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This research presents the first comprehensive analysis of problematic content circulation on WhatsApp, focusing on private group messages during the national election in India. Through a large-scale data donation program, we obtained a representative sample of users from Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state with over 200 million inhabitants. This extensive dataset allowed us to examine the prevalence of misinformation, political propaganda, AI-generated content, and hate speech across thousands of users. Our findings reveal a significant presence of political content, with two concerning trends emerging: widespread circulation of previously debunked misinformation and targeted hate speech. While AI-generated content was minimal, the persistence of debunked misinformation suggests serious limitations in the reach and effectiveness of fact-checking efforts within these private groups.

This study makes several key contributions. First, we develop and deploy a bottom up, opt-in data donation model at scale, potentially providing methods that generalize to other social media platforms. Second, we develop innovative and practical strategies to sample and collect representative samples from social media by combining field work and digital tools. Third, we provide unprecedented quantitative insights into everyday WhatsApp usage patterns and content sharing behaviour's. The implications of our research extend beyond WhatsApp, offering valuable insights for developing effective content moderation policies across encrypted communication channels. Our data collection approach can be adapted for studying other platforms, particularly crucial in an environment where API access is increasingly restricted.

Kiran Garimella is an assistant professor in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers. Prior to joining Rutgers, Garimella was the Michael Hammer postdoc at the Institute for Data, Systems and Society at MIT and a postdoc at EPFL, Switzerland. His research focuses on using digital data for social good, including areas like polarization, misinformation and human migration. His work on studying and mitigating polarization on social media won the best paper awards at top computer science conferences. Kiran received his Ph.D. in computer science at Aalto University, Finland, and Masters & Bachelors from IIIT Hyderabad, India. Prior to his Ph.D., he worked as a Research Engineer at Yahoo Research, Barcelona, and QCRI, Doha.

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