WhatsApp, Jio Plan Nationwide Campaign To Tackle Fake News, Rumours

Facebook-endemic WhatsApp and Reliance Jio today started a new campaign to train people about using the mobile messaging platform responsibly on their JioPhones.

Starting Oct nine, WhatsApp and Jio spokespersons and officials would visit x cities in unlike Indian states including Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan for street plays and to engage users and guide them on meaningful and positive ways of WhatsApp apply.

In the past few months, WhatsApp has fabricated a huge effort in educating Indian users about the pitfalls of falling for rumors, given tips on how to check for imitation news, and released many national-level ads in newspapers and on radio. While it may take had a cooling result on some of the WhatsApp-led violence in parts of the country, in that location is an even more than urgent need to educate new users, such every bit those getting online for the showtime time using JioPhone.

"Jio has an of import function in driving India'south digital revolution past empowering millions of Indians. We are excited to… help organise a campaign that educates people on how to communicate in a simple and safe way," a WhatsApp spokesperson said in a statement.

Reliance Jio introduced mobile app WhatsApp on its 4G feature phone device, JioPhone in September. We tried out the app on the feature phone, and information technology'southward pretty feature rich, with the exception of video call support and some other features.

WhatsApp on JioPhone also has restrictions on forwards also equally labels to indicate forwarded letters, and so that's a positive step already. At present, the companies have jointly developed video tutorials and informative leaflets, available online and in Jio Stores in 11 Indian languages including Hindi, Bengali and Marathi.

WhatsApp has over 200 million monthly active users in India and is preparing to launch ads in its app, every bit per recent reports. It'southward by far the most used messaging app in the world, topping Facebook's other app Messenger in terms of monthly users, which hovers effectually the 1.five billion marker.

With inputs from IANS