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WhatsApp Must Act to Protect Elections | foundation.mozilla.org (foundation.mozilla.org)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The link above is for the petition

Here is the letter:

Our Letter To WhatsApp:

WhatsApp needs to implement these product changes during polling days and in the month before and the month after elections:

Add friction to forwarding messages: Reduce the ease with which messages can be forwarded on the platform by adding one additional step which nudges users to pause and reflect before they forward content.

Add disinformation warning labels to viral content: Automatically add clear “Highly forwarded: please verify” warning labels to viral messages, in addition to the “forwarded many times” label currently in use.

Reduce WhatsApp’s broadcast capabilities: Disable the Communities feature and also limit the size of broadcast lists to 50 people and cap their usage to twice a day.

Without decisive action from WhatsApp, disinformation attacks will likely scale up in 2024, aimed at manipulating and undermining elections affecting half of the world’s population. WhatsApp must act to change its product to protect election integrity.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (3 children)

I thought Mozilla was a FOSS organization whose goal it was to defend an open Internet with free communication?

Here they are putting out a blog post that says "WhatsApp should use the power it has over its users to implement antifeatures that their users might not want and could remove if it were FOSS".

What the hell kind of world are we living in again?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Are you new to the hypocrisy of FOSS nerds?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I suspect that I am; I am not omnipresent and not aware of everything happening everywhere.

Am I right that the logic is approximately like this: FOSS is a left-wing anti-business cause, misinformation tends to help right-wing parties win elections, therefore it is compatible with FOSS values and principles to want to use the power that proprietary software developers have in order to censor ("stop the spread of") misinformation?

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