Overview
We’re excited to announce a major expansion to our capabilities: Open Measures now supports WhatsApp coverage, enabling analysts, academics, and security teams to tap into one of the world’s most influential messaging platforms.
With nearly 3 billion users worldwide, WhatsApp plays a pivotal role in organizing communities, shaping public opinion, and, all too often, hosting disinformation and facilitating cybercrime. Until now, much of this conversation has been out of reach for traditional social media research tools. That changes today.
WhatsApp is both an end-to-end encrypted messenger and also supports discussions via larger groups and channels. Because of the way WhatsApp has been adopted worldwide, often via “zero-ratings traps” where telecom companies strike deals with large platforms to provide unrestricted access to their apps, activity on the platform is projected to continue to proliferate – often at the expense of marginalized communities.
By incorporating WhatsApp coverage, Open Measures offers users the ability to contextualize:
- Coordinated influence operations
- Threats of physical violence and reputational harm
- Online harassment campaigns
Why We’re Paying Attention
Over the years, WhatsApp has been at the center of several high-impact cybercrime and information operations. Here are just a few examples that highlight why this coverage is so critical.
Fraud and Cybercrime
As we’ve previously reported, WhatsApp has facilitated criminal schemes like those carried out by the notorious Yahoo Boys. Using public groups/channels on messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram, the primarily West Africa-based network of fraudsters share tips and tricks to carry out romance scams. Additionally, in India, 10s of thousands of WhatsApp accounts have been blocked following an investigation into “arrest scams” where the victim is threatened with arrest unless they pay a large sum of money.
Health Misinformation
A 2024 paper explored medical misinformation commonly spread in Indonesia. Along with untested medical treatments for dengue fever like drinking raw papaya juice, messages on WhatsApp promoted religious offerings as a way to overcome illnesses. Further, in the early days of the pandemic, WhatsApp was flooded with messages claiming that drinking hot water, inhaling steam, or consuming garlic could cure COVID.
Coverage and Use Cases
Open Measures does not collect content from one to one chats and, instead, our user-directed coverage includes publicly available groups and channels. Our WhatsApp coverage will operate similarly to the way Telegram is covered. That means we’ve started with a seed number of channels/groups and then our community can dictate our coverage by adding groups to Crawl Requests.
WhatsApp collection empowers users across sectors:
- Universities can conduct qualitative and quantitative analysis in an era of shrinking API access for academic researchers.
- Cybersecurity teams can track social engineering threats, phishing attempts, and scam trends as they’re developing.
- Nonprofits/NGOs can monitor for early warning signs of medical misinformation, “climate hoax” narratives, and threats to democracy.
- Brands can get ahead of emerging false narratives that can affect reputation or customer trust.
Looking Ahead
As our team continues to expand our sources, WhatsApp coverage will become an even more powerful asset in your social media toolkit.
We believe transparency is essential in a digital world that’s increasingly fragmented and manipulated. We’re excited to launch WhatsApp to both Public and Enterprise users — helping researchers worldwide better understand, detect, and respond to on- and offline harms.
Identify online harms with the Open Measures platform.
Organizations use Open Measures every day to track trends related to networks of influence, coordinated harassment campaigns, and state-backed info ops. Click here to book a demo.