Facebook Determines To Tackle Fake News Prior To Indian Election

At the time when India’s general election is about to begin, Facebook is working hard to prevent fake news from breaking. Some of the measures it intends to take are eliminating doubtful accounts and hiring a third party to go through and confirm all the facts shared.

Ahead of Indian election, Facebook is working hard to eliminate fake news

According to Samidh Chakrabarti, leader of Facebook’s Civic Engagement team, the company has been paying a lot of effort for two years to prepare for this India election. Facebook has associated with the local news houses to address false stories in both Hindi and English, as well as other languages used in the country. If a story is pinpointed as containing fake news, the number of times it appears on people’s newsfeed will be reduced to about 20%.

In 2016, Facebook was under fire over its failure to tackle fake stories in the US election, which has led to Mark Zuckerberg answering to the US Senate.

Other Facebook’s products are also targeted. WhatsApp faced a large amount of criticism in India for its failure to stop the junk news that had led to the death of over 20 people. The messaging app later reduced the number of people to whom a user can forward a message to 5 (the previous number was 256). This change was first applied in India only, but this year WhatsApp has decided to bring this policy to the world.

WhatsApp was under fire for indirectly trigger mob killing

Despite its potential harms, social media sites are being used more and more in India for political purposes. In 2014, the Bharatiya Janata Party made use of these platforms to improve its online presence and set advertisements.

The organization in charge of monitoring this year election has received a “Voluntary Code of Ethics for the General Elections 2019” from these social media companies. For Facebook alone, the company has increased its workforce in safety threefold to 30.000 people for the election of its biggest market.