WhatsApp it is the most used messaging platform on the planet, and although people should be very careful what they do in the application, for some it seems that it is used for mass manipulation, with tragic consequences. According to the police in India, two men were licked by a group of people after false rumors were spread on WhatsApp claiming that those people had kidnapped children, where they started without knowing for the time being.
WhatsApp was the platform where the rumors about the two men were distributed, and their lynching took place in an isolated village where they had stopped their car to ask for directions to help them reach their destination. At least 18 people forcibly took the two men out of the car, and based on false rumors on WhatsApp, they beat them until they were out of breath, the entire crime being filmed and published on social media in India.
WhatsApp: Platform manipulation led to CRIME
WhatsApp had distributed video clips in which people were warned that Pakistanis are trying to kidnap their children, and people without much education came to believe that strangers who do not speak their language actually want to kidnap children. WhatsApp was only the starting point for the manipulation, because some local news televisions in India also distributed the information, and thus two innocent people were killed by a group completely disconnected from reality.
"Two men had stopped to ask directions in north-eastern Assam state when they were beaten to death by a large mob. Indian police have arrested 16 people after two men became the latest victims of hysteria over WhatsApp rumors of child kidnappers. Rumors of child kidnappings are spreading across India over WhatsApp, and have already led to the deaths of seven other people in the past month."
WhatsApp is a good source of manipulation in India, in the last two years there have been no less than 2 other similar incidents due to the information distributed through the platform, and the authorities cannot do anything. WhatsApp is just one of the platforms through which the manipulation is done, because Facebook and Twitter are also intensively used, and this is how innocent people are killed without the people who start these rumors ever being held accountable.
