Russia starts biggest war games since Soviet fall near China

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia began its biggest war games since the fall of the Soviet Union on Tuesday close to its border with China, mobilizing 300,000 troops in a show of force that will include joint exercises with the Chinese army.

China and Russia have staged joint drills before but not on such a large scale, and the Vostok-2018 (East-2018) exercise signals closer military ties as well as sending an unspoken reminder to Beijing that Moscow is able and ready to defend its sparsely populated far east.

Vostok-2018 is taking place at a time of heightened tension between the West and Russia, and NATO has said it will monitor the exercise closely, as will the United States which has a strong military presence in the Asia-Pacific region.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence broadcast images on Tuesday of columns of tanks, armored vehicles and warships on the move, and combat helicopters and fighter aircraft taking off.

In one clip, marines from Russia’s Northern Fleet and a motorized Arctic brigade were shown disembarking from a large landing ship on a barren shore opposite Alaska.

This activity was part of the first stage of the exercise, which runs until Sept. 17, the ministry said in a statement. It involved deploying additional forces to Russia’s far east and a naval build-up involving its Northern and Pacific fleets.

The main aim was to check the military’s readiness to move troops large distances, to test how closely infantry and naval forces cooperated, and to perfect command and control procedures. Later stages will involve rehearsals of both defensive and offensive scenarios.

Russia also staged a major naval exercise in the eastern Mediterranean this month and its jets resumed bombing the Syrian region of Idlib, the last major enclave of rebels fighting its ally President Bashar al-Assad.

CLOSER CHINA-RUSSIA TIES

The location of the main training range for Vostok-2018 5,000 km (3,000 miles) east of Moscow means it is likely to be watched closely by Japan, North and South Korea as well as by China and Mongolia, both of whose armies will take part in the maneuvers later this week.

Analysts say Moscow had to invite the Chinese and Mongolian militaries given the proximity of the war games to their borders and because the scale meant the neighboring countries would probably have seen them as a threat had they been excluded.

The exercise - which will involve more than 1,000 military aircraft, two Russian naval fleets, up to 36,000 tanks and armored vehicles and all Russian airborne units - began as President Vladimir Putin held talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the Russian port city of Vladivostok.

Relations between Moscow and Beijing have long been marked by mutual wariness with Russian nationalists warning of encroaching Chinese influence in the country’s mineral-rich far east.

But Russia pivoted east towards China after the West sanctioned Moscow over its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region in 2014 and trade links between the two, who share a land border over 4,200 km long, have blossomed since.

Russia broadcast footage of some of 24 helicopters and six jets belonging to the Chinese air force landing at Russian air bases for the exercise. Beijing has said 3,200 members of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will join in.

Some experts see the war games as a message to Washington, with which both Moscow and Beijing have strained ties.

“With its Vostok 2018 exercise Russia sends a message that it regards the U.S. as a potential enemy and China as a potential ally,” wrote Dmitri Trenin, a former Russian army colonel and director of the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank.

“China, by sending a PLA element to train with the Russians, is signaling that U.S. pressure is pushing it towards much closer military cooperation with Moscow.”

Putin, who is armed forces commander-in-chief, is expected to observe the exercises this week alongside Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, who is overseeing them.

Shoigu has said they are the biggest since a Soviet military exercise, Zapad-81 (West-81) in 1981

Record U.S. job openings, quits rate boost wage growth outlook

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. job openings surged to a record high in July and more Americans voluntarily quit their jobs, pointing to sustained labor market strength and confidence that could soon spur faster wage growth.

FILE PHOTO: The sign on a Taco Bell restaurant advertises "Now Hiring Managers" in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, U.S., June 12, 2018. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo

The Labor Department’s monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, released on Tuesday also suggested a further tightening in labor market conditions, with employers appearing to increasingly have trouble finding suitable workers.

While the tightening labor market could boost wage gains, some economists warned that worker shortages could over time negatively impact economic growth. The JOLTS report cemented expectations the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates at its Sept. 25-26 policy meeting. The Fed has raised rates twice this year.

“The economic expansion is on a collision course with a lack of workers to man the shop floors, work the restaurants and stores at the shopping malls across America,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at MUFG in New York. “No workers, no growth, it’s that simple.”

