Tech Roundup: Can WhatsApp curb fake news in the 2020 election?

You’re reading The Brazilian Report’s weekly tech roundup, a digest of the most important news on technology and innovation in Brazil. This week’s topics: Brazil’s efforts to curb misinformation on WhatsApp ahead of the elections, e-commerce performance with Black Friday on the horizon, and the dreadful cybersecurity scenario for Latin America’s company’s and individuals. 

Electoral courts and WhatsApp team up against fake news. Will it work?

One and a half months before the 2020 municipal elections, Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court launched a new bot, in partnership with WhatsApp, to increase access to reliable information both on sanitary measures and electoral rules. While experts recognize the good intentions of the initiative, they say the fight against misinformation needs broader strategies.

How the bot works. Users must add a number provided by the Electoral Justice system to their list of contacts in order to interact with the bot. Then they will receive messages with information about their polling station, which safety measures to observe when heading out to vote, as well as fact-checked news on the election.

• There will also be a dedicated channel to denounce numbers that send mass messages during the campaign — which is forbidden by local electoral legislation. This feature, though, will be deactivated by December 19.

Step in the right direction. Débora Albu, coordinator of democracy and technology at think-tank ITS Rio, tells The Brazilian Report that structuring an anti-fake news strategy around WhatsApp — used by almost all Brazilian smartphones — is “very positive.” 

• “Voters don’t need to leave a platform they already use, they don’t need to create new digital skills. The process is very simple and this is crucial.”
• Plus, the partnership with Facebook — which owns WhatsApp — points in the direction of a partnership between the public sphere and the private sector that might come in handy during elections. “Unlike 2018, there is now an attempt to join solutions and new initiatives, so you have a unified front,” she said.

Yes, but … Ms. Albu warns the only way to tackle such a complex issue is through a more comprehensive strategy, involving political and media education — something a simple WhatsApp bot cannot handle. 

Regulation. Previously heralded as one of the pinnacles of Congress’s reaction to misinformation, the controversial “fake...