Alarming lessons from Facebook’s push to stop fake news in India

A monitor displays script in the Gurmukhi language in the office of Vishwas News, operated by Jagran New Media, in New Delhi, India, on Friday, May 17, 2019. Facebook, Twitter Inc. and Google parent Alphabet Inc. are discovering the harsh reality that disinformation and hate speech are even more challenging in emerging markets than in places like the U.S. or Europe. Vishvas, Facebook’s largest Indian-language fact-checking contractor, faces the challenge of working in country with 23 official languages. Photographer: Anindito Mukherjee/Bloomberg

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.