Facebook goes offline in India to campaign against fake news

Analysts say social media platform not doing enough despite having tech power to do so

The world’s largest social network Facebook has launched an offline campaign in local English newspapers in India educating readers on how to identify ‘false news’, a more subdued term for fake news, which has become an epidemic on its platform.

India has the largest base of users for Facebook and its instant messaging service WhatsApp in the world. Over 241 million people in India are on Facebook while WhatsApp has over 200 million users in the country.

With hundreds of millions of users accessing its platforms on a daily basis, several people have begun questioning Facebook’s inability to curb the fake news problem.

A full-page advertisement in Bengaluru’s Deccan Herald newspaper on Thursday gave readers ten tips to spot false news. The ad, which had an informational format rather than a creative one, pointed out the basics such as checking for other sources and inspecting dates to identify fake news. The ad also appeared in the Telegraph and the Indian Express.

Apart from a single Facebook logo on the left-hand top corner of the page, the advertisement doesn’t mention Facebook or WhatsApp. The format of the ad is similar to an ad Facebook posted in UK newspapers in May. Facebook has run similar campaigns in other countries as well as in the digital format on its own platform.

“Fake news indicates intentional malice but the false news could be an unintentional mistake as well. The second thing is that they’ve not mentioned Facebook or WhatsApp anywhere in the ad, probably not wanting to make the connection that Facebook is a vehicle of false news,” said Karthik Srinivasan, National Lead for Social at Ogilvy & Mather.

Srinivasan adds that the company’s strategy is akin to washing its hands off the problem of fake news instead of trying to build a narrative that being a big brand it is trying to educate users on the problem of fake news.

A Facebook spokesperson without answering specific queries referred to a note in April of the social media platform launching a new online “tool against misinformation”.

In the US, people and politicians have accused Facebook of being a vehicle to spread fake news and in turn helping Donald Trump to become the President.

The US Senate Intelligence Committee is investigating fake Facebook accounts affiliated to Russia and is looking at a possible interference by the country in Trump’s victory over rival Hillary Clinton.

Even in India, there have been problems of miscreants using Facebook as a platform to spread fake news.

“It’s a concern for all of India. When people see that a narrative is not going their way, they want to manipulate it and put fake news out there. People have sort of learnt to maneuver the AI and algorithms and it’s just search engine optimisation at the end of the day,” says Divya Spandana (Ramya), who heads the Social Media and Digital Communications for the Congress.

“Facebook making an effort to educate people to identify fake news is a good step, but it’s still kind of vague. At the government level I think we need a policy for two things, to identify fake news and an anti-trolling policy,” she said.

Last month, Satwik Shukla and Tessa Lyons, both product managers at Facebook, wrote a post saying that Facebook had taken several steps to reduce false news and hoaxes on the platform.

“We’ve found instances of Pages using Facebook ads to build their audiences in order to distribute false news more broadly. Now, if a page repeatedly shares stories that have been marked as false by third-party fact-checkers, they will no longer be able to buy ads on Facebook. If Pages stop sharing false news, they may be eligible to start running ads again,“ they wrote in a post.

Analysts say the effort is not enough.

“Facebook is no more a platform where you post photos of your family or kids. It’s become a medium to vent and create outrage and these social media handles peddling fake news are using this to their advantage,” says Jency Jacob, managing editor of Boom, a digital news website that focuses on fact-checking.

“If they’ve managed to connect 2 billion people, I’m sure they have enough engineering capability and the technology to fight fake news. They are sitting on a huge amount of data and analytics. My understanding is that fake news sells very well on mediums like Facebook, and if they crack down on them, there could be a huge decline in engagement numbers,” added Jacob. 

‘UNLIKING’ FALSE POSTS
 

• Facebook has  241 mn active users while WhatsApp has over 200 mn users in India

• Globally, the company is facing heat for fake news being rampantly shared on its platform

• In August, Facebook said it would block ads from pages that regularly shared fake news on its platform

• Apart from a single Facebook logo, the social network’s ad in newspapers doesn’t mention Facebook or WhatsApp