Meta Ropes In NewsMeter As 11th Third-Party Fact-Checker In India

Social media group Meta, which is facing regulatory heat in the country, has roped in South India focused NewsMeter as another third-party fact checker in India.

With this, Meta now has 11 fact-checkers in the country, the most across the globe. In a statement, the tech major said that the partnership will “help connect people to accurate and verified information, enhancing our fact-checking capabilities in regional Indian languages including Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Tamil”.

“The partnership with NewsMeter is an important step in enabling us to curb misinformation in regional Indian languages across Facebook and Instagram,” Meta India’s director and head of partnerships Manish Chopra said.

The platform’s fact checking initiative has also expanded its coverage to include other Indian languages such as Kashmiri (no clarity on whether the content will be moderated in Devanagari script or Nastaliq script or both), Bhojpuri and Oriya, apart from Nepali. In total, Meta now fact-checks content across 15 languages on its various social media platforms. 

According to Meta, the platform reduces the distribution and adds a warning label to any piece of content that is rated as ‘false’ by a fact-checker.

Move To Alleviate Govt’s Concerns

The move to add fact-checkers to its India initiative comes at a time when Facebook is under increased scrutiny over its reported failure to curb misinformation and fake news.

Earlier this year, the platform came under fire from government officials over the issue. Back then, authorities reportedly said that the firm’s inaction on fake news was forcing the government to order content takedowns. 

Later, the matter escalated to an extent where Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that the government was working to make social media platforms accountable, hinting at a stronger legislation to tame social media firms.

A week ago, it was reported that an internal study by Meta found that many women had shunned Facebook in India over male dominance and content related to nudity. 

In a snapshot of the overall situation, the latest monthly compliance report filed by Meta said that it took action against 21.6 Mn content pieces on its Facebook and Instagram platforms in just May.

Interestingly, revelations as part of the infamous Facebook Papers last year had revealed that Meta (then Facebook) had failed to deploy enough resources in the country’s 22 officially recognised languages and a lack of cultural sensitivity. 

While Meta promised measures to alleviate user concerns, nine months have elapsed since the disclosures. Addition of NewsMeter is the first addition to Meta’s third-party fact-checking initiative since then.

Despite that, lack of fact-checking staff in other local languages has also contributed to the growing controversy around the company. Meta maintains that it works with more than 80 fact-checking partners across the globe in more than 60 languages.