During this year’s election season in Mexico, propagandists took advantage of WhatsApp’s new mass broadcasting feature.channel,” to impersonate Use trusted political news outlets to spread misleading information. Thousands of miles away in India, the powerful Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has built a massive online communication machine called the “BJP Digital Army.” ruthless propaganda on WhatsApp ahead of the summer elections. In the United States, Elon Musk published the following paper: made with AI The image of Kamala Harris wearing a communist uniform in X received widespread attention among Hispanic-American WhatsApp groups in South Florida, a prominent constituency in the state. swing voters.
Messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and Viber often advertise themselves as spaces for private discussions among family, friends, and other acquaintances. But these platforms have also become highly influential tools for manipulating and misleading voters around the world.
our new studya joint venture of New York University Stern Center for Business and Human Rights and the University of Texas at Austin. media engagement centershowing that the spread of manipulative political content is intentional, professional, and systematic. Billions of people have already voted this year, but it’s not too late for messaging apps to take the necessary steps to protect their users from manipulative propaganda.
Weaponizing messaging apps
Deceptive or malicious information “trending” on social media often originates from From content shared on messaging apps. of The reverse is also true: Manipulative narratives originating from social media can take on new and expanded life within the messaging app ecosystem of encrypted groups and private chats.
Recent examples in the United States illustrate this trend.
- Earlier this year, in the wake of protests on college campuses, messaging app Telegram. breeding ground against false conspiracy theories about US President Joe Biden’s alleged ties to the terrorist organization Hamas.
- Fake news article cites attack on Indian students at University of Texas spread The posts on WhatsApp were made in a targeted attempt to antagonize the Indian community against local Democrats who are said to be soft on crime.
The weaponization of messaging apps by political propagandists is not just a US problem. In fact, other countries are experiencing this trend earlier and more intensely. Recent elections in the European Union and Asia demonstrate the extent to which messaging apps have become central to election campaigns in these regions.
- Propaganda activists in Hungary ahead of 2024 European Union elections weaponized Telegram forwarding bot (turbocharged) Propaganda by calculation toolagainst LGBTQ+ and pro-democracy civil society organizations portrayed as “Western-led.”
- During Turkey’s 2024 local elections, propagandists launched fake “news” channels on Telegram and WhatsApp, copying the Turkish Radio and Television Company (TRT) and other reputable broadcasters. They use the channel to share deceptive videos Portraying opposition politicians as sympathetic to both Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Syrian jihadists, encouraging viewers to “repost” and amplify content in stories and status updates I urged them to do so.
- In the Philippines, former President Rodrigo Duterte’s government established channels and communities on Viber. actively promoted Through social media and physical posters. The government, which attracted more than 2 million viewers, leveraged Viber’s multimedia creation and distribution capabilities, including sticker packs and bots, to pump out pro-Duterte content.
Political propagandists around the world have developed and refined digital “broadcasting toolkits.” It’s a set of tactics to reach large numbers of voters directly on their mobile phones, using narratives tailored to their specific interests and views. These tactics and strategies rely on a growing set of services from many popular messaging platforms. Features and communication toolspropagandists exploit this in sophisticated ways to achieve viral dissemination of content among the desired target audience.
The propagandists supporting the Bharatiya Janata Party in India are masters of these tactics. they have spent years curation distribution system WhatsApp – A network of local, regional and national groups carefully calculated to maximize engagement and speed of content spread across the app. With the help of the BJP’s volunteer cadre, the party then spread an inflammatory message It aimed to exploit specific grievances of the public under the guise of unofficial third-party accounts. Many of the materials by mistake It paints opposition candidates as colluding with foreign agents, from philanthropist George Soros to the CIA to Muslims in general. In the Mexican example discussed above, propagandists used a fake channel that had been successfully verified (and gained legitimacy) by WhatsApp in conjunction with WhatsApp’s forwarding tool to add that channel’s content to group chats on the app. I sent out a lot of content. From there, a “View Channel” tag at the top of the content directed additional followers to the fake channel.
