Meta Expands Third-Party Fact-Checking In India, Includes Capabilities In Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Tamil

Meta currently has 11 third-party fact-checking partners in the country and covers 15 local languages.

India is the country with the most third-party fact-checking partners globally across Meta. Image: Getty

Meta on Tuesday announced it is expanding its third-party fact-checking programme in India. Social networking giant Facebook's parent Meta has joined hands with NewsMeter, a fact checker primarily focused on the southern states in India. The partnership between Meta and NewsMeter is aimed at connecting people to accurate and verified information, enhancing the social network's fact-checking capabilities in regional Indian languages including Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Tamil.

Meta currently has 11 third-party fact-checking partners in the country and covers 15 local languages. With this partnership, India is the country with the most third-party fact-checking partners globally across Meta.

The company has also expanded its Indian language coverage from 11 to 15 through its existing fact-checking partners to include Kashmiri, Bhojpuri, Oriya and Nepali. 

“We are committed to combating the spread of misinformation and have built the largest global fact-checking network,” Manish Chopra, Director and Head of Partnerships India at Meta, said in a statement.

“The partnership with NewsMeter is an important step in enabling us to curb misinformation in regional Indian languages across Facebook and Instagram.”

Globally, the company has partnered with 80 fact-checking partners that review and rate content in more than 60 languages. All of its fact-checking partners have been certified through the independent, non-partisan International Fact-Checking Network, the company claimed.

According to Meta, each time a fact-checker rates a piece of content as false, altered or partly false, it reduces its distribution so that fewer people see it. It notifies people who try to share the content – or who previously shared it – that the information was rated by a fact-checker, and it adds a warning label that links to the fact-checker’s article with more information about the claim.