Facebook Adds Five More Partners to its Fact Checking Programme in India

With ensuing general elections, the Indian government has warned social media platforms of strong action if any attempt was made to influence the country’s electoral process through undesirable means.

The government is also proposing to amend IT rules, wherein social media, online platforms and messaging apps will be made more accountable and be mandated to deploy tools to identify and curb unlawful content as well as follow stricter due diligence practices. Over the last few months, social media players like Facebook, Twitter and Google have promised to infuse more transparency into political advertisements on their platform, and have since announced a slew of measures as part of election integrity efforts.

Facebook and WhatsApp (also owned by the social media giant) have been facing the menace of rumours and fake news floating on their platforms. Both organisations have taken a number of steps, including sensitisation programmes among users across the country.

Since April last year, Facebook has been partnering various entities to bolster its efforts to clamp down on manipulated posts on its platform. It already counts BOOM and news agency, Agence France-Presse (AFP) as its partners.

Once a fact-checker rates a story as false, it is shown lower in News Feed that significantly reduces its distribution, the statement said adding that this “stops the hoax from spreading and reduces the number of people who see it”.

Besides, Pages and domains that repeatedly share false news will also see their distribution reduced and their ability to monetise and advertise removed – which helps curb the spread of financially-motivated false news. Facebook said that once a story is rated as false, the platform was able to reduce its distribution by 80%.