(C) Alec Muffett's DropSafe blog.
Author Name: Alec Muffett
This story was originally published on allecmuffett.com. [1]
License: CC-BY-SA 3.0.[2]


“WhatsApp Must Act to Protect Elections” | Mozilla want to make WhatsApp painful to use during elections, because people are scum

2024-04-26 11:47:47+00:00

Yeah. Nah. This is a foolhardy, misconceived idea which will be trivially circumvented by motivated political actors (never underestimate a village hall filled with activists) whilst also undermining WhatsApp and other platforms’ positions on CSAM versus message privacy.

Here’s a test: “First, Do Signal.”

Our Letter To WhatsApp:



WhatsApp needs to implement these product changes during polling days and in the month before and the month after elections:



Add friction to forwarding messages: Reduce the ease with which messages can be forwarded on the platform by adding one additional step which nudges users to pause and reflect before they forward content.



Add disinformation warning labels to viral content: Automatically add clear “Highly forwarded: please verify” warning labels to viral messages, in addition to the “forwarded many times” label currently in use.



Reduce WhatsApp’s broadcast capabilities: Disable the Communities feature and also limit the size of broadcast lists to 50 people and cap their usage to twice a day.



Without decisive action from WhatsApp, disinformation attacks will likely scale up in 2024, aimed at manipulating and undermining elections affecting half of the world’s population. WhatsApp must act to change its product to protect election integrity.
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[1] URL: https://alecmuffett.com/article/109688
[2] URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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