By Waliu Adeyeri
It is a sober Sunday in the ancient city of Owo, Ondo State, as ‘UNKNOWN GUN MEN’ attacked the St Francis Catholic Church, Owa-luwa in Owo.
Although the number of casualties is yet to be ascertained, reports have shown it as another successful mayhem unleashed on Nigerians in the country. In the words of the governor of the State, Governor Oluwarotimi Akeredolu,
“It is a black Sunday in Owo. Our hearts are heavy. Our peace and tranquility have been attacked by the enemies of the people. This is a personal loss, an attack on our dear state…”
Like other attacks in the country, the news of the massacre went viral with people sharing the gory scenes of the video on social media platforms.
Unlike other platforms like Twitter which would not show the content except if the users agree to watch the sensitive video, WhatsApp shows what you want to see and what you don’t want to see.
WhatsApp is found wanton of allowing users to post sensitive gory images of massacres, child pornography, etc. without considering the discretion of their viewers on their contact list.
Unlike the multimedia messages sent as personal messages, which receivers may decide to download or not, users with a good mobile network can not choose what to see on their status while they are seeing other persons’ statuses, the status update could show next abruptly.
If not for everyone, please for some Nigerians, let there be a filtering option to limit sensitive content sharing on WhatsApp.
WhatsApp is a popular social messaging application that allows users to send and receive multimedia messages on their mobile phones or PCs. The users could share status (thoughts, pictures, videos) for users whose contacts are saved on their contact list to see.
The WhatsApp technical team could do more by creating a filter feature to prevent the viewing of sensitive videos without breeching users’ privacy protocol.
Waliu Adeyeri writes from Ikorodu
