“India is now the world’s cheapest country to spread fake news,” said Counterpoint analyst Tarun Pathak
India is WhatsApp’s biggest market, a country of 1.3 billion people where mobile internet access has exploded in recent years. A motorcyclist in Gujarat, India, checks his smartphone. Photo: Karen Dias/Bloomberg News By Newley Purnell March 31, 2019 2:03 p.m. ET NEW DELHI—In India, viral fake news is lighting up Facebook Inc.’s FB 0.69% WhatsApp messaging app as the world’s biggest democracy prepares for national elections in the coming weeks.
India is WhatsApp’s biggest market. Research firm Counterpoint estimates it has 300 million users, making it bigger here than Facebook. WhatsApp hasn’t released user figures since February 2017, when it said it had 200 million users in India. Since then, plummeting prices for mobile data and inexpensive smartphones have made WhatsApp the default digital town square in a country with deep societal divides.
Among the WhatsApp messages that have taken off in recent weeks is footage from a videogame falsely purporting to show Indian warplanes blowing up a building across rival Pakistan’s border. Other images have shown people who died in a heat wave passed off as dead militants. WhatsApp, which Facebook acquired in 2014 for $22 billion, has tweaked its app to try to prevent false news from going viral. It maintains that the app isn’t meant for the bulk sending of messages.
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