Nidhi,* a 26-year-old from India's capital, New Delhi, was once very close to her uncle. But after he started forwarding anti-Muslim messages containing misinformation in their family's group chat, their relationship soured.

They always got into healthy political debates during family dinners, but his posts on WhatsApp were becoming "intolerable," she said.

"He would forward what was clearly false information, twisted historical facts to fit a certain kind of propaganda," she told DW.

Nidhi said her uncle never showed any open hate toward Muslims, but on WhatsApp, it was a different story.

"Some of us would call him out for it and fact-check him. But that seemed to make no difference. He once sent a message calling people from the Muslim community 'infiltrators' and that was it for me."

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Nidhi said she exited the family group chat and has not reconciled with her uncle since.

"He was someone I respected a lot, but it's difficult to do that now in person because of how he was online," she said.

Another young Indian, 19-year-old Armaan* from Mumbai, was thrown out of his family group chat for pointing out disinformation. He said family fights sparked by WhatsApp messages began to affect him mentally.

"The chats had become toxic. I was exposed to them almost daily and that made me feel a lot of anger," he said.

"There would be messages signed with the line 'forwarded as received.' If you didn't fully trust the information yourself why would you send it ahead? Sometimes the messages would also be suffixed by a long list of names to show that these many people had given their assent to the authenticity of the information and therefore it was bound to be true, when in reality it was almost always fake," he said.

India is WhatsApp's largest........

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