Job openings, a measure of labor demand, increased by 117,000 to a seasonally adjusted 6.9 million in July. That was the highest level since the series started in December 2000. The jobs openings rate was 4.4 percent, unchanged from the previous month and an all-time high first touched in April.

The current level of job openings means there is a job for every one of the 6.2 million people who were unemployed in August. Hiring was little changed at 5.7 million in July, keeping the hiring rate at 3.8 percent for a second straight month.

There were 46,000 unfilled jobs in the finance and insurance industry in July. Nondurable goods manufacturing had 32,000 vacancies. The job opening rate in the overall manufacturing industry climbed to a record high of 3.8 percent in July from 3.6 percent in June.

But job openings in the retail trade industry fell by 85,000. There were also decreases in education and federal government job vacancies in July.

WORKER SHORTAGES

The scarcity of workers was also corroborated by a survey of small businesses published on Tuesday. The NFIB survey found that job openings at small businesses hit a 45-year high in August. A record number of businesses reported they could not find qualified workers to fill open positions.

According to the NFIB, job openings were mostly prevalent in construction, manufacturing and wholesale trade. There was also a dearth of truck drivers.

“Looming shortages of qualified workers could prove detrimental to business expansion plans in coming months,” Dante DeAntonio, an economist with Moody’s Analytics in West Chester, Pennsylvania. “In the meantime, the increasing tightness in the labor market is spurring more workers to re-enter the workforce as well as leave their jobs in search of better opportunities.”

The worker shortages, especially for truck drivers, are already contributing to bottlenecks in the supply chain, which could slow the vibrant economy. The economy grew at a 4.2 percent annualized rate in the second quarter, almost double the 2.2 percent pace set in the January-March period.

Growth this year is expected to top 3 percent.

The Labor Department’s JOLTS report also showed the robust labor market is giving Americans confidence to quit their jobs for other positions. The quits rate increased to 2.4 percent in July, the highest level since April 2001, from 2.3 percent in June. Fed officials look at the quits rate as a measure of job market confidence.

The increase in job mobility supports economists’ optimism that job growth may be finally on a faster path. The government last week reported a surge in annual wage growth in August, with average hourly earnings increasing 2.9 percent, the largest gain since June 2009, from 2.7 percent in July.

Wage gains have largely remained moderate even as the unemployment rate has dropped to near an 18-year low of 3.9 percent.

“Workers are leveraging the tighter labor market to find new opportunities and employers are poaching workers from other firms,” said Nick Bunker, an economist at job search website Indeed in Washington. “The next question is how more quitting will translate into higher wage growth.”

(Graphic - U.S. labor market by sector: tmsnrt.rs/2drejuZ)

(Graphic - U.S. employment: tmsnrt.rs/1T9hBxK)

UN report recommends building national leadership for broadband

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GENEVA, Sept. 11 (Xinhua) -- A latest UN broadband commission report released on Tuesday recommends building national leadership for broadband and, for the first time, calls for national strategies for promoting the safe use of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

In its latest report, The State of Broadband: Broadband Catalyzing Sustainable Development, the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development says that a growing number of governments now benchmark the status of broadband in their national broadband plans, while at least 15 countries now have strategies in place for promoting the safe use of AI.

The report highlights the critical role that broadband connectivity plays for the world's people, from accessing online health services to receiving social security payments via mobile phones to receiving life-saving disaster warnings.

To boost broadband, the commission recommends building national leadership for broadband; promoting Internet training and stimulating consumer and business demand; monitoring developments of communication and information technologies (ICT) to inform policy; reviewing universal service measures; strengthening digital skills and literacy; supporting local e-Businesses and entrepreneurs; adapting legal frameworks; and reducing taxes and duties on telecom products and services.

The commission, however, also raises concerns for the growing inequalities in access to broadband and how connectivity is used within and between countries, sexes and regions.

According to the report, though almost half of the world's people uses the Internet, most of them are in urban and densely populated areas and the challenge remains to connect those living in rural and remote areas. Last year, ITU said the scale of infrastructure that must be built or upgraded to bridge the digital divide and deploy emerging technologies is considerable, meaning that about 450 billion U.S. dollars would be needed to connect the next 1.5 billion people.

