Some of the regulations proposed by the government for social media companies in India are a threat to the very existence of WhatsApp in its current form, a top company executive said on Tuesday.
With over 200 million active monthly users, India is the biggest market for WhatsApp all over the world. WhatsApp has over 1.5 billion users globally.
“Of the proposed regulations, the one which concerns us the most is the emphasis on traceability of messages,” Carl Woog, WhatsApp’s Head of Communications, told IANS on the sidelines of a media workshop.
The Facebook-owned messenger has adopted the end-to-end encryption for the messages sent on the app, which disallows anyone other than the sender and the receiver to see the messages being circulated. WhatsApp has adopted this policy as a security measure for its users and without this feature, Woog explained, WhatsApp will be a completely new product.
“The proposed changes are going overboard and are not consistent with strong privacy protections that people around the world are seeking,” said Woog, who served as the Spokesperson for the Barack Obama administration in the US.
“Given the end-to-end encryption we have in place, the regulations will require us to re-architect our product,” he said, adding that in such scenario WhatsApp will cease to exist in its current form.
Woog, without denying the possibility of quitting Indian market if the new regulations come into effect, told IANS “It will not help to speculate what is to come. There is a process in place in India to discuss this issue”.
With the end-to-end encryption, it is difficult for law enforcement authorities to find the culprit behind the spreading of misinformation. Nevertheless, the proposed IT Ministry regulations require social media platforms to keep a track of messages that have been shared on their platforms in order to curb the circulation of fake news and misinformation.
WhatsApp, last year, resorted to limiting the number of forwards to five people only in order to alleviate the situation that had been caused by the fake news circulation through the app. Last year, WhatsApp received a lot of criticism from the government over dozens of lynching incidents in the country that were linked directly to the rumors spread on WhatsApp.
“We ban nearly two million suspicious accounts every month. While roughly 20 percent of these accounts are banned at the time of registration, over 70 percent of the spam accounts get banned without a recent user report,” Woog said.
These efforts are particularly important during elections where certain groups may attempt to send messages at scale,” WhatsApp said.
Users are allowed to flag accounts with the help of the in-app ‘report’ feature, the reported accounts are later reviewed by a team of human workers. When someone reports an account, the WhatsApp team can see the last few messages from that account.
WhatsApp said that the company was hiring more reviewers with knowledge of more regional languages in India ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
“As part of establishing our operations in India, we have identified a Grievance Officer who can be contacted directly if a user has a concern about their WhatsApp experience and is unable to report it through other channels”, WhatsApp said, addressing the major demand from the government.
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