photos and rumours spread on social media. A number of social media platforms and the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) released a Voluntary Code of Ethics in March 2019, outlining how the Election Commission of India can notify platforms to remove content (Freedom House, 2019). Given its importance to Indian politics and everyday life, WhatsApp has received the most public criticism. Following the rumours spread on WhatsApp, the Indian IT ministry issued several warnings, stating irresponsible messages were not being “addressed adequately by WhatsApp”, and that in the absence of adequate checks, WhatsApp would be considered an “abettor” of rumour propagation and subject to legal consequences (BloombergQuint, 2018). In response, WhatsApp added a ‘forwarded’ tag to messages, limited to five the number of times a message can be forwarded, and launched an advertisement campaign giving “easy tips” to spot fake news (Waterson, 2018). Restrictions have proved ineffective, and technical tools to circumvent these restrictions are advertised to campaigners—such as one charging a fee of 0.04 rupees ($0.0005) per message per individual, to allow a message to be forwarded thousands of times (Gilbert, 2019). The day following the Kashmir terrorist attack, India’s Central Reserve Police Force set up a team of twelve soldiers to fact-check social media posts (Bagri, 2019). Army Chief General Bipin Rawat said that “Our adversary will utilise social media for psychological warfare. We must also leverage social media to our advantage” (Gurung, 2018). Given the heightened tensions with Pakistan following the Kashmir attack, the Indian army is now considering how to use social media to its strategic advantage. Battling disinformation is particularly difficult in India: dozens of languages make both automated and human moderation difficult, and the use of end-to-end encryption by WhatsApp restricts the platform’s ability to counter disinformation. Alt News even found that two of Facebook’s media partners, India Today Group and Jagran Media Network, published false information about the Kashmir attack (Goel & Frenkel, 2019). This demonstrates the difficulty in countering disinformation, and that such efforts are carried outagainst ingrained and institutionalized practices. References AFP India. (2019a, February 18). No, this is not a photo of Indian politician Rahul Gandhi with the perpetrator of a deadly suicide attack in Kashmir. AFP Fact Check. https://factcheck.afp.com/no-not-photo-indian-politician-rahul-gandhi-perpetrator-deadlysuicide-attack-kashmir AFP India. (2019b, February 26). No, these videos do not show Indian, Pakistani warplanes in Kashmir. AFP Fact Check. https://factcheck.afp.com/no-these-videos-do-not-showindian-pakistani-warplanes-kashmir Amnesty International. (2020). Trolling Verified: Troll Patrol India’s Findings On Online Abuse. Amnesty International. https://amnesty.org.in/trolling-verified-troll-patrol-indiasfindings-on-online-abuse-twitter/ Bagri, N. T. (2019, March 15). When India and Pakistan clashed, fake news won. LA Times. https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-india-pakistan-fake-news-20190315-story.html Bansal, S. (2019, January 27). Narendra Modi App Has A Fake News Problem. HuffPost India. https://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/narendra-modi-app-has-a-fake-newsproblem_in_5c4d5c86e4b0287e5b8b6d52 183