WhatsApp is a popular chat application used by over 2 billion users worldwide. However, due to end-to-end encryption, there is currently no easy way to fact-check content on WhatsApp at scale. In this paper, we analyze the usefulness of a crowd-sourced system on WhatsApp through which users can submit "tips" containing messages they want fact-checked. We compare the tips sent to a WhatsApp tipline run during the 2019 Indian national elections with the messages circulating in large, public groups on WhatsApp and other social media platforms during the same period. We find that tiplines are a very useful lens into WhatsApp conversations: a significant fraction of messages and images sent to the tipline match with the content being shared on public WhatsApp groups and other social media. Our analysis also shows that tiplines cover the most popular content well, and a majority of such content is often shared to the tipline before appearing in large, public WhatsApp groups. Overall, the analysis suggests tiplines can be an effective source for discovering content to fact-check.

中文翻译：

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打击加密平台错误信息的提示：2019 年印度大选 WhatsApp 案例研究

WhatsApp 是全球超过 20 亿用户使用的流行聊天应用程序。然而，由于端到端加密，目前没有简单的方法可以在 WhatsApp 上大规模地检查内容。在本文中，我们分析了 WhatsApp 上的众包系统的实用性，用户可以通过该系统提交包含他们想要进行事实检查的消息的“提示”。我们将 2019 年印度全国大选期间发送到 WhatsApp 提示线的提示与同期在 WhatsApp 和其他社交媒体平台上的大型公共团体中传播的消息进行比较。我们发现提示线是 WhatsApp 对话的一个非常有用的镜头：发送到提示线的很大一部分消息和图像与在公共 WhatsApp 群组和其他社交媒体上共享的内容相匹配。我们的分析还表明，提示线很好地涵盖了最受欢迎的内容，并且大多数此类内容通常在出现在大型公共 WhatsApp 群组之前先分享到提示线。总体而言，分析表明提示线可以成为发现内容以进行事实核查的有效来源。