Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, revealed on Tuesday that it is expanding its third-party fact-checking programme in India to include NewsMeter, a fact-checker largely focused on the southern states of the nation, various media outlets reported.
According to a statement from the company, the partnership would improve Meta’s fact-checking capabilities in regional Indian languages including Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, and Tamil as well as connect individuals to reliable and accurate information.
Meta works with more than 80 fact-checking partners internationally who review and rate content in more than 60 languages. The independent, nonpartisan International Fact-Checking Network has approved all of Meta’s fact-checking partners.
The new partnership would give Meta 11 fact-checking partners in India, making it the nation with the most such partners internationally.
Through its current fact-checking partners, Meta has also increased the number of Indian languages it supports from 11 to 15, including Kashmiri, Bhojpuri, Oriya, and Nepali.
Manish Chopra, Director, and Head of Partnerships, India at Meta, said in a statement, “We are committed to combating the spread of misinformation and have built the largest global fact-checking network.”
The partnership with NewsMeter, he continued, “is an important step in enabling us to curb misinformation in regional Indian languages across Facebook and Instagram.”
The company reduces a piece of content’s distribution so that fewer people see it each time a fact-checker deems it to be false, altered, or partially false.
Additionally, it informs users who attempt to share the content or who have already shared it that the information has been fact-checked. Further, a warning label is also added to the content with links to the fact-checker’s article to provide more information about the claim.
Meta has also partnered with with the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) to fund a fact-checking news fellowship programme that is only available to Indian news organisations, in an effort to combat the issue of misinformation online.
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The Chenab Times News Desk