These unscrupulous tactics are often successful. According to investigation According to research commissioned as part of our research, 62 percent of messaging app users in nine countries across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas receive political content on those apps. More than half (55 percent) of its political content came from people. Accounts that the user did not know about or chose not to follow. Furthermore, of those who received political content from a stranger, 52% said the content significantly or somewhat influenced their opinions.
Platform design to enable propaganda
Political campaigns using messaging platforms tend to be less visible as they create a more private space by design. Many messaging apps End-to-end encryption achieve it to some extent virtually impossible External researchers, and even the platforms themselves, can systematically track the content circulating in these spaces. End-to-end encryption is an encryption method that makes messages unreadable to everyone except the sender and the intended recipient, and is particularly valuable in the following situations: democracy activist Dissidents in repressive situations. For example, during Venezuela’s recent elections, opposition activists used encrypted chats on WhatsApp and Signal for coordination. protests depending on the evidence of widespread election fraud By President Nicolas Maduro and his administration. But it also obscures the activities of political propagandists and others. terrorist organization.
Some messaging services (particularly Signal) have more features. clearly It was chosen to prioritize user privacy over fraud mitigation efforts while remaining a pure messaging app for one-on-one or small group conversations. However, other platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram started out as basic messaging services with simple user interfaces that enabled one-on-one text messaging.all apps”, or a one-stop shop for digital communications.
These changes in the nature of apps can be attributed to the platform’s business model. Apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, Viber, etc. withdraw profits Take advantage of premium features like business accounts and ads, rather than private messaging, which is often offered as a free service. These same features provide a mechanism for propaganda actors to reach voters en masse while benefiting from the relative secrecy of a private messaging ecosystem.
The implications for democracy extend beyond the integrity of the information environment surrounding elections. With encryption and minimal moderation, messaging apps often relative haven For political extremists such as the far right,telogram collective” seeks to promote the collapse of “society as we know it” through acts of violence. In the United States, suchaccelerationist” Extremists are using Telegram for propaganda and coordination attack attacks on power grids and other critical infrastructure; concerns A wave of rolling blackouts could affect voting stations and disrupt the certification of election results. Telegram’s hands-off approach to such activity on the app led to the arrest of founder and CEO Pavel Durov by French authorities in August. basis The suspects alleged that they violated French criminal law by promoting child sexual exploitation and fraud.
Platforms can contribute to solutions
There are concrete steps platforms can take to protect elections from propaganda and manipulation without compromising the ability of users, including human rights defenders, to communicate securely through encrypted chats.
First, platforms must separate messaging services from social media and broadcast services, ensuring that only messaging functionality provides the privacy and security of end-to-end encryption. Provides nominal privacy for group chats with hundreds of thousands of members – telegram does – Promotes mass abuse and makes no sense in the real world. After all, where else outside of cyberspace can 200,000 people gather without notice? Second, messaging platforms should place strict limits on the number and pace of account creation to ensure that propagandists cannot easily manipulate fake accounts.phone farm” was intended to artificially amplify their efforts. For example, Signal is limit You can use one account per device, which is ideal from an abuse prevention perspective. In contrast, WhatsApp and Viber allow up to two accounts per phone number, but propagandists say You can work around these limitations.
Third, in the context of elections, platforms should limit large-scale broadcasts to verified channels and vetted business accounts. If a platform allows channels or business accounts to reach large audiences, those accounts should be closely scrutinized to ensure their authenticity and compliance with platform policies. Fourth, platforms should provide users with easily accessible in-app fact-checking tools, including certified misinformation. ”hint line” and tools for it Reverse image searchallows users to obtain information about an image, such as its origin and usage history.
As these apps grow in popularity, US and abroadpolitical manipulation efforts will intensify. Messaging apps must balance the desire to monetize their applications with the very real security challenges that arise when “broadcast” mechanisms are forced into previously private communication spaces. Subtle changes to these and other platform features can protect both the user base and the integrity of elections.
