Over the last three months, the Facebook-owned messaging WhatsApp has banned more than 2 million accounts each month for bulk or automated behavior. WhatsApp released a white paper on Wednesday detailing its efforts to curb this type of abuse, which can be used to distribute click-bait links or spread political misinformation to large groups of people.
“WhatsApp was built for private conversations among close friends and we are constantly working to maintain the private nature of our service,” said a spokesperson in an emailed statement. “Today, we’re sharing more about how our advanced machine learning systems prevent automated behavior and bulk messaging to help keep WhatsApp safe.”
Last year, a spate of lynchings triggered by viral hoax messages on its service put the company at the center of a debate about misinformation in India, where it has more than 200 million users.
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Now it’s bracing for India’s upcoming national elections, the biggest in the world.
WhatsApp is deploying artificial intelligence to clean up its platform ahead of the elections, in which more than 800 million Indians are eligible to vote. It’s also warning India’s political parties against spreading politically-motivated spam messages.
In order to ban those accounts, WhatsApp uses a combination of human intervention and machine learning. Twenty-five percent of the banned accounts are removed by humans, while the remaining 75% are scrubbed out by algorithms that seek out malicious activity, according to Fortune.com.
“Some may want to distribute click-bait links designed to capture personal information, while others want to promote an idea,” WhatsApp said during the press conference, according to Venturebeat. “Regardless of the intent, automated and bulk messaging violates our terms of service, and one of our priorities is to prevent and stop this kind of abuse.”
WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging services in the world with more than 1.5 billion users. Its popularity, like other prominent messaging apps and social networks, makes it a destination for bad actors to spam people, spread misinformation, and otherwise wreak havoc.
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