WhatsApp Communities Will Make It Easier To Spread Misinformation, Critics Say

“It works like a pyramid,” said Nemer, whose research focuses on Bolsonarism, misinformation, and social media, and the “human infrastructure” behind the political misinformation that spreads through WhatsApp. “At the top, you have people who generate misinformation. In the middle, you have Bolsonaro’s supporters who work like a swarm of bees to spread misinformation on the platform. At the bottom, the average Brazilian is in the misinformed group this is done, and then it spreads to other groups that are there.

The community, Nemer feared, would make it easier for those at the top to manage that network of misinformation.

Experts like Nemer should be worried. When WhatsApp announced in April that it would not launch the feature until the end of the year, Bolsonaro was reportedly angry that the company did not launch it immediately. In July, Brazil’s federal prosecutors reportedly asked the company to delay its launch until after the country’s October elections to avoid the spread of fake news and misinformation.

WhatsApp finally launched the feature four days after Bolsonaro’s defeat. When BuzzFeed News asked if Meta had waited until after the election to launch Community, a WhatsApp spokesperson simply replied, “No.”

After this story was published, a WhatsApp spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that the feature is not yet available in Brazil and won’t be until January.

Over the years, WhatsApp has built fences to reduce the spread of misinformation on the platform, such as clearly labeling forwarded messages, sources of misinformation, and limiting forwarded messages to only five groups at a time. Now, the company created an additional restriction: People can only forward forwarded messages to only one group at a time, instead of five.

“We believe this will reduce the spread of potentially harmful misinformation within community groups,” a WhatsApp spokesperson told BuzzFeed News.

Still, Nemer was skeptical. “The idea — to have a group of groups — is great,” he said. “But what’s the point of the forward limit if you can now send anything to a single Announcement group and still reach more people than if you sent one forward to a single group?”