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WHATSAPP - SOCIAL MEDIA’S DARK WEB

Avaaz is ringing the alarm bell on the deluge of fake news and hateful memes on WhatsApp,
with a crowdsourced effort detecting hundreds of pieces of potential disinformation anda representative survey showing that about 9.6 million Spaniards received such content.
26/04/2019

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CONTENTS

31) Summary - What the report shows42) Scale - Almost 10 million reached63) Stories - 13 case studies84) Methodology - How the study was done

191SUMMARY - WHAT THE REPORT SHOWSThis report shows, for the first time, that Spaniards
using WhatsApp have been flooded withdisinformation and hateful memes ahead of theSpanish elections.
The content presented here was submitted by thousandsof Avaaz members from across Spain, and analyzed
by a team of Avaaz researchers and data analysts.
Posts range from fake news about Prime Minister
Pedro Sánchez signing a secret deal for Catalan
independence to conspiracy theories about migrants
receiving big cash payouts, propaganda against gay
people and an endless flood of hateful, sexist, racist
memes and outright lies.

This report shows clearly that WhatsApp’s response
to disinformation and manipulative content so far isinsufficient: More than one in four Spaniards have beenreached by posts that are false, misleading, hateful orpose a serious threat to healthy public discourse.
Therefore, Avaaz is calling on WhatsApp to implement
emergency measures ahead of the upcoming elections,both in Spain and the EU:

According to a new survey conducted for Avaaz by theSpanish pollster Metroscopia, this type of content iswidespread: 9.6 million potential voters in Spain(26.1%) have seen such false, misleading, racist or
hateful posts on WhatsApp. That is more than on
YouTube, Twitter and Instagram combined and almost as
much as on Facebook (27.7%).
And while Facebook and other platforms have received
much public scrutiny for the spread of disinformation,
Whatsapp has not yet drawn much attention in Europe,even though it is becoming the most popular messaging
platform for many, with over 89% of Spaniards using it.

1. Issue a disinformation warning to allusers in Spain and Europe, ensuring they areaware that WhatsApp is in part being misused toinfluence public opinion and informing them on
how to better protect themselves;
2. Implement an hourly forwarding limit,
in order to reduce the viral spread of toxic
disinformation. The current forwarding limit offive at a time is insufficient and can easily becircumvented by simply repeating the forwarding
action multiple times;
3. Provide a button for users to flag content
to trusted fact checkers and massively step up
efforts to tackle bad actors purposely spreading
such content.

The study shows
JJ Disinformation and hateful content has reached

up to 9.6M potential voters in Spain (26.1%), with
WhatsApp being the social network most used inSpain, according to a new Metroscopia survey.		

JJ The examples in this report, submitted by Avaaz

members in Spain, mainly fall into the following
categories:• 43% Anti-Left (Anti-Sánchez/Anti-Podemos/
Anti-Separatist and others), including posts
with unfounded allegations that Prime Minister
Pedro Sánchez made a secret deal with Catalonian
separatists, or fake news that he was hiding thefact that his grandfather fought alongside Franco.

• 10% Anti-LGBTQ/Anti-Feminist, for example,
a story claiming that Madrid Mayor Manuela
Carmena planned to set up open “sex zones”
for gay people around the city. In fact, Carmena
proposed to create a safe environment for LGBT
people in Madrid.
• 25% other false, misleading, racist, andhateful content (including anti-right)*, forexample, a vintage photo of a white child sitting
astride a black child on all fours nostalgicallyreferring to slavery.
• 8% that we deemed to be neither
disinformation nor hateful content, such as
parody.

• 14% Anti-immigration, for example a postclaiming that a recent migrant from Nigeria
receives more money than a pensioner evictedfrom his house by the Spanish state. The story
is made up, and the photos feature people fromentirely different contexts.

4We compiled these in the “other” category, as none of them alone would have reached a significant percentage (>5%).

