Facebook Geared to track the fake content during Indian elections

While India is getting ready for the general election 2019, which are schedule to begin from the next month starting April 11. Facebook is taking active steps to curb the spread of misinformation on its platform. This includes taking steps like blocking fake accounts and deploying third-party fact checkers to ensure that only the genuine and authentic content is displayed on users' News Feeds.

Facebook has set up a quick response team in Singapore, where they will keep an eye on objectionable content and fake news on a real-time basis, the team will work closely with the Election Commission of India, informed an official of the social networking giant. Facebook has also partnered with Indian media organizations to check and flag fake news stories in English, Hindi and in some regional Indian languages.

This step has taken by the Facebook, which had come under severe criticism for its inability to curb the misuse of its platform to circulate fake news in past by several governments, had started preparing for the Indian general elections almost a year ago. It has set a product team in the US too.

The sources revelled that, India is close to 300 million subscribers, India reportedly has the highest number of Facebook users in the world. This number is roughly a third of the population eligible to vote in the Indian General Elections 2019 and most a third of India’s 900 million voters are active on social media, making this one of the world’s biggest ever attempts to monitor internet content.

To address this large chunk of audiences, Facebook had set-up the product team, since many of Facebook’s tools and products have been revamped and localised, keeping the upcoming elections in mind. Sources said, Facebook has also launched an exclusive feature for India – ‘Candidate Connect’. This new feature will allow India’s Lok Sabha candidates to record their election manifesto in the form of 20-second videos and share it with their constituents.

Additionally, the company has also introduced an 'Paid by for' label to mark the ads that have been paid for by advertisers. It has also introduced an Ad Library, that would provide detailed information regarding political ads in the country.

"We are working hard to prevent bad actors from interfering with elections on Facebook," Samidh Chakrabarti, director of Facebook's Product Management for Civic Integrity division, said in a statement to the agency adding that the social media giant has tripled the number of people working on safety and security to 30,000 to prepare for the elections.

Last week, global and Indian social media outlets had agreed to follow a ‘voluntary code’ on taking down ‘problematic content’ and bringing ‘transparency in political advertising’.