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Seeking to scotch rumours and identify fake news on social media platform WhatsApp, a team of experts at a city-based institution is working on developing an application that may be able to tell you whether a message is fake or not.
Ponnurangam Kumaraguru, associate professor of computer science at the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi, (IIIT-D) is heading the team which is developing the app that seeks to determine the authenticity of a message circulated on this platform.
Rumours on WhatsApp have sparked off a spate of incidents involving mob fury, including one where five men were lynched on the suspicion of being child-lifters in Maharashtra's Rainpada village. Recently, a man was beaten to death and three others were injured after a mob attack them suspecting them to be child-lifters, near Bidar in Karnataka.
The professor feels that the application will be a useful tool in the current scenario where a number of such incidents have been reported in which people were killed in violence, triggered on the basis of rumours circulated on WhatsApp.
"We are collecting a large number of data and have asked people to forward us messages on the number 9354325700. These messages will be analysed and accordingly, we will develop a model for putting a wrapper on such messages," he added.
For example, if a message is received, there will be colour codes that will indicate the authenticity.
A green might indicate that it is a legitimate content, yellow colour might indicate that the system is not able to decode it while red might indicate that it is definitely fake content, he said.
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"Through the messages received, we will study the common factors in such messages. The commonality might be an image, a URL or some words. If it is a forwarded message, it is a high probability that it is a fake message," said the professor.
He said the app is likely to be ready in a couple of months.