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2SCALE - ALMOST 10M REACHED

To underpin the specific examples identified
and analyzed in this report and highlightthe scale of the crisis on WhatsApp, Avaaz
commissioned a public survey with Metroscopia,
a leading Spanish political polling institute.
The poll found that about 9.6 million voters(26.1% of a voting population of 36.8 million)
likely received political content through themessaging app that they considered false,
intentionally misleading, racist, or inciting hatredor violence. That is more than on YouTube(5.2%),Twitter (10.1%) and Instagram (5.2%)
combined and almost as much as on Facebook(27.7%). The poll also showed that almost nineout of 10 Spaniards (89.2%) are using Whatsapp,most of them every day.
Metroscopia conducted the fieldwork by phoneon April 22 and 23 with a representative sampleof 2,036 Spanish voters.(1)

9.6

MILLION
6SPANISH VOTERSHAVE LIKELY SEENDISINFORMATIONOR HATEFUL CONTENT
ON WHATSAPP(1) Full data of results here: https://secure.avaaz.org/WA_Poll_Metroscopia

WHATSAPP RIGHT BEHIND FACEBOOKWHEN IT COMES TO LIES AND HATE *27 7%.

26 1%.

10 1%.

5 2% 5 2%.

.

* = Percentage of Spaniards seen disinformation or hateful content on each of the platforms

89 2%.

OF SPANIARDS
USE WHATSAPP731

STORIES 13 CASE STUDIESThis chapter presents examples of some of the mostdisturbing items shared by Avaaz’s membership in Spain,
which our team deemed to be disinformation or hatefulcontent. For each item, we have included a descriptive
summary and a link to an independent fact-check. Manyof these items were forwarded to us multiple times,
but because WhatsApp is encrypted, it is impossible toindicate how far each specific item spread.

ANTI-LEFT

WHY IS PEDRO SÁNCHEZ HIDING THE LIFE OF HIS GRANDFATHER?
DESCRIPTION: This post claims that the leader of the Socialist party is deliberately hiding the life story of
his pro-Franco supporting grandfather.
TEXT ACCOMPANYING THE IMAGE: Here we have Lieutenant Colonel Castejón who fought with Franco
during the Civil War. This is also historical memory. Ah, and it’s Pedro Sánchez’s grandfather.
Why is Pedro Sánchez (PSOE) hiding the life of his grandfather? This one gave the coup d’état with Francoin 1936.
FACT-CHECKED BY Diario Critico: UNTRUE The man involved in the military coup, Lieutenant Colonel
Castejón Espinosa, was born in Manila, when the Philippines was still Spanish territory. But he has nothingto do with Sánchez’s grandfather, who was from Lorca, Murcia, and who was called Mateo Pérez-CastejónDíez.

8SÁNCHEZ’S SECRET DEAL WITH CATALAN SEPARATISTS
DESCRIPTION: Pedro Sánchez has agreed withpro-independence Catalan parties that in return for
their support to help him form a government he will
support the independence of Catalonia.
SUMMARY OF THE TEXT SHARED IN SPANISH(Full text in Annex): An accord between Sánchez
and pro-independence Catalan parties has been
negotiated secretly, and the media hasn’t been
covering it properly. The current Spanish PM isworking with the pro-independence Catalan parties
and has agreed to separation, and that Spanish
taxpayers would pay the cost. This is what to expectof Sánchez if he wins the election in April.
FACT-CHECKED BY La Vanguardia: UNTRUE The
Spanish government’s official position is that no newforums are opened to debate self-governance orindependence.

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THE COCAINE-SNIFFING PODEMOS AND PSOE ACTIVISTDESCRIPTION: This post claims to show Podemos and PSOE activist Vicki Donda snorting cocaine off amobile phone. It implies that this will be the future for Spain if PSOE and Podemos form a government.
TEXT ACCOMPANYING THE IMAGE (translated): Vicki Donda, activist and sympathizer of the feminist
movement of Podemos and PSOE. A good sign for Spain as they let more socialist leeches enter theinstitutions. Huge lines.
FACT-CHECKED BY Newtral: UNTRUE The image first appeared on Pinterest in 2016 and has continued tospread in various humorous groups, even crossing to Mexico and Argentina. The picture does not depict aPodemos activist. The same image with the name of Ana Roda from the Spanish party Ciudadanos has also
been shared. It does not depict her either, as confirmed by her party.

