On WhatsApp, fake news is nearly impossible to moderate. Is that bad?

With the number of social media users in India rapidly rising, the dissemination of fake news has become a widespread phenomenon in recent years.

So-called "information overload" has made it difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff, and in some cases, misinformation spread via social media appears to have precipitated real-life violence, sometimes with fatal consequences.

In one recent incident, Twitter users in India expressed their anger when a ruling party member shared an image taken out of context, in what seemed like an effort to stoke social tensions during a riot in the Indian state of West Bengal.

Several such images were circulated through social media to skew public opinion in this period. In 2015, a possibly fake image circulated via WhatsApp and was later linked to the subsequent lynching of a Muslim man in India, on the suspicion that he had slaughtered a cow.

In India, reporting misinformation to police can be a first step towards prosecuting its sender under Indian laws like Section 67 of the IT act, if the information is perceived as likely to be "harmful to young minds", or section 468 of IPC if the news is considered "detrimental" to someone's reputation.

But policies like these are hard to implement effectively, routinely running afoul of protections for free expression.

Facebook's "trending" tweaks

As a major venue for the spread of fake news, Facebook has found itself at the center of this debate. After the 2016 US election, critics charged that the prevalence of false stories smearing Hillary Clinton, spread mostly on Facebook, may have shaped the outcome of the US election. These allegations triggered an ongoing debate about how Facebook might moderate misinformation on their network, along with multiple technical tweaks by Facebook, in an attempt to make its network less friendly to fake news distributors.

Most recently, Facebook updated its "Trending" feature formula. Unlike in the past, when the posts with maximum engagement appeared in the "Trending" section, now only those posts that have been shared by other "reputable sources" will appear in the Trending section. Users are also invited to contribute to the system by reporting false news stories directly to the company.

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