Facebook has endured a public relations nightmare over the past two years. Much of this mess has been of their own making. The huge scandal involving Russian groups buying ads to influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election is something Facebook still has not fully recovered from. There is pressure on the social media giant to ensure that the info being published on their platform is accurate. This is a huge task when you consider that roughly one quarter of the world’s population uses the service. However, Facebook has shown that they are taking this issue seriously. They have hired people to serve as fact-checkers in India.
The hiring of a large group of people to check facts on Facebook in India was done in preparation for the upcoming elections that will be held in May. Basically, Facebook does not want the same thing to happen in India that happened in the United States in 2016. The fact-checkers will be looking at posts that are in 10 different languages. They will definitely have their work cut out for them. This is because India has a population of more than one billion people. Only China has more people. It is estimated that 500 million people will participate in the election.
India is the largest democracy on the planet. Therefore, the stakes are very high for Facebook to show the world that they can effectively limit disinformation from being spread during an election of this magnitude. The people who are performing the fact checks will not be employees of Facebook. Instead, they will be hiring an outside company called Boom to handle these duties. Boom has experience fact-checking during certain large events. However, the national election in India will be their largest assignment so far by a very big margin.
The people in charge of Boom feel that they will be up to the challenge. Only time will tell if this is the case. No other fact-checking company has ever attempted to look at posts in as many as 10 different languages before. Therefore, this will be the most comprehensive fact-checking job ever attempted. The technology that is being used to edit videos and make them look very convincing to the public is something that Boom is well aware of. However, the company feels like they have the skill and experience to notice fake posts that are spreading false information.
Dil Bole Oberoi
