The instant messaging platform had earlier expressed inability in tracing the origin of messages citing privacy of consumers.
Fake News Controversy: With the government threatening action against WhatsApp over spread of fake news, the chief executive officer (CEO) of the American messaging platform, Chris Daniels, flew down to New Delhi to fix things.
Daniels, who took over as the boss of WhatsApp in May, on Tuesday told the government it would work out a technological solution to trace the origin of fake messages. The Facebook-owned firm, with more than 200 million active subscribers in India, also committed to complying with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) rules relating to local storage of financial data by having servers in India.
Daniels, a Facebook insider known for running internet.org at the California-based social media firm, has been firefighting with the Indian authorities over fake news soon after he was appointed as the WhatsApp boss.
Whatsapp Fake News Measures
Following an exchange of letters with the Department of Information Technology on the steps to block fake news, the WhatsApp team decided to meet the authorities in person to list out the corrective measures planned by the company. In the country for three to four days, the team would meet other ministers and bureaucrats as well. It could not be confirmed if a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi was scheduled.Within hours of his interaction with Daniels, Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad was off to Argentina for an ICT conference. From there, he will travel to Silicon Valley, which houses several prominent tech companies including WhatsApp. The minister is scheduled to meet top executives of many tech companies including Google during his...continue reading
