Pallavi Mishra has seen the scale of the challenge first-hand. The manager at Vishvas News, Facebook’s largest Indian-language fact-checking contractor, spent two weeks recently talking with internet users in small cities. She found most people are so new to social media they have no clue about bogus content. They share stories indiscriminately, with stupefying speed. “Being the ‘first’ to share things in their circles gave them a rush,” she says.
(May 21): The world’s largest election has become something of a test case in how technology giants handle fake news after years of scandal. It’s not working out so well.
India has as many as 900 million voters in an election that culminates this week, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling coalition headed for apparent victory. Particularly challenging for would-be fact-checkers, from Facebook Inc. to Google, is the country’s 23 official languages. Facebook has hired contractors to verify content in 10 of those languages, but those staffers are spread thin and posts in more than a dozen other languages – Sindhi, Odia and Kannada among them – are completely unvetted.
