Topics covered:
- Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.
- Challenges to internal security through communication networks, role of media and social networking sites in internal security challenges, basics of cyber security; money-laundering and its prevention.
Checkpoint Tipline by Whatsapp
What to study?
- For Prelims: Key features and significance of Tipline.
- For Mains: Fake News- concerns, effects, role of social media platforms and other stakeholders involved.
What is it? WhatApp has unveiled a brand new initiative, called Checkpoint Tipline, that will help people verify if any information they receive is true or false.
Launched by PROTO, an India-based media skilling startup, the tipline is basically aimed at creating a database of rumours. The idea is to study misinformation spread ahead of the upcoming elections for Checkpoint, which is a research project commissioned and technically assisted by WhatsApp.
How it works?
- WhatsApp users can submit all the information received through the messaging platform and that they are uncertain about to the ‘Tipline’ on WhatsApp (+91-9643-000-888).
- Following this, PROTO’s verification centre will “seek to respond and inform the user” if the information received is verified or not.
- The response will indicate if information is classified as true, false, misleading, disputed or out of scope and include any other related information that is available.
- The verification centre, in turn, will be able to review rumors in the form of pictures, video links or text. Apart from English, it will cover four regional languages – Hindi, Telugu, Bengali and Malayalam.
Significance:
- This is not the first time the global messaging platform has tried to filter the barrage of information exchanged every day by billions of users. In the aftermath of a series of mob lynching incidents following misinformation spreading on WhatsApp, the company is now taking stringent steps in the lead up to the 2019 general elections in India.
- It has also undertaken many efforts to battle fake news, including the five-forward limit, social campaigns, and the latest – a ‘Tipline’ for misinformation.
Sources: the hindu.