Meanwhile, the report also warns that big data and AI technologies are falling "into the hands of a largely unregulated extractive industry, creating another digital divide," and that "too few organizations have the AI tools and expertise needed to turn big data into useful insights for good, and the potential benefits of the data currently do not reach everyone."

The commission thus calls for responsible use of data as the key to achieving sustainable development, which presents both genuine opportunities and daunting challenges.

International Law Experts Warn Europe’s ‘Pull Back’ of Migrants is Illegal – Part 2

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This is the second part of our series about migration to Italy.

Even though fewer people are attempting irregular migration to Europe since the start of the year, the number of deaths that occur along the Mediterranean route has dramatically increased, according to International Organization for Migration (IOM) and Amnesty International estimates. Courtesy: International Organization for Migration (IOM)

ROME, Sep 10 2018 (IPS) - “The Italian and other European authorities are engaging – on the migration issue – in a policy which has the foreseeable results of numerous deaths.” It is a grim warning from expert on international law, refugees and migration issues, and member of the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), Itamar Mann.

In February 2017, Italy entered into an agreement with Libya to provide funds to Libyan authorities for the coordination of relief operations in the central Mediterranean. Since the agreement, the Libyan Coast Guard has returned migrants to Libya who attempted to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.

However, according to a recent Amnesty International report both “Italy and the European Union (EU) are bolstering their policy of supporting the Libyan Coast Guard to ensure it prevents departures and carries out interceptions of refugees and migrants on the high seas in order to pull them back to Libya. This is also contributing to rendering the central Mediterranean route more dangerous for refugees and migrants, and rescue at sea unreliable.”

When IPS asked Mann if he thought there was a direct link between the “pull back” of migrants intercepted in the Mediterranean and the increased number of migrant deaths, Mann described this policy as “killing by omission.”

Even though fewer people are attempting irregular migration to Europe since the start of the year, the number of deaths that occur along the Mediterranean route has dramatically increased, according to International Organization for Migration (IOM) and Amnesty International estimates.

According to Amnesty International:

• From January to July 2018, 1,111 people were reported dead or missing along the central Mediterranean route,

• The death rate among those attempting the crossing from Libya has surged to 1 in 16 in the period June-July, 2018,

• This was four times higher than the rate recorded from January-May 2018, which was 1 in 64.

Migrants arriving at Lampedusa, Italy in this picture dated 2011. Credit: Ilaria Vechi/IPS.

Moral responsibility lies not only with Italy, but Europe too

In May, GLAN filed an application against Italy with the European Court of Human Rights for a 2017 incident where the Libyan Coast Guard allegedly intervened in the rescue, by an non-governmental organisation, of a sinking dinghy. At least 20 people died, including two children, when the vessel sunk. But the Libyan Coast Guard is reported to have engaged in “pull back” and returned the survivors to Libya, where they reportedly endured detention in inhumane conditions and were beaten, starved and raped.

“While Italy retains legal responsibility, the process has been facilitated in multiple ways by the EU, and [therefore] the moral responsibility is not exclusively Italian.” -- Itamar Mann, Global Legal Action Network (GLAN).

According to Violeta Moreno-Lax, a senior lecturer in law from Queen Mary University of London, and legal advisor to GLAN: “The Italian authorities are outsourcing to Libya what they are prohibited from doing themselves. They are putting lives at risk and exposing migrants to extreme forms of ill-treatment by proxy, supporting and directing the action of the so-called Libyan Coast Guard.”

Mann, however, pointed out that, “while Italy retains legal responsibility, the process has been facilitated in multiple ways by the EU, and [therefore] the moral responsibility is not exclusively Italian.”
“The EU, for example, has tried to advance migrant processing centres in Libya, engaged in training of Libyan forces, and turned a blind eye to continued violations. So beyond the legal case, simply blaming Italy and ignoring the larger context would be misleading,” he told IPS via email.

The Italian government is expected to respond in due course to the legal papers.

Italy’s response to irregular migration

Italy’s stance on migrants has been reported previously. The country’s interior minister Matteo Salvini was reported by the Telegraph as saying his country would no longer be “the doormat of Europe” as it had been left to largely deal with the migrant crisis on its own. The newspaper reported that in May he had called for Italy’s coast guard and naval ships to be pulled back from patrolling the Mediterranean and brought closer to home.

There have been a number of other reported incidents of alleged “pull back”.

