Swachh Digital India: Fake News Has a Real Impact on Our Lives

Swachh Digital India: Fake News Has a Real Impact on Our Lives is an investigative report published by The Quint on 18 July 2017, written by Vineet Khare and Manasi Dash as part of a co-production series with BBC Hindi called Swachh Digital India. The article examines the challenges of tracking fake news on WhatsApp due to end-to-end encryption and documents real-world consequences including a false Indian Air Force plane crash report that triggered police searches. It features commentary from Sunil Abraham of Centre for Internet and Society questioning how end-to-end encryption functions in group messaging environments with multiple recipients.

Article Details
Full Text
Context and Background
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Article Details

📰 Published in:: The Quint
✍️ Authors:: Vineet Khare, Manasi Dash
📅 Date:: 18 July 2017
📄 Type:: Investigative Report
📺 Series:: Swachh Digital India (co-produced with BBC Hindi)
📰 Publication Link:: Read Online

Full Text

WhatsApp, which helps its users send messages, make audio and video calls, share location, pictures and videos, has a significant user base in India.

With end-to-end encryption, WhatsApp says it's not possible for the third party to read messages exchanged between two people.

"When end-to-end encrypted, your messages, photos, videos, voice messages, documents, status updates and calls are secured from falling into the wrong hands," the company says on its page.

What's Up With WhatsApp?

"WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption ensures only you and the person you are communicating with can read what is sent and nobody in between, not even WhatsApp can."

"Your messages are secured with a lock and only the recipient and you have the special key needed to unlock and read your message. For added protection, every message you send has a unique lock and key."

Now consider a situation where a fake, disturbing video or a message goes viral?

Is it possible to track its source – who sent it first on the app?

A Facebook spokesperson (Facebook owns WhatsApp) refused to comment.

Many experts agree that tracing the origin of a message introduced on WhatsApp is not possible.

The company says the data is not saved on its servers, but on the instrument.

The Legal Purview

Ethical hacker Rizwan Shaikh also agrees, but he adds that law enforcement agencies can track the data by going backwards and checking the message receiver's handset, but it's not feasible every time due to the paucity of resources.

"A message on WhatsApp could go viral within a few hours. If the origin of a message has to be tracked, steps need to be taken in the first few hours. Otherwise it becomes impossible," says Rizwan.

Messages on the app have almost no barriers that could impede its spread. Pictures or moving images could be translated into multiple languages making their reach extremely powerful.

The Impact

Sample this story which illustrates how confusing a situation can become.

In 2015, reports of the crash of an Indian Air Force plane hit the headlines. Police searched a 10-km forest area near Chitrakoot for a day before realising that it was a fake report.

Then Chitrakoot SP Pawan Kumar said it all started with an image circulated via WhatsApp.

According to local journalist Vivek Agarwal, it was the rush to cover the news that made them forget about fact-checking.

According to Kumar, the alleged image appeared to have travelled from Satna in Madhya Pradesh.

However, another journalist who reported about the crash, says the image came as a forward from Rajasthan.

The Big Question

Now, how do you track the origin of the picture in such a situation?

Sunil Abraham of Centre for Internet and Society has a few questions for WhatsApp.

He says end-to-end encryption works best between two parties. But what happens in a WhatsApp group?

"End-to-end encryption works best between two parties. In a group, the message is sent to multiple parties. I cannot believe that when a message is sent to a 100-member group, the message is encrypted 100 different times on the phone and then sent to each recipient. I don't think this is how the technology works."

He believes WhatsApp should have an answer to this puzzle.

Meanwhile, NDTV has reported that WhatsApp told the Supreme Court earlier this month that it will help block sexually-offensive content from being shared on social media.

How it would do that, considering the app is end-to-end encrypted, is not clear.

(This article is part of a series done in co-production between The Quint and BBC Hindi called Swachh Digital India. Also read this article in Hindi on BBC Hindi here.)

Context and Background

This article appeared during a watershed moment when WhatsApp-driven misinformation was increasingly recognised as a governance and public safety challenge in India. The platform’s user base had grown exponentially following the rollout of affordable data plans under Reliance Jio in September 2016, bringing millions of first-time internet users online with limited digital literacy skills. This demographic shift created fertile ground for misinformation to spread unchecked through family and community groups.

The Chitrakoot incident documented in the article exemplified how WhatsApp’s design amplified false information. A fabricated image of an Indian Air Force plane crash triggered police deployment across a 10-kilometre forest area for an entire day. The image’s origins remained disputed, with different sources claiming it came from Satna in Madhya Pradesh or Rajasthan, illustrating the impossibility of tracing message provenance through WhatsApp’s architecture. Local journalist Vivek Agarwal’s admission that competitive pressure overrode fact-checking protocols highlighted systemic vulnerabilities in regional media ecosystems.

Sunil Abraham’s technical critique challenged WhatsApp’s public messaging about end-to-end encryption in group contexts. Whilst the company claimed messages were encrypted with unique keys for each transmission, Abraham questioned whether mobile devices possessed sufficient processing power to encrypt messages 100 different times for large groups. His scepticism suggested either WhatsApp was obscuring architectural details or employing shared encryption keys that contradicted claims of individualised security. This technical ambiguity had regulatory implications, as authorities struggled to balance privacy protections with accountability for harmful content.

The Supreme Court development referenced in the article concerned WhatsApp’s July 2017 affidavit promising cooperation to block sexually offensive content. This commitment appeared contradictory given the platform’s insistence that end-to-end encryption prevented it from accessing message contents. The company never clarified how it would implement content filtering whilst maintaining encryption integrity, suggesting either a shift towards client-side scanning or reliance on user reporting mechanisms.

The Swachh Digital India series emerged from growing recognition amongst Indian and international media organisations that coordinated fact-checking efforts were necessary to counter misinformation’s spread. The Quint’s collaboration with BBC Hindi reflected attempts to reach audiences across linguistic divides, though the scale of the challenge dwarfed available resources. Within months of this article’s publication, WhatsApp misinformation would contribute to mob lynchings across India, forcing the platform to implement forward limits and other friction mechanisms. The fundamental tension Abraham identified between encryption, content moderation and law enforcement access remains unresolved in policy debates around encrypted messaging platforms.