Today, we are expanding our third-party fact-checking program in India to include NewsMeter, a fact checker primarily focused on the southern states in the country. 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.
Globally, we work with more than 80 fact-checking partners that review and rate content in over 60 languages. All of our fact-checking partners have been certified through the independent, non-partisan International Fact-Checking Network.
With this partnership, we now have 11 fact-checking partners in India, making it the country with the most third-party fact-checking partners globally across Meta. In addition, we’ve also expanded our Indian language coverage from 11 to 15 through our 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,” said Manish Chopra, Director and Head of Partnerships India at Meta. “The partnership with NewsMeter is an important step in enabling us to curb misinformation in regional Indian languages across Facebook and Instagram.”
Each time a fact-checker rates a piece of content as false, altered or partly false, we reduce its distribution so that fewer people see it. We notify people who try to share the content – or who previously shared it – that the information was rated by a fact-checker, and we add a warning label that links to the fact-checker’s article with more information about the claim.
To help address the industry-wide issue of misinformation online, we’ve also partnered with the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) to fund a fact-checking news fellowship program designed exclusively for Indian news organisations.