Mozilla sends an email to subscribers asking them to support it. Mozilla wants whatsapp supervising the spread of messages. Is that wanted behavior for a private chat app?

Mozilla’s researchers have found that political actors around the world have systematically exploited WhatsApp’s broadcasting features in elections over the last five years to reach massive audiences. Closed WhatsApp groups have increasingly been used to share inaccurate political news, incendiary propaganda, hate speech, and conspiracy theories. Unchecked, this content can spread quickly and reach voters at a very large scale, and potentially even threaten the integrity of upcoming elections.3

Mozilla is making an urgent call for WhatsApp – the world’s second most popular social network – to implement three simple changes to slow the spread of political disinformation and other harmful content on its platform. Will you add your name to ask WhatsApp to take action to protect elections globally?

Tell WhatsApp to immediately take action to update its product to detect and stop networked disinformation, hate speech, and political violence to protect the integrity of upcoming elections around the world.

We need WhatsApp to act quickly: The first round of voting in India starts on April 19 – less than three weeks from now. Voting in national elections in South Africa, India, and Mexico will end by June 2, with the EU voting the following week. 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.
  • Pussista@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    6 months ago

    I don‘t know where you read their call to monitoring chats. They‘re requesting making spamming others harder and requiring more steps.