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Indian fact-checking organisations are on tenterhooks as they await the consequences of Meta’s decision to abandon its partnerships with professional fact-checking organisations in favour of a community-led model, starting with the U.S.
The change has accompanied the partisan atmosphere that has enveloped fact-checking in the U.S., where the recent election of Donald Trump as President has driven an ideological reorientation among Big Tech firms.
Amitabh Kumar, founder of Social and Media Matters, which has worked with large social media platforms, said that he was trying to keep an open mind on Meta’s move. But, he highlighted, that there were concrete reasons that led to the introduction of fact-checking on social media platforms. “Cambridge Analytica happened because of Facebook,” Mr. Kumar said, recalling how the firm’s user data were used for behavioural campaigns.
There was also scrutiny of the firm’s role in shaping opinions leading up to Brexit, the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union. “Fact-checkers were brought in to counter this,” he said. But Mr. Trump’s election and the divisive rhetoric around fact-checking in the U.S., which drew criticism during the COVID-19 pandemic as posts and accounts were being taken down or flagged at a time when there wasn’t yet total consensus among scientists on the disease’s causes and origins or the risks around its vaccines, have led to resentment towards professional fact-checking by social media platforms.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a video that fact-checking organisations had behaved in a “partisan” way. He added that the new community system would face fewer accusations of bias.
As The Hindu had reported last May, the implementation of Community Notes on X has been impeded by a requirement that people across the ideological spectrum must agree on the inclusion of a fact-check on a post. This requirement has led to political misinformation in particular frequently going unchecked.
Two senior fact-checking executives contacted by The Hindu declined to comment on the Meta announcement’s implications for India, citing uncertainty on immediate consequences.
Meta has only announced the change for the U.S. at present, and has not released any timeline for if and when such a change will be implemented in other countries. Partnerships with firms like Meta is a key source of revenue for certain fact-checking firms.
Indian law on fact-checking has been challenged in courts, at least as far as fact-checking with regard to the government is concerned. The Supreme Court has stayed the notification of a fact-check unit of the Press Information Bureau from having the power to flag posts as misinformation and strip social media platforms’ immunity from liability under the law.
However, there has been a less-discussed aspect of the IT Rules, 2021, namely misinformation that does not involve the Union government. The Rules provide for a self-regulatory organisation (SRO) for such news as well.
The Misinformation Combat Alliance, a fact-checking industry body in India, has positioned itself as the natural fit for this purpose. No fact-checking SRO has been notified by the IT Ministry as yet, but the requirements of the 2021 Rules clash with a community approach on fact-checking.
IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said in an interview with The Hindu on Wednesday that the controversy around fact-checking validated the government’s point of view that ascertaining the truthfulness of a piece of information is best left to those to whom the misinformation pertains.
Published – January 10, 2025 02:30 am IST
