Meta partners with PTI to boost third-party fact-checking in India

Tech giant Meta  has expanded its third-party fact-checking initiative in India by collaborating with Press Trust of India (PTI). 

Through this partnership, the news organisation, which has set up a dedicated fact-checking unit within its editorial department, aims to identify and evaluate content for misinformation across Meta platforms.

Under this initiative, Meta is collaborating with independent third-party fact-checkers certified by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), to combat misinformation on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp by identifying, reviewing, and rating viral content.

It has established an independent fact-checking network with close to 100 partners worldwide to review viral misinformation across over 60 languages.

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“With this partnership with PTI, we now have 12 fact-checking partners in India, making it the country with the most third-party fact-checking partners globally across Meta. Our Indian language coverage stands at 16 through our existing fact-checking partners including Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Urdu, Punjabi, Assamese, Manipuri/ Meitei, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Kashmiri, Bhojpuri, Oriya and Nepali, besides English,” the company said in a statement.

Whenever a fact-checker identifies a piece of content as false, altered, or partly false, Meta decreases its distribution to limit its reach.

It then informs users that the content has been reviewed by a fact-checker. Additionally, the content carries a warning label linking the fact-checker's article, providing further details about the claim.

Recently, the Misinformation Combat Alliance (MCA) and Meta also announced plans to launch a specialised fact-checking helpline on WhatsApp. The initiative aims to address the issue of misleading deepfake videos that might mislead users on matters of public importance.