“The principle of safety is absolutely core to what WhatsApp does on a daily basis, despite the fact that WhatsApp is now quite a widely used platform for every Indian,” Shivnath Thukral, Public Policy Director, India at WhatsApp tells indianexpress.com.  Thukral says the thought behind the brand new marketing campaign is to empower customers with the controls they must be secure on the platform.

“At the end of the day, it is the user who has the right to decide who to block, who to report, who to accept in their contact list, and ensure that they are in control of their own lives,” he added.

The marketing campaign highlights why you will need to add two-step verification to WhatsApp, which requires a six-digit pin and an OTP to authenticate a consumer. This will probably be useful if the smartphone is misplaced, because the miscreant won’t be able to entry WhatsApp with out the safety pin.

Meta can even use this marketing campaign to coach customers concerning the block and report function, the place a consumer will be capable to block a suspecting account and report the identical to WhatsApp for additional motion. Similarly, it is going to additionally concentrate on highlighting a number of privateness options reminiscent of easy methods to allow or disable profile photographs, final seen, and standing to pick customers. Lastly, it is going to additionally spotlight numerous group security options, together with privateness settings and a bunch invite system.

Over the previous few years, WhatsApp has not solely tried to deal with “integrity” considerations but in addition made the platform easier and higher, reminiscent of communities for organising teams. Calling “misinformation” an issue of the actual world, Thukral says the platform has taken many steps to safe customers and forestall them from spreading faux information

“We are an encrypted platform where I cannot see, I cannot read, I cannot store any of your messages. My access to content is negligible or zero as compared to our Facebook or IG right within our family of apps,” he explains.

He continued: “We heard the feedback we received from India and we reduce the virality, or at least the factor of virality by limiting forwards to only five highly forwarded messages.” Due to the measured steps taken by WhatsApp, there was a drop in virality within the vary of 70 per cent on the platform.