Facebook campaign to fight Covid misinformation in India
NEW DELHI: Facebook Inc. on Thursday said it will roll out a new campaign in India in the coming weeks to “educate and inform people” about how to detect misinformation related to Covid-19, and encourage users to check the information they receive against an authentic source.
The social networking giant has removed over 12 million pieces of “harmful” misinformation on Covid-19 globally from Instagram and its own platform during the pandemic, including falsehoods about approved vaccines. It also put warning labels on over 167 million posts that were marked as false by thirdparty fact checkers.
The social media giant, which counts India among its biggest markets, said it is working on connecting people to accurate sources, and tackle misinformation, especially about the Covid-19 pandemic. To support its efforts to provide tools to make qualified decisions about information users see online, Facebook will be rolling out a new campaign in India over the coming weeks, the Us-based social networking platform said in a statement.
The campaign is aimed at educating and informing people about how to detect misinformation related to Covid-19 and encouraging them to check the information they receive against an authentic source such as the Mygov platform.
“We have developed six easy tips to fight Covid-19 misinformation. These tips will show up on Facebook through a series of creative adverts, and link out to a dedicated microsite, “www.fightcovidmisinfo.com/ india,” it added.
Via the campaign, people will be encouraged to get the whole story and not just the headline, look for trusted sources, and share facts and not rumours.the campaign and the website will be rolled out in English and nine Indian languages—hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Oriya, Malayalam, Marathi, Kannada, Gujarati and Bengali.
As per data provided by the Indian government earlier this year, India has 530 million Whatsapp users, 410 million Facebook users and 210 million users of Instagram.
Last month, Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms had removed about 100 posts and URLS after the government asked them to take down content spreading fake news around the pandemic.