Facebook India to launch ops centre ahead of polls
NEWDELHI: In a bid to prevent the spread of fake news on its platform ahead of the national elections in India, Facebook Inc. plans to start an operations centre in Delhi, which will coordinate with the social media giant’s offices at Menlo Park (California), Dublin and Singapore, on a 24x7 basis to monitor election content, said Shivnath Thukral, director, public policy, India and South Asia, Facebook.
With this move, Facebook aims for constant engagement with the Election Commission of India (ECI) to understand how it can ensure the upcom- ing polls are safe from abuse and misinformation on its platform, said Thukral.
It has been under pressure from the Indian government over its inability to prevent misuse of its platform during elections. India will be the second country after the US to have an operations room for Facebook. While the company did not share specific details about its launch date and actual working, the centre will be modelled on the one launched during the US elections, said Thukral. There will be multiple cross-functional teams that will look at different aspects of the platform such as content, policy, legal, while some work closely with the ECI, added Thukral .
Facebook has already intensified its election efforts and there are already 40 teams working on elections in India. The process began with Karnataka, then the other state elections and will now be further strengthened during the general elections.
Its first big priority is to remove fake accounts that are the source of misinformation. It claims to have taken down two billion fake profiles between September 2017 and October 2018 in its fight against bots, and their creators, using a combination of machine learning and human reviews.
Another step is to reduce the instances of fake news going viral. Facebook says it is a technology platform and not an arbiter of truth, so it has on-boarded independent fact checkers to help identify and review false news.