Meta collaborates with Press Trust of India to expand its third-party fact checking program

PTI will now be able to identify, review, and rate content as misinformation across Meta platforms.

Meta is expanding its third-party fact-checking program in India to include Press Trust of India (PTI), a dedicated fact-checking unit within the newswire’s editorial department. The partnership will enable PTI to identify, review and rate content as misinformation across Meta platforms.

To fight the spread of misinformation and provide people with more reliable information, Meta partners with independent third-party fact-checkers that are certified through the non-partisan International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) who identify, review and rate viral misinformation across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Globally, it has also built the largest independent fact-checking network of any platform, with nearly hundred partners around the world to review and rate viral misinformation in more than sixty languages.

With this partnership with PTI, Meta now have twelve fact-checking partners in India, making it the country with the most third-party fact-checking partners globally across Meta. The Indian language coverage stands at sixteen through its existing fact-checking partners to include Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Urdu, Punjabi, Assamese, Manipuri/ Meitei, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Kashmiri, Bhojpuri, Oriya and Nepali, besides English.

Each time a fact-checker rates a piece of content as false, altered or partly false, Meta reduces its distribution so that fewer people see it.

Meta mentioned in a press release, "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. Since 2016, our fact-checking program has expanded to include nearly 100 organisations globally."

The focus of the program is to address viral misinformation– particularly clear hoaxes that have no basis in fact. Fact-checking partners prioritise provably false claims that are timely, trending and consequential.