WhatsApp suggests a cure for virality

PRIESTS, teachers and parents have for generations advised their wards to think twice before speaking, to count to ten when angry and to get a good night’s sleep before making big decisions. Social networks care little for second thoughts. Services such as Facebook and Twitter are built to maximise “virality”, making it irresistible to share, like and retweet things. They are getting better at it: fully half of the 40 most-retweeted tweets date from January last year.When sneezing pandas and dancing cockatoos sweep the internet, no harm is done. But viral content can have grave consequences. In the 2016 presidential election, Americans spread divisive posts that had been planted on Facebook by Russian troublemakers; the social network reckons that about 40% of Americans saw at least one of them. Virality can cost lives. At least two dozen innocent people have been lynched in India this year after bogus rumours warning of child abductors went viral on WhatsApp, a messaging service owned by Facebook. WhatsApp has also been used by political operatives in India, its largest market, to stoke religious and nationalist fury.