Pune Police urge people to 'break the chain of misinformation and fake news'; see post

In an attempt to curb the misinformation from spreading on the internet amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Pune police on August 18 shared a creative that urged people not to forward messages without first verifying its authenticity. In a witty Twitter post, the police shared an image that indicated “always verify before forward” using keypad symbols, with a hashtag #NoToFakeNews. The department’s official handle captioned the creative, saying, that people must at least take a minute to read and establish the factual accuracy of the information prior to sliding it to someone else’s phone or on social media. 

Advocating the need of spreading authentic information as a healthy practice in society, the Pune Police department appealed to the citizens to “break the chain” of ‘fake news’. With the advent of social media and Whatsapp, while it gets challenging to tell apart fact from fiction due to platform’s free speech and limited restrictions, the police forbade people from “thriving” that culture.  False information can have major repercussions in pointing people’s view about a certain burning scenario or idea of a situation, therefore, the department has been stressing on the need to “stay away” from augmented, manufactured, or falsified content. Especially amid the pandemic, as insecurities and fear loom large among the major population of the society. 

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The Internet acknowledged the importance of facts and appreciated the police’s post. “Absolutely! I would go ahead and say, do you really need to forward? Is it helping someone? Or it's just a point to discuss? If at all you want to forward, forward harmless jokes, entertainment clips - but forwarding news is dangerous, most of the time it is an opinion, not news,” a user wrote, agreeing to Pune Police. 

Forward validated information

Earlier, on August 14 in a similar nature of advisory, Pune police warned people against sharing “manufactured opinions” as “facts” on text messaging platform WhatsApp. In a Tweet titled as ‘What-A-Siyappa’, the department reminded citizens to adhere to forwarding only validated information and not circulate “lies”. As in India, the majority population connected via WhatsApp tends to fall in the trap of fake news forwarded among “personal chat groups” for the family, friends, and colleagues. There’s also the risk for the information to go viral in a very short period of time. 

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