Introducing Open Measures WhatsApp Coverage
Insights from WhatsApp, one of the world's largest social media platforms, are now on Open Measures
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.
Background
WhatsApp is an end-to-end encrypted messenger that supports discussions via larger groups and channels and is being adopted worldwide. As part of a new trend among digital messaging apps, telecom companies and mobile network operators, have struck deals with Meta, WhatsApp’s parent company, to offer users relatively unlimited access to WhatsApp without counting time spent on the app against their overall data usage.
Zero-Rating Traps
Between telecom companies, online platforms, and users of both, these deals – often known as “zero-rating traps" – appear to be mutually beneficial. Offering users unlimited access to WhatsApp gives telecom companies that do so a competitive edge; meanwhile, WhatsApp gains dominant position in those markets (for users who can’t afford to pay for lots of data usage, WhatsApp becomes their entire internet).
For users, while this seems to democratize internet access, it also essentially “traps” lower-income and marginalized users in a walled garden – and since information shared on WhatsApp is often stripped of context, it can make them particularly susceptible to misinformation.
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 misinformation operations. Below are just a few examples that highlight why this coverage is so critical:
Fraud and Cybercrime
As we’ve previously reported, WhatsApp has been used for 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, tens of thousands of WhatsApp accounts have been blocked following an investigation into “arrest scams,” where victims are threatened that they will be arrested 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 (similar to misinformation about seawater targeting Spanish-speaking users on Telegram).
Coverage and Use Cases
Open Measures does not collect content from one-to-one chats; instead, our user-directed coverage includes publicly available groups and channels. Our approach to WhatsApp coverage is similar to our Telegram coverage: We’ve started with a number of “seed” channels and groups, and we’ll rely on our community to dictate how we expand our coverage by adding groups via our 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 users’ 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 – to help 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.