At the end of July, Italian authorities reportedly rescued migrants at sea and returned them to Libya. Also in July, the story of how migrants on the Italian coast guard ship, the Diciotti, were reportedly blocked from disembarking by the country’s ministry of interior generated much criticism and gave rise to a heated debate in Europe. The migrants were eventually allowed to disembark in Trapani, Sicily, after intervention by Italy’s president Sergio Mattarella. 

“The repatriation of refugees to Libya is illegal, as international law prohibits the transfer of people, who encounter distress at sea, to ‘unsafe havens,’” Benjamin Labudda, an expert on migration issues and housing conditions of refugees in the European context and a PhD Scientific Assistant at the Institute of Sociology of University of Muenster, told IPS.

‘Non-refoulement’, a well-known fundamental principle of international law, no country receiving asylum seekers can expel or return them to territories where their lives or freedom could be threatened on account of their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.

Concern for migrants sent back to Libya

Flavio Di Giacomo, spokesperson for IOM, told IPS he was also concerned about the return of migrants to Libya.

“If a boat is rescued in international waters and returned to Libya, we are facing a ‘pull back’. The fact that we are referring relief operations in international waters to Libya is ambiguous because the migrants would probably be taken to an unsafe port,” he said.

He said the issue should be kept under close observation, as according to international law migrants rescued at sea should not be returned to Libya, which was “not a safe harbour.”

“We must promote legality, through more residence permits and integration policies,” said Di Giacomo. “A simple closure would be misunderstood by the countries of origin of these migrants. They would only see ‘the rich Europe that sends back the poor Africans.’”

Labudda added that agreements for the distribution of refugees among EU countries must be institutionalised and enforced, as many countries still refuse to welcome refugees.
“A solution regarding the structure of a process of distribution has to be found as soon as possible in the upcoming months,” he added.

Inmate Mothers in Ukraine Raising Their Kids in Prison

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 JAMnews

BY 

MISHA FRIEDMAN

Image by Misha Friedman. Ukraine, 2018.

American photographer Misha Friedman visited 11 women’s penal colonies and jails in Ukraine to tell a photo story about women serving prison sentences with their children.

“Children stay with them until a maximum age of three years,” Friedman says. “Then the fate of the child and of the mother develops in different ways. Each case is different, depending on the sentence.”

Their life stories, the photographer says, are like no other, and reflect what is happening today in the Ukrainian institutions of the penitentiary system. Therefore, he chose them as the main characters of his new documentary project.

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Image by Misha Friedman. Ukraine, 2018.

“Each penal colony [in Ukraine] contains one ‘children’s cell,’ so in each colony they come up with their own way on how to keep mothers with children,” says Friedman.

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Image by Misha Friedman. Ukraine, 2018.

According to Ukrainian law, convicted women with children under three years of age can live with them in the colony. After reaching the age of three, children are taken either by relatives, or are given to orphanages.

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Image by Misha Friedman. Ukraine, 2018.

Women on good behavior with children under three years old can be allowed to live outside the colony. However, the authorities say that nobody has used this right yet, presumably because the convicts do not have the money to support themselves or their children.

5410ef82b7e4f064f2b29d36045c9454.jpg

Image by Misha Friedman. Ukraine, 2018.

Friedman says that of all the prisoners, he particularly remembers one mother. He photographed her closely, and she asked to take a portrait of her child.

“I asked – why? She said that her child will soon be three years old, so he will be taken away. But she will still be here for another nine years. She was (presumably – Ed.) serving time for murder."

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Image by Misha Friedman. Ukraine, 2018.

The photographer said that he was most of all surprised that almost no one visited the women:

“The number of visits to male prisons and detention centres is completely incommensurable with the women’s visits. Women are abandoned. It does not matter whether it is a first or repeated offense, a woman in prison is much more taboo and shameful for a family; she is an ‘abandoned thing.’”

a61fc10d99fe81c3e2b0a820e63d2481.jpg

Image by Misha Friedman. Ukraine, 2018.

Disinformation Is Spreading on WhatsApp in India—And It’s Getting Dangerous

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| The Atlantic

BY 

TIMOTHY MCLAUGHLIN

kerala-flood.jpg

Two men stand atop the ruins of a building destroyed by the floods in Kerala. [CC by 3.0] from Wikimedia Commons. Kerala, 2018.