10ANTI-LGBT

2PICTURE OF THE PRIME MINISTER OF LUXEMBOURG WITH HIS PARTNER
DESCRIPTION: The picture claims to be of the prime minister of Luxembourg with his partner attending agala dinner. Xavier Vettel is Luxembourg’s first openly gay prime minister. The picture is a clear attempt toshock the reader because it shows a man wearing a dress, trading on anti-trans and anti-gay rhetoric.
TRANSLATED TEXT WITH THE IMAGE: “The Prime Minister of Luxembourg with his partner at a galadinner. THE END OF THE WORLD IS NEAR!”
ORIGINAL TEXT: El Primer Ministro de Luxemburgo y su pareja, en una cena de gala. ¡EL FIN DEL MUNDO
ESTÁ CERCA...!
FACT-CHECKED BY Maldito Bulo: UNTRUE
The photo depicts the Austrian singer and artist Conchita Wurst, in an evening gown, walking up the stairs
at the Vienna Opera Ball. The other people in the photo are not (and do not resemble) the prime minister of
Luxembourg or his husband.

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MADRID MAYOR CREATING OPEN-AIR SEX ZONES FOR GAYSDESCRIPTION: This story claims that the current mayor of Madrid will set up “sex zones” for gay people
around the city. These zones will be for gay people to have sex in public.
VERIFICATION BY Maldita Bulo: UNTRUE Madrid Mayor Manuela Carmena was talking about creating asafe environment for LGBTQ people in the city, not places where gay people could have sex in public. Hercabinet also denied that there were plans to create cruising zones.

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ANTI-IMMIGRATION

3MAGHREB MAN RECEIVES 1,800€ A MONTHDESCRIPTION: This piece of disinformation has been spread via a WhatsApp audio message. It claims thespeaker saw a client of North African or Middle Eastern origin in a bank receiving 1,800€ a month in socialwelfare payments.
TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO: Allegedly recorded at a bank where it is said that the client of North African origin
receives 1,800€ a month in social welfare for him and his three children.
FACT-CHECK BY Maldito Bulo: UNTRUE According to interviews with the Department of Labor, Social andFamily Affairs of the Catalan region these numbers are not accurate. A family of four (one adult and threechildren) would, at most, get 1,042€ a month.

13THE SPAIN OF PSOE AND PODEMOSDESCRIPTION: This post claims that a recent migrant to Spain from Nigeria receives more money than anelderly man evicted from his house by the Spanish state.
TEXT ACCOMPANYING THE IMAGE: Jorge: Spanish, Andaluz, 93 years old. Has worked all his life. Evictedfrom his house by the state. It has taken a year to find a public shelter.
Mohamed, Nigerian, 20 years old. Two (years) in Spain where he has not worked, neither during day nornight. The state has given him shelter these two years, a mobile phone and 30€ a day.
If you are indignant, share this!
FACT-CHECK BY Maldito Bulo: FAKE “Jorge” is in reality a 101-year-old Greek man named Konstantionos
Spanos, who appeared on CNN. “Mohamed” is a 27-year-old Nigerian who was caught for narcotics
trafficking in India.
The images circulated in Italy in February 2018 with almost exactly the same text. It was also debunked byButac.

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OPENLY RACIST OR HOMOPHOBIC

4“THOSE WERE REAL GIFTS!”
DESCRIPTION: This meme is expressing
nostalgia for the time when you could giveaway slaves as gifts.

WOMEN IN PHOTOSHOPPED CHAINSDESCRIPTION: The doctored image of a man “leading”
three chained women down the road is accompaniedwith the text “Here’s a man who must be respected
because what you see in the image is part of his
religion. Unlike Western men who are sexist andreactionary for giving roses to a woman.”
The original photo can be found here.

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HOMOSEXUALITY IS NOT NATURALDESCRIPTION: This homophobic post depicts a number of islands with a number of couples, concludingthat homosexuality is not natural and leads to human extinction.

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AND THIS...

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CAYETANA ÁLVAREZ DE TOLEDO MEETS “THE BLACK GUY FROM WHATSAPP”
DESCRIPTION: This photo of the People’s Party candidate forBarcelona, Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, famous for her longneck, has been altered here to make it resemble a widely-sharedmeme, known in Spain as “the black guy from WhatsApp.”UNIDAS PODEMOS (UNITED, WE CAN)DESCRIPTION: Explicit content shared after the name change of Podemos to “Unidas Podemos”.

