Misinformation to be ‘prebunked’ in India by Google
Google’s Jigsaw subsidiary is launching a new antimisinformation project in India, aimed at preventing misleading information that has been blamed for inciting violence.
The initiative will use “prebunking” videos — designed to counter false claims before they become widespread — circulated on the company’s YouTube platform and other social media sites, a top executive said.
Google’s efforts to challenge the spread of misinformation are in contrast to rival Twitter, which is cutting its trust and safety teams, despite new owner Elon Musk saying it will not become a “free-for-all hellscape”.
Google recently conducted an experiment in Europe, where it sought to counter antirefugee narratives online after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The experiment in India will deal with multiple local languages — Bengali, Hindi and Marathi — and cover diverse sections of a country populated by more than a billion people.
“This presented an opportunity to research prebunking in a non-Western, global south market,” said head of research & development Beth Goldman.
Indian government officials have called on tech companies such as Google, Meta, and Twitter to take stronger action against the spread of fake news.
The ministry of information and broadcasting has repeatedly invoked “extraordinary powers” to block YouTube channels, and some Twitter and Facebook accounts allegedly used to spread harmful misinformation.
Inflammatory messages have also spread via Meta’s messaging service WhatsApp, which has more than 200-million users in India. In 2018, the company curbed the number of times a message could be forwarded, after false claims about child abductors led to mass beatings of more than a dozen people, some of whom died.
Working in collaboration with the Alfred Landecker Foundation, a prodemocracy organisation based in Germany, the philanthropic investment firm Omidya Network India, and a number of smaller regional partners, Jigsaw has produced five videos in three different languages.
After watching the videos, viewers will be asked to fill in a short multiple-choice questionnaire, designed to gauge what they have learnt about misinformation. The company’s recent research on the subject suggested viewers are 5% more likely to identify misinformation after watching such videos.
The Indian initiative will focus on issues that resonate in the country, Goldman added.
“By forewarning individuals and equipping them to spot and refute misleading arguments, they gain resilience to being misled in the future.”
Results are expected to be published in mid-2023.