Brazil Asks WhatsApp to Delay 'Communities' Launch to 2023
The Ministério Público Federal (MPF) has asked(Opens in a new window) WhatsApp not to launch its Communities feature in Brazil until 2023 due to concerns about it being used to spread misinformation.
Brazil will hold its general election—which determines the next President, Vice President, and National Congress as well as other political leaders—on Oct. 2. That means it's critical for the Brazilian government to combat the spread of misinformation and disinformation in the country.
That's where Communities comes in. WhatsApp announced the feature, which allows organizations to collect otherwise disparate group chats into a single place, in April. The feature is supposed to launch this year, but MPF wants it to be held back in Brazil until next January.
The ministry says that Communities "can come against efficient measures that the platform itself has adopted in recent years to contain the spread of fake news." (Emphasis theirs.) MPF says it's particularly concerned by the ability for administrators to message everyone in a Community.
MPF says (translated from the original Portuguese):
As the recommendation points out, when Communities are implemented, their administrators will be able to send messages to up to 2,560 people at once, which will represent a ten-fold increase in the limit of initial message sendings currently in force on the platform. And if the maximum size of each group actually doubles, these initial submissions will grow even more, reaching up to 5,120 people at once. With this, there would be an increase in the capacity for content to viralize on WhatsApp, which could negatively affect your current policy of combating misinformation.
WhatsApp didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
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