17VOX LEADER ABASCAL WITH REVERSED MEGAPHONE
This photo shows Vox leader Santiago Abascal holding a megaphone backwards, pretending this is what heactually did at that event. The image is doctored. The original image can be found here.

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4METHODOLOGY HOW THE STUDY WAS DONE
Avaaz used a combination of crowdsourced submissions from its
members, data processing tools like Twilio and fact-checks by Spanish
media to arrive at what we believe is an insightful picture of the scaleand impact of fake news and hateful memes on WhatsApp in Spain.
JJ CONTENT SUBMISSION: This report is based on a crowdsourced project, joinedby 5,833 Avaaz members all over Spain. Members were invited to join the “AvaazWhatsapp Watch” and forward content received on their WhatsApp that they deemed
false, misleading or hateful to a specific phone number we set up.
JJ SCOPE: Ultimately, Avaaz received a total of 2,461 submissions, including over 992
unique media files and 1,469 text submissions. Our researchers and data analysts
were able to review, analyze and categorize 548 of those submissions in chronologicalorder. We examined the content flagged and limited our analysis to posts containing
text, images and videos.
JJ TIME FRAME: The project was launched on April 11, 2019. Data collection for thisreport ended 14 days later, on April 24, 2019.
JJ FACT-CHECKING: The highlighted pieces in this report were fact-checked using
information provided by well-established media outlets and fact-checking sites, mostly
from Spain, like El País or Maldito Bulo.
JJ CATEGORIES INCLUDED IN THE STUDY: The 13 selected pieces in this report aremostly malicious or factually incorrect posts. Other items submitted from Avaaz
members in Spain can be found in the Annex, that is available on request. Not all havebeen fact-checked or verified, but they do demonstrate the wide variety of purposely
misleading, partisan, racist, homophobic or offensive memes circulating on WhatsApp.
JJ VIEWERSHIP ESTIMATION: Although some of the images/texts have been shareddozens of times, we are unable to provide a detailed viewership estimation becauseof encryption in WhatsApp, which renders the platform difficult to analyze. Therefore,
we conducted a representative survey with Metroscopia, which shows that up to 9.6
million of the Spanish voting population (26.1%) say they have received such content.

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JJ METROSCOPIA SURVEY: The fieldwork for the WhatsApp survey was carried out by phoneon April 22 and 23 with a representative sample of 2,036 Spanish voters. (1)• 89.2% of Spaniards use WhatsApp: 79.6% every day; 8.6% several times a week; 1% several times amonth.
• 35.9% have received political content on WhatsApp in the last month: 11.6% often; 24.3% sometimes.
• 29.3% have received political content on WhatsApp that they consider potentially false, intentionally
misleading, racist, or inciting hatred or violence: 5.3% often; 24% sometimes.
- Extrapolated to the entire polling sample (including non-Whatsapp users), this represents 26.1% of
the Spanish voting population.
• Political content that users consider potentially false, intentionally misleading, racist, or inciting hatredor violence has also been received on other social media: 27.7% on Facebook; 10.1% on Twitter; 5.2% on
Youtube; 5.2% on Instagram.

JJ AVAAZ MEMBERSHIP IN SPAIN: Avaaz has a total of 706,645 members in Spain.
JJ ANNEX: Other items received from Avaaz members in Spain can be received uponrequest by journalists.

20(1) Full data of results here: https://secure.avaaz.org/WA_Poll_Metroscopia]

ABOUT AVAAZ
Avaaz is a global citizens’ movement with over 50 million
supporters worldwide, including 20 million in Europe and about
706,000 in Spain.
This study was carried out by a team of researchers and data analysts
set up by Avaaz to detect and debunk disinformation ahead of the EUelections.
Over the coming weeks, Avaaz members from across Europe will
work alongside this newly launched team to monitor disinformation
operations across the European Union and help identify fakenews, uncover the networks driving it and work with platforms
and governments to correct false or misleading content and holdperpetrators accountable.
Avaaz plans to produce other similar reports to inform the publicand decision makers about the spread of disinformation across thecontinent.						To schedule an interview with one of Avaaz’s campaign directors or
simply stay informed about further reports and investigations fromour team, please contact:						Andrew Legon: +447429865292 / andrew.legon@avaaz.org
Julie Deruy: +33676477259 / julie@avaaz.org

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