WhatsApp offers $50,000 to stop that

New Delhi, Jul 05: The Facebook-owned messaging app, WhatsApp has is free and available on multiple devices and also has reached places where there's low connectivity. But now, as WhatsApp reaches a critical mass in India, it has also become one of the top social platforms to share the fake news.

Over the last few years, we have seen the repercussions of the spread of fake news on the platform. Recently, five people were killed due to a mob lynching in Maharashtra, after they were incited following a fake video that was shared via WhatsApp.

There are a number of cases of mob violence, lynchings and other types of acts that have been caused due to the rumors that spread on WhatsApp.

In order to tackle this massive spread of false and unverified news, the Facebook-owned company is now set to commision a set of new global awards to invite researchers to participate and come up with solutions for tackling the fake news issue.

According to a report by the company, WhatsApp is now incentivizing an entire programme called 'WhatsApp Research Awards for Social Science and Misinformation' that will fund independent research proposals which gives a method to analyze data with respect to the spread of information.

WhatsApp has offered an award of $50,000 (£37,800) to anyone who can help stop the spread of fake news on its platform following a spate of deadly lynchings in India sparked by viral rumors.

India's ministry of electronics and information technology said in a statement late on Tuesday that the lynchings were tied to "irresponsible and explosive messages" circulated on WhatsApp.

Also, the company would invite the award recipients to attend two workshops on how WhatsApp works and also encouraging them to share their research works with other awardees to collaborate and eliminate fake new from its roots.

The applications for applying to this award are due by 12 August. Applicants will be notified about further actions via email by 15 September.