What happens if a rumor sent via WhatsApp causes hysteria among the service's users? People are dying.
According to the BBC , Watson and the Aargauer Zeitung, this is exactly what happened in India.
After a rumor in the form of a video about child abduction was sent uncontrollably in India via WhatsApp message, 9 people have been lynched so far.
Recently, an angry mob attacked two men in the northern Indian state of Assam after they stopped to ask for directions.
Video shows alleged child abduction
The rumors of child abduction originate from a video that was distributed via WhatsApp. It shows two men on motorcycles approaching a group of children. One of them grabs one of the children and drives away with him. The accompanying text tells about kidnappers who will come to the city to steal children.
Is this video true and is the hysteria and attacks justified? No. Because this is a video excerpt that has been taken out of context. According to the BBC, the video actually shows a mock scene from a prevention film from Pakistan. The last section explaining the scene was cut out.
However, this “abridged” version takes advantage of many Indians’ fear of strangers. In addition, some regional media outlets fueled further panic by picking up on the unfounded rumors. This caused many citizens to attack people who did not look familiar or had no knowledge of the regional language.
Police are often powerless against fake news
The police have been trying to combat these rumors with educational campaigns for weeks. But they seem powerless to stop the video from going viral.
According to the BBC, the following people have become innocent victims since April:
- A man in the southern state of Tamil Nadu is beaten to death by a mob after seemingly aimlessly wandering the streets.
- A 55-year-old woman in Tamil Nadu is lynched for giving sweets to children; the police arrested 30 people.
- A man in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh is lynched because he speaks Hindi rather than the national language, Telugu.
- A man in Telengana is killed by a mob as he enters a mango grove at night.
- Another man in Telengana is lynched while visiting a village to see his relatives.
- A newcomer to the southern city of Bangalore is tied with a rope and beaten to death with cricket bats.
- A transgender woman is lynched in Hyderabad.
And now two more men who asked for directions have been lynched in northeastern Assam.
Problem far far away?
Author's thoughts:
What happened in India is reality. But a reality that has nothing to do with us? Probably hardly, because in this country too we deal with chain letters and clickbait every day. In this country too, hate speech on the internet is an issue and cybercrime is also a reality here.
We all have a responsibility when we use social media. Education and conscious use of digital content starts with each individual. Even if it doesn't hurt to send or resend a fake message, you can see from the incidents in India that harmless sending can also result in suffering for real people - even the death of innocent people.
Such acts can also be prevented to a certain extent by reflecting on your actions, researching the content and not believing everything you get sent via social media.
a reverse search and only form your opinion once you have already collected several pieces of the puzzle - not just based on a video excerpt that maybe only lasts half a minute.
Further links on this topic:
You can also search for images on your smartphone!
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Stolen pictures - made up story
Romance Scam: This is how the correspondence works!
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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )

