Facebook India Pushes Fact-Checking Ahead Of General Election 2019

On Monday, Facebook announced that it has expanded its fact-checking program by third parties in India, partnering with additional names such as Fact Crescendo, Factly, and India Today Group. This action is towards the aim to fight the spread of fake news on the network as preparing for this year election.

The social network has not only reviewed articles but also provided checkers with tools for reviewing images and videos so that it can identify and address more kinds of misinformation.

According to a statement from the company, besides the names above, Vishvas.news and Newsmobile will also join hands in reviewing news stories on the platform for facts, as well as rating their accuracy. Additionally, this fact-checking program will be applied to Hindi, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali, Malayalam, and English.

Head of Facebook India News Partnership, Manish Khanduri stated that the company is committed to combatting misinformation, especially when the campaign season of 2019 General Election is coming. To do that, Facebook is collaborating with third-party fact-checkers throughout the country, reviewing posts in six languages.

When a fact-checker marks a story as false, it will appear lower in News Feed which helps limit its distribution, which means fewer people would see that story. Also, domains and pages sharing fake news many times will also get lower distribution as well as lose their ability to advertise and monetize. This, hopefully, will help combat the spread of financially-motivated fake news.

People waiting in line to vote

Plus, Khanduri stressed that these moves are just a part of its long-term commitment as bad actors never repeat the same old tricks. Considering that, while short-term actions are taken, it’s critical to invest in partnerships, stay ahead of new kinds of misinformation.

In preparation for general elections, social networks have received warnings from the Indian government of strong measures in case of attempts to affect the electoral process on bad purposes.

Meanwhile, the government is requesting to adjust IT rules by increasing the accountability of messaging apps, online platforms, social media as well as forcing them to use tools for detecting, curbing unlawful content, and following stricter due diligence practices. During the past few months, Google, Facebook, and Twitter have pledged to make political ads on their platforms more transparent; since then, they have announced a lot of measures for election integrity.