Jaipur, 21 September 2019
The second day of Talk Journalism 2019 (21 September) saw a session on fake news, organised by Facebook took place in the afternoon session. The session was conducted by Trushar Barot, who is currently employed with the organisation.
He commenced the session by introducing himself. He then asked a question that “How Facebook tackles with misinformation?”. For that, he introduced three pillars which they generally use, named as “Remove, Reduce and Inform”. He explained each of those pillars in a lucid manner.
The first pillar was about ‘Remove’. He talked about Facebook removing certain information which could be affecting the community standards. He also introduced kinds of misinformation which would become viral in no time. He discussed the caste discrimination issue. Post that, he explained the second pillar which was ‘Reduce’.
The information which Facebook thinks which should not reach the audience, they reduce those contents on the page. He introduced the audience with the fact-checking network named as IFCN which stands for. “International Fact-Checking Network”. He added that they use various fact-checking policies which are verifiable, important, relevant & viral. He quipped about the third pillar ‘Inform’ in short.
Then the session was carry forwarded in the form of an interactive Question-Answer session. Barot was put on the task by a curious audience who asked various questions related to the Facebook misinforming contents. One of the questions was from a fact-checker as well related to the authenticity of a video. Barot discussed the idea that what actually they do with the millions of fake accounts. Then the session concluded with a memento given to Barot as a gesture of delivering a session full of learning.
Text: Yeshi Upadhyay | Copy Edit: Niharika Raina | Photo: Yeshi Upadhyay | Photo Desk: Sagar Samuel | Editorial Coordination: Rupali Soni & Niharika Raina