

Also, instructed to curb the issue although WhatsApp has denied government’s proposal of tracking messages as this goes against the privacy standards.