WhatsApp had announced its partnership with Google Drive back in August
WhatsApp - the world's most popular instant messaging app - confirmed its prior announcement that, as of Monday, November 12, Android users who have not backed up their data and chats on Google Drive for over a year will lose their older backups.
Owned by tech giant Facebook, WhatsApp had reached an agreement with Google last August to store user content on the Google Drive cloud storage service without the backup affecting the user's Google Drive storage quota. This will also allow users to easily reload their data on different or new Android smartphones.
WhatsApp had warned that starting November 12, any backups that hadn't been updated in over a year will be automatically removed from Google Drive storage. Android users can update their copy and configure its update frequency as long as they have a personal account on Google.
WhatsApp on Tuesday announced that it has selected 20 research teams worldwide - including experts from India and those of Indian origin - who will work towards how misinformation spreads and what additional steps the mobile messaging platform could take to curb fake news.
Shakuntala Banaji from London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), Anushi Agrawal and Nihal Passanha from Bengaluru-based media and arts collective "Maraa" and Ramnath Bhat from LSE have been selected for the paper titled "WhatsApp Vigilantes? WhatsApp messages and mob violence in India".
The research examines the ways in which WhatsApp users understand and find solutions to the spate of "WhatsApp lynchings" that has killed over 30 people so far.
Written with inputs from IANS
We discussed what WhatsApp absolutely needs to do in 2019, on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below.
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