Kerala was drowning. For over a week, rains had inundated the state, located in southwest India, causing widespread flooding and leading to the deaths of hundreds. Disturbingly, agents of disinformation saw the disaster as the perfect time to strike. Taking to Facebook and to WhatsApp, the Facebook-owned encrypted messaging platform, they disseminated false news of a dam on the verge of bursting, circulated a fake phone number for a navy rescue helicopter, and spread an erroneous claim that the Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo had donated $11 million dollars to relief efforts. The sheer volume of disinformation that spread during the floods and the subsequent rescue operations was so great that the Indian army asked the public to help identify people sharing disinformation. Kerala’s chief minister issued a warning that “strict measures” would be taken against “cyber offenders.”

Meanwhile, some 800 miles away in Mumbai, a TV in the newsroom at BOOM flashed with images of people in Kerala stranded on rooftops, surrounded by brown, murky water, awaiting rescue. BOOM is one of a handful of websites in India dedicated to the seemingly quixotic task of debunking junk science, doctored photos, and false rumors that spread on social media and messaging platforms. Creators of this content—politicians, nationalists, and pranksters among them—have found a captive audience in India’s voracious tech consumers. While some hoaxes are fairly harmless, others have had far more serious consequences, including a recent string of killings that have been fueled in part by rumors that spread through WhatsApp. “What you are seeing is a phenomenon that is unlike anywhere else in the world,” Govindraj Ethiraj, BOOM’s founder and editor, told me.

On the day I visited BOOM’s offices, Karen Rebelo, the site’s deputy editor, sat at her desk and coordinated efforts with reporters to create a list of verified videos of the flood. (She had just set aside a project to debunk a journalist’s claim about an extravagant art purchase by a politician’s wife.) BOOM’s methods, she admitted, aren’t exactly sophisticated: running reverse image searches to identify the origins of photos taken out of context, or digging up the archived versions of web pages that have been taken down. The other methods include basic reporting—calling police or government officials to confirm information.

BOOM’s ambitious efforts face considerable challenges. In 2017, India became the second-largest market in the world for smartphones. It now has around 300 to 400 million smartphone users, a number that is expected to grow to more than 800 million by 2021. In addition, the recent rise of cheap data and faster internet speeds has kicked off a boom in the app economy, as Deloitte noted in a recent report.

As smartphone use spread in India, so did WhatsApp: It has over 200 million users in the country, according to a company spokesman. Soon, it became more than just a simple peer-to-peer communications tool. Indians now use it to disseminate political campaign platforms, distribute news and public announcements, and promote businesses, turning it into something resembling a broadcasting and publishing platform. According to WhatsApp, users in India forward more messages, photos, and videos than in any other country in the world—making it the perfect breeding ground for disinformation.

Rohit Chopra, an expert in Hindu nationalism and new media at Santa Clara University, said Hindu nationalists and members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have quickly adapted to platforms like WhatsApp to push their own inflammatory propaganda. “The nature of the internet is that it is not subject to the same constraints as TV or print news. The Hindu right has recognized that and been proactive in using this space,” he told me. “This technology has unleashed and exposed some of the darker elements of Indian society.”

When Ethiraj, a veteran business journalist, founded BOOM in 2014, he conceived of it as an investigative website. As the site struggled to find an audience, Ethiraj grew alarmed at the sheer volume of dubious information appearing on Facebook that would eventually migrate to WhatsApp. Such content emerged from what he referred to as the “subterranean,” where the creators or first posters were unknown. “You could see the first early signs of ... the fake-news phenomenon. Obviously the elections in the United States in mid-2016 were a big trigger to our understanding of what was happening,” Ethiraj said. (He clarified that he used the term “fake news” to describe things that are actually fake.) “As 2017 progressed, you could see this was beginning to have impact … on people’s perceptions, opinions, feelings. All of that.”

To find stories to investigate, BOOM’s reporters spot posts and messages that are quickly picking up likes and shares. Some hoaxes—like a WhatsApp message claiming it could scan a phone user’s thumbprint and steal their biometric data—are easy to debunk. Others weave in true or partially true information, like a viral photo that claimed to show flood victims lining up to buy liquor. The photo itself was real, but the people pictured were waiting for fuel.

