Here is why WhatsApp can't ignore India anymore

India is a very important country to us, and we're proud to have 200 million people who use WhatsApp to connect with their friends, family and communities," WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton said in February 2017. Acton was in India - at the time - and met Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad to talk about the ways WhatsApp could help empower people in the rural parts of the country, among other things. The crux of it all, however, revolved around digital India and how WhatsApp could contribute to the government's most sought-after initiative. India is the world's second largest Internet market, and WhatsApp has been well at home here. Which means, the instant messaging service has a bigger task at hand, now more than ever: WhatsApp can't afford to ignore India.

Things haven't started off on a good note for WhatsApp this year even as the instant messaging service was caught foot in mouth on New Year's Eve witnessing mass outage across the globe. Although, it was a global phenomenon, it wouldn't be wrong to say India was met with the biggest impact. It wouldn't be wrong to say India was (one of) the biggest contributor to the outage either, although, WhatsApp hasn't categorically mentioned a reason behind it. One of the probable - and major - reasons behind the outage could be server issues: too many people using the service, all at the same time. Both the reason and the impact are based on an obvious assumption: India is the largest market for the instant messaging service.
WhatsApp outages aren't new or surprising, especially in India. A lot of this has to do with India's vast diversity, and vivid culture. India is known for its festivals, and celebrations, and the greetings and wishes that follow. Now that SMS has been left to fend for itself, WhatsApp has invariably become the go-to service for Indians across the board. There are others like Hike and Telegram, but, WhatsApp, has somehow managed to become the King in the North. The reasons could be aplenty, but, no one has a definite clue how WhatsApp has become what it has become in so little a time. Which is why every WhatsApp outage becomes news in the country. And frequent outages mean, WhatsApp stays in the news, all the time.

WhatsApp outages aren't new or surprising, especially in India. A lot of this has to do with India's vast diversity, and vivid culture

Not once, however, has WhatsApp disclosed why it's simply unable to, meet India's growing messaging service demand. The service may come up and boast of the number of active users that it has piled up - and that's a good thing because services like Hike don't do that - but never ever does it come up and take the responsibility of messing up in its biggest market. Users may ceremoniously take to Twitter to run #WhatsAppisdown hashtags after every outage, but, the instant messaging service itself made its last tweet on Aug 23, 2016. Facebook, the owner of WhatsApp, publishes a full blog almost every time the service goes down in sharp contrast. Now, I am not saying that WhatsApp should also become an avid Tweeter, but then it's an Internet-based company, it's supposed to be a little more Internet savvy now, isn't it? The company, however, chose to inform the world (and apologize) about the recent outage through an e-mail statement sent out to select media houses. Even then, it did not give out a reason, why the messaging service was down.
While we're on outages and the lack of transparency - users often tend to know WhatsApp is down through social media channels initially thinking their Internet just went down - it's also imperative to ponder over some of the other issues that WhatsApp has become quite notorious for. Especially in India. Fake news is one. You can say, believing a rumor or gossip, is subjective and that WhatsApp can do little to help, but, actually it can make a world of difference. We already know that WhatsApp is one of the biggest sources for spreading of fake news and other misleading information in the country - heck there are television shows now that try to decode their authenticity - but we do not know (yet) about WhatsApp's explicit take and views on them.

India has given a tremendous user-base to WhatsApp, it's about time the company returns the favor

WhatsApp, earlier in August 2017, said it is exploring ways to check spread of fake news through its platform. Calling the issue as "complex" WhatsApp software engineer Alan Kao had said, "We definitely do not want to see fake news on our platform and it's a complex problem in determining what is fake and what isn't. Because of the encryption, we can't read the contents of the messages." Although, it has established that it is working on ways to "try and minimize" fake news, WhatsApp is yet to mete out any constructive solution. Although, it has also established that it has been educating users to check authenticity of content before sharing.
Also read: At midnight, Indians crashed WhatsApp for 1 hour with Happy New Year messages
Problem is end-to-end encryption, it says, which is fine because at the end of the day it's helping users - maintain their privacy -- as well. Again, I'd like to take it back to Facebook, that has been in the habit of publishing blogs "educating" users about the ill effects of false information and its rampant circulation. How WhatsApp is educating its users, I am not so sure about though.
While we're on fake news, spam is also one issue that plagues WhatsApp. So is the issue of unknown people adding you to groups that you have nothing to do with. The list is endless, and seemingly growing by the day. While I don't exactly doubt WhatsApp's intentions - I am an avid user as well, for the record - but, it's about time that it embraces the Internet now and use the medium to propagate a culture of shared responsibility. Especially in India. India has given a tremendous user-base to WhatsApp, it's about time the company returns the favor.