This week I had a very interesting article about Facebook in India, regarding the south and central region of Asia. In India, Facebook is working to expand it’s fact checking network to stop the spread of miscommunication and fake news within the country. This is a crucial time to begin this process considering the general election for India in May of 2019 is fast approaching. The candidates of this election, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the opposition Congress Party and its regional allies, are neck and neck in the predictions and polls already, just adding to the call for Facebook to address it’s problem with fake news and the spreading of lies. It is huge for India, one of the largest democracies in the world, to rid their election of any fake news. Facebook has already started making some efforts to battle this ongoing fight against the spread of miscommunication by introducing stricter rules for political advertisements. However, the most recent move to reinforce the fact checking program has been revolving around verifying the accuracy of stories. Five new partners, including India Today Group, a reliable and popular local media group, has been added to Facebook’s fact-checking network, making a total number of seven partners. Another way Facebook is updating their program is incorporating more Indian languages, along with english, to broaden their coverage and make it so all of India can understand content and news in a proper format. Although a big concern with Facebook revolves around it’s popular messaging app, WhatsApp. This platform has had many implications, such as spreading false news and being susceptible to misuse. India is Facebook’s, and therefore WhatsApp’s, largest user creating a concern for political misuse. However efforts to amend this have gone in place. After a series of lynchings occured because of messages sent on its service, WhatsApp reduced the number of people or groups that a message could be forwarded to at one time, cutting 20 to now five.