BOOM also relies heavily on a WhatsApp-based tip line to hunt down false news stories going viral. Through the tip line, people can submit content they’ve received or found online. It provides users a chance to ask if something they’ve read is true, and gives BOOM’s reporters another medium to distribute fact-checked, accurate content back to the public. Indians living overseas have even gotten involved, pinging the line with tips from as far off as Hong Kong and Germany. It has been such a success. “We take turns [manning the line] because it will drive you nuts,” Rebelo said.

Amid the overwhelming stream of potentially false stories, BOOM decides which ones to fact-check by asking, “What will happen if we don’t tackle it?” Rebelo said. Questionable content that could provoke actual physical harm takes precedence. In 2017, footage that circulated widely on WhatsApp claimed to show a small child being snatched by men on a motorbike. Searching on YouTube, Rebelo found its origin: a kidnapping-awareness campaign video created by a Pakistani charity, edited to remove a message warning parents to keep an eye on their children. It was a simple but effective means of distortion. Officials have linked this video to several instances of violence, including a spate of killings in Assam in early June. Police officers in Dhule also told me they believe this video played a role in the killings of five men there in July. The investigation is ongoing.

In May 2017, Rebelo published a piece debunking the video. Her story showed how the video that went viral was doctored. Yet as is often the case, her work did little to stop the video’s circulation online. In the spring, false reports spread through WhatsApp of child kidnappings, mainly in rural areas. Some of them used the exact video Rebelo fact-checked last year. The rumors often warned of outsiders traveling from town to town, searching for children to pluck off the streets. Images, including photos of children killed in the war in Syria, have circulated as well, providing a gruesome and false illustration of what supposedly happens to the abducted children. These reports have been linked to numerous incidents of mob violence and lynchings.

The Indian government does not track the number of deaths or acts of violence linked to false rumors that circulate on WhatsApp. But Brijesh Singh, the inspector general of Maharashtra’s state cyber-police division, estimated that around two dozen people have been killed nationwide since May. IndiaSpend, a sister site of BOOM, puts the figure at 33 deaths arising from 69 such incidents between January 2017 and July of this year.

In April, BOOM signed a deal with Facebook to serve as the company’s first-ever third-party fact-checking service. Through its deal with Facebook, BOOM reporters review articles and assign them accuracy ratings. Those found to be false should, in theory, show up less frequently in Facebook’s newsfeed. Rebelo and Ethiraj said that the fact-checking has appeared to slow the spread of false information on Facebook. But Rebelo admitted that “a lot of it is just feeling our way through.” (Facebook does not yet have data on the effectiveness of BOOM’s efforts.)

WhatsApp, which has worked with fact-checking sites in Mexico and Brazil, appears to be interested in pursuing a similar model in India before the country’s elections next year. It has also had initial conversations with BOOM about its work in India. But because WhatsApp is not a public platform and is encrypted, gauging the spread of false information and the effectiveness of fact-checking efforts is nearly impossible.

Rebelo said she would like to see tech companies take greater responsibility. “It’s their ecosystem at the end of the day,” she said. WhatsApp, for its part, has introduced a number of changes designed to limit forwarding and a tag that marks messages as “forwarded.” The thinking here: to get users to question the veracity of messages, rather than blindly forwarding them along. Greater digital literacy in parts of India where users are new to the internet and WhatsApp would help too, Rebelo said. But “sliced and diced” video clips and images can convince even the most seasoned internet user, Ethiraj said. “How do you make people aware that you should not believe what you see?” he asked.

As India’s 2019 elections approach, BOOM expects its already heavy workload to increase. Politicians and political parties are some of the worst “habitual disseminators of false information,” Ethiraj said. Parties have begun building teams for the specific purpose of pushing out a huge volume of propaganda and disinformation, Chopra said. These efforts ramp up in the months before elections. And with more people connected to WhatsApp than in previous elections, Ethiraj and his staff are bracing for an unprecedented amount of false news. He seemed stunned by how quickly and thoroughly misinformation has infiltrated the news ecosystem. “I don’t think in 2017 I could have seen how big it would become, at all,” he said.

While the problem is a global one, “the amount of noise we are creating on WhatsApp in India is absurd,” Chopra said. The daily deluge of false messages on the platform amounted to what he called a “colossal, Herculean level of bullshit.”