Hoaxes are usually spread very easily from person to person, or within groups. Messaging applications such as WhatsApp are the ideal place to share false or dubious content, since it takes advantage of trust with close people or the addiction to WhatsApp where we always read the messages that come to us. For this reason, even WhatsApp itself has had to introduce methods to prevent its spread , and we will explain how to use them, as well as what other tools we have to check them.
Before 2020, WhatsApp was already quite concerned about hoaxes. The biggest problems arose in India, where hoaxes led to the deaths of dozens of people by mob of people, and for crimes they had not committed. Therefore, they introduced a limit to forward messages, where a message could not be forwarded more than five times.
WhatsApp measures to stop the hoaxes
However, in 2020 that was not enough, since a person could send all those messages without limits to all the chats he wanted. Thus, a hoax propagator could send a message to hundreds of people, and thus start a chain. In addition, it is possible to bypass the limit simply by clicking “copy” and pasting it in a chat.
Therefore, in 2020 they announced that they were going to introduce a new limit, where only a message could be forwarded to a chat. There were various hoaxes about this measure, where it was said that the Government of Spain had been the one that had worked with WhatsApp to introduce this limitation as one of the reasons for not using WhatsApp , and was encouraged to switch to Telegram, but nothing more Far from reality, this measure was introduced worldwide.
Along with it, WhatsApp will also introduce a small icon of a magnifying glass to be able to search forwarded messages directly on Google, in such a way that many text messages or links could be entered in the search engine to see if they are false messages. For now, the only option is to copy and search by hand to sort between recent posts.
Always doubt the forwarded messages
René Descartes was the one who established the principle of methodical doubt as a tool to doubt everything that exists and try to reach at least an absolute truth. That path of doubt led him to enunciate the principle of “I think, therefore I am.” Skepticism in the face of everything that comes to us through WhatsApp is a great help to avoid believing, or even worse, sharing, content of which we are not sure.
Although there are occasions when reality surpasses fiction, in most cases hoaxes, depending on the format, tend to stand out for various elements. For example, in forwarded text , there are often misspellings as the first element. Secondly, phrases such as “you will not see it in the media”, the use of words such as “Confirmed”, “forward this message so that it is known”, or the like, are always used to try to make the person reading it believe that Are true. If information is true in itself, you do not need these additions.
In the case of videos , on many occasions its low resolution prevents knowing if, for example, an event is occurring in Spain, or if the identity of the person who appears in it coincides with that stated in a text message associated with a video. It is easy to find the content of the video in the media, and there they are usually associated with a denial, or even better if it is what you are looking for: something that confirms that it is real.
In the case of images , the situation is even worse, since all kinds of elements can be retouched, such as the creation of false tweets. In these cases, it is usually best to search for the tweets by Google, and in the event that they do not appear, it can usually be because they are false, or because the author has deleted them. If we search for the text on Google or on networks like Twitter, we can check if there is any denial about them.
Finally, we can also receive links from all kinds of media. There are websites where a user can create their own fake news, such as 12minutes. And unfortunately, even in traditional media, some false news or news that does not conform to reality usually creeps in, but in most cases there are usually denials of the medium itself, other media, or even the person affected by said hoax, which usually have a specific purpose in their majority. For this reason, even if a news item appears in a reliable medium, it can be false or misrepresented, and looking for example responses in comments on networks such as Twitter or looking for the news in other media can help us to avoid swallowing a hoax.
WhatsApp itself has an official FAQ in which they give a series of tips to avoid hoaxes, among which are those we have mentioned, such as identifying forwarded messages, being careful with tricked photos and videos, keeping aside our prejudices before information that Confirm our established beliefs, prevent false content from becoming real by repeating it, or corroborate sources.
Use loop checkers or see for yourself
Luckily, there are now a multitude of hoax verifiers. Among them we find Maldita , former Maldito Bulo , who, together with Newtral, AFP and EFE , is part of the IFCN network , which stands for International Fact-Checking Network . This network, used by Facebook in all its apps and social networks, unites media around the world that have passed a series of checks by Facebook to verify false news.
In the case of Facebook, the social network assigns a poster to a fake news that alerts the user that the content they are viewing is false. In WhatsApp, as the application does not know the content of the messages that the user sends because they are end-to-end encrypted, the use of these means is optional. And thanks to this list, all countries know where to go to identify hoaxes .
The denial of hoaxes is something that usually takes a couple of days, where unfortunately much of the damage can be done. Therefore, until a hoax is disproved , it is important to corroborate the information with as many sources as possible. Nobody is free to promote a hoax or false information for any purpose such as political, ideological or personal gain, and although sometimes it is difficult to verify that something is true, we must do everything possible to try it.