Facebook selects new partner for health fact checks in India

Facebook on Wednesday joined hands with The Healthy Indian Project THIP a health specialised factchecking site as part of its thirdparty factchecking programme in India to combat Covid19 and all other health related misinformation on the social media platformDuring the pandemic Facebook removed more than 18 million pieces of harmful misinformation across its platform and Instagram and labelled over 167 million fake news posts on Covid19 with the help of thirdparty factcheckersThe partnership with THIP will enhance its capabilities to understand and curb healthrelated misinformation on the platform the social media giant said in a statementTHIP Media works with verified medical professionals to fact check misleading news and claims about health medicines diet and treatment in English Hindi Bengali Punjabi and GujaratiAlso read Facebook launches new initiative to help children be safe onlineGlobally Facebook is working with 80 factchecking partners that help in content monitoring in more than 60 languages Facebooks factchecking partners have been certified through the independent nonpartisan International FactChecking NetworkIn India Facebook has 10 factchecking partners one of the largest after the US This includes India Today Group Vishvas News Dainik Jagran Factly Newsmobile Fact Crescendo BOOM Live AFP NewsChecker and Quint who factcheck in 11 Indian languages along with EnglishThe Indian languages include Hindi Bengali Telugu Malayalam Tamil Marathi Punjabi Urdu Gujarati Assamese and KannadaThirdparty factcheckers evaluate stories check if the stories are factual and rate their accuracy When a factchecker rates a story as false Facebook shows it lower in News Feed significantly reducing its dissemination and reducing the number of people who view it the company saidPages and domains that repeatedly share false news will also see their distribution reduced and their ability to monetise and advertise temporarily removedCommunity members are presented with a popup notice if someone tries to share a factchecked post so that people can decide for themselves what to read trust and sharePeople who share a story thats later debunked are notified so they know there is additional reporting on that piece of content the company addedFacebook has also launched a fellowship with 10 factchecking organisations including Factly and Quint in India and will provide virtual training sessions by third party experts to help the participating fact checkers enhance their capabilities to combat misinformation related to Covid19This story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever