Pandemic misinformation arrests and efforts to curb hate speech
We hope you're having a good week. There's a bunch of important news happening around the world right now, including Facebook's efforts to curb hate speech in India, arrests in Egypt over pandemic misinformation, U.S.-Mexico border misinformation and much more.
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Assembly elections: Facebook to curb hate speech in India (Hindustan Times)
Facebook announced its plan to combat hate speech and misinformation in the ongoing assembly elections in India. With elections in four states and a union territory, the social media giant said it has invested in proactive technology to detect and reduce the distribution of content that violates its policies on hate speech.
"The company has pledged to reduce the distribution of content from the accounts found to have repeatedly violated its policies. It added it has partnered with eight third-party fact-checking organizations to tackle misinformation during elections."
Coronavirus Trials in Egypt: Blurring the Lines Between Fake News and Freedom of Expression (SMEX)
Journalists, doctors, and social media users have been targeted with arrests and were falsely accused of spreading misinformation about the pandemic in Egypt as COVID-19 surged in the country.
"With the surge of Covid cases in Egypt, the government imposed further restrictions on the freedom of expression and opinion. The Egyptian State monopolized the term “real news,” constraining it to news issued by official authorities only. Any other news would be deemed fake and prosecuted before the public."
Misinformation about the border puts migrants at risk (Verificado)
Scammers, ‘coyotes’ and even migrants themselves make people believe that it is now easier to cross the border to reach the United States; they warn people that they are at risk of becoming victims of crime and human trafficking.
"They said they had already opened the border so we thought it was true," says Rigo, about the rumors he heard loudly in Guatemala and that encouraged him and his wife to make the crossing with their three-year-old daughter until North of Mexico.
BOOM Study: Analysing More Than A Year Of COVID-19 Fact Checks (BOOM)
BOOM, an independent fact-checking group in India, recently analyzed 314 fact checks on false or misleading claims around COVID-19 since January 26, 2020, and found that while there has been a dip in COVID-19-related fact checks since August, 2020, the numbers have started rising since January - with vaccines and lockdowns being the most common topics.
"One of the more striking results from our study was the prevalence of videos in disseminating COVID-19-related fake news. 127 out of 314 fact checks (40% of total) were done on false or misleading claims shared with one or more videos."
Meedan Updates
Misinformation trends and tactics in poll-bound West Bengal, India
India will witness four state assembly and one union territory elections in West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Assam and Puducherry between March and April 2021. Of these, West Bengal will go to polls first and is expected to be the most contentious state election. It is among the handful of states where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the current ruling party at the centre, is not in power. Stakes are high both for the BJP and the current Trinamool Congress (TMC) government in West Bengal that is fighting to retain its ten year turf. In this blogpost, we take a look at the emerging trends and tactics of misinformation uncovered by our fact-checking partners in India.