Was the Signal app developed by a poor villager’s son from Uttar Pradesh? Did the app receive awards from NASA and UNESCO? Is WhatsApp Closing Store?
These and several other claims are making the rounds on social media days after WhatsApp updated its privacy policy and switched to Signal with many Indians as a safer alternative. Signal is a platform-encrypted messaging service that uses the Internet to send messages, images, and videos.
A boy from a poor Uttar Pradesh village who passed with a gold medal from IIT created an app called Signal. The app has been awarded as the best new app of 2021 by NASA and UNESCO because it is the first app ever to use code from Sanskrit to create the app “, says part of the long claim.
WhatsApp will also be shut down in six months because their servers cannot handle the traffic of Good Morning Messages sent in India. Download Signal to send Good Morning Messages to your neighbor. Send this message to 10 contacts and win ? 500 proof of purchase from Flipkart, “reads the claim further.
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) found that the entire message was initially posted on Reddit as satire, which was later recorded by many social media users who considered it to be true.
The archived versions of similar posts can be seen here, here and here. Let us now discuss each point raised in the viral message.
Who created Signal?
According to reports, Signal is being developed by Signal Foundation, a non-profit organization founded in 2018 by American programmer Brian Acton, in collaboration with another American, Moxie Marlinspike of Open Whisper Systems.
The list of management members of the app also mentions Meredith Whittaker, except for Acton and Marlinspike, but there is no mention of any Indian in the team.
Close WhatsApp?
We could not find any reliable report on the closure of WhatsApp.
In fact, when WhatsApp updated its privacy policy Will Cathcart shared a series of tweets on January 9 highlighting how it will try to secure the privacy of users even in the future.
“We are proud of the service we offer, and we will continue to develop technology and practices to provide private, secure communications to as many people as possible. That’s why we are so committed to end-to-end coding, and why “We will continue to improve the privacy of WhatsApp, as we did with the launch of Disappearing Messages in November. Our innovation on privacy will continue,” Cathcart tweeted.
NASA, UNESCO Sanskrit coding awards?
AFWA reached out to Anil Rachamalla, an expert on internet ethics and digital well-being, who confirmed that the claim about Sanskrit coding was false.
“The claim that Sanskrit was used to encode Signal application is untrue. Signal codes are available on GitHub in open source; anyone can visit and view the codes. To my knowledge no Sanskrit encryption application has been developed so far , “said Rachamalla. said.
When we checked GitHub, we noticed that there is no mention of Sanskrit in the list of programming languages used to encode Signal.
According to ‘transifex’ which locates languages for Signal, up to 117 languages are used by the application to locate content in Android, Desktop and iOS. However, we could not find Sankrit on this list either. According to the website, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi and Telugu are the only Indian languages used to translate the original code into English.
Nor did NASA or UNESCO offer an award for the “Best New App” as stated in the viral claim.
A satire post that is taken seriously
A keyword search on the internet reveals an article from ‘Mint Lounge’, which says that it was a Reddit user ‘i_Killed_Reddit’ who started the viral message to get more followers from India.
The journalist Meghnad S also has the viral claim on its verified Twitter handle, along with the link to the message posted by “i_Killed_Reddit”. “Here is the origin of this ingenious work of satire,” he wrote.
On Reddit, however, we found that the message was marked as ‘Satire’ by the social media platform. Before ‘i_Killed_Reddit’ started with the viral message, he also wrote a text that should clear up any ambiguities regarding the claim.
“We need as many Indians to download Signal as possible. The only way Indian Unkills will start using it is if there is a touch of proud Indian feeling. Please copy and send the message below on WhatsApp to all Indian Unkills, “which in turn will spread the message. You can also add more points to make it more personal,” the user wrote.
After that, we reached out to the Reddit user, who confirmed to us on condition of anonymity that the message had been posted as a satirical piece.
“The post was made sarcastically by me on January 10. It was posted on r / India and r / UnitedStatesOfIndia. The post about r / India was removed later that evening due to worrying information. But it was later reinstated and as satire marked., “the user told AFWA.
ClaimThe Signal app was developed by the son of a poor villager from Uttar Pradesh. It was awarded by NASA and UNESCO for Sanskrit coding. ClosureSignal is founded by two Americans, Brian Acton and Moxie Marlinspike. No Sanskrit coding was used in the app.
JHOOTH BOLE KAUVA KAATE
The number of crows determines the intensity of the lie.
- 1 Crow: Half true
- 2 crows: mostly lies
- 3 crows: absolutely false
