What's Up with Whatsapp?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 6 August 2018
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The developing world's favourite chat app is accused of spreading malicious rumours. In India the rumours led to the lynching of people falsely accused of child abduction, while in Uganda the government has introduced a controversial tax on social media platforms to stop alleged political gossip.
Ed Butler visits Kampala where he discovers how popular the app is, both for socialising and for business. Meanwhile Rahul Tandon reports from Kolkata on the unnervingly fast spread of the app across India. Plus Samantha Bradshaw of the Oxford Internet Institute explains what makes Whatsapp particularly well suited for lower income countries.
(Picture: Ugandan woman with painted nails using a cell phone; Credit: Godong/UIG via Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Ed Butler and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:08.7 | Today, the social media platform that's transforming business in India. |
| 0:14.0 | You'll find even a pan-vala using a WhatsApp, a wholesaler, to the biggest shot in the corporate world. |
| 0:21.1 | Everybody's on WhatsApp. |
| 0:22.3 | But with WhatsApp's rise in India and around the world, |
| 0:25.2 | so comes government efforts to control this and other social media. |
| 0:29.5 | Through censorship, taxation. |
| 0:31.6 | Some users are angry. |
| 0:32.6 | You see, our government these days, it's ignorant about we people, the poor one. |
| 0:39.1 | I'm no longer using WhatsApp, Facebook. |
| 0:41.7 | That's a lot of money. |
| 0:43.2 | Communication, misinformation. |
| 0:45.4 | Can WhatsApp and other platforms remain free, business daily from the BBC? |
| 0:52.3 | It's been a big few days in the debate over what some people like to call fake news. |
| 0:58.7 | Facebook has detected coordinated inauthentic behaviour to use its particular jargon on this area |
| 1:05.0 | ahead of the US midterm elections. On Tuesday, the social network removed 32 pages and accounts, no less, |
| 1:12.0 | from Facebook and Instagram. Some American lawmakers are now threatening further sanctions against |
| 1:16.3 | Russia for what they reckon is its responsibility. But of course, Facebook isn't the only |
| 1:21.8 | platform in play here. There is Twitter as well, fueling rage and rumor, and in many |
| 1:26.8 | countries, WhatsApp has emerged |
| 1:28.9 | as a platform of choice for millions of ordinary citizens. It's not just for news and gossip, |
| 1:34.9 | but for business too. We're going to be looking at all of that in just a moment. But first, |
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