Facebook grows fact-checking network in India; adds five new partners

NEW DELHI, Feb 11: Facebook India on Monday announced that it has added five new partners in the third-party fact-checking programme and has expanded it to three new languages.
Starting Monday, India Today Group, Vishvas.news, Factly, Newsmobile and Fact Crescendo — all of whom are certified through a non-partisan International Fact-Checking Network — will review news stories on Facebook for facts, and rate their accuracy.
The existing partners of the programme are BOOM Live and AFP in languages including English,
Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Malayalam and Marathi.
Facebook India News Partnership Head Manish Khanduri said when a fact-checker rates a story as false, the Facebook India show it lower in News Feed, significantly reducing its distribution. This stops the hoax from spreading and reduces the number of people who see it.
Pages and domains that repeatedly share false news will also see their distribution reduced and their ability to monetize and advertise removed. This helps curb the spread of financially motivated false news.
In our past experience, once a story is rated as false, we have been able to reduce its distribution by 80 per cent.
We are committed to fighting the spread of false news on Facebook, especially ahead of the 2019 General Election campaign season. And one way to do that is by growing our partnership with third-party fact-checkers. We now have seven partners across the country covering six languages, who will review and rate the accuracy of stories on Facebook,” he added.

(UNI)

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