COVID-19: RS Prasad warns social media platforms over fake news peddling

Union Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Saturday warned strict action against social media platforms if they allowed any fake news about COVID-19 to surface on their sites.

RS Prasad said that some people have been misusing social media and spreading rumours about the deadly virus at a crucial time when the country is battling against the spread of it.

"In the battle of Coronavirus, the country is fighting many different challenges. The Narendra Modi government has always been in favour of social media but we came across some objectionable videos and news in these testing times on social media platforms. We expect these platforms to avoid allowing such content and act responsible, otherwise, the government will take action on them," RS Prasad told news agency.

India's total number of coronavirus cases rose to 3,072, said the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Saturday. Out of these,  2,784 are active cases and 212 have been discharged after recovery. 

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Fact-checking website to combat fake news

Amidst the Coronavirus pandemic, the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay has launched a fact-checking platform that helps people verify news or check the validity of the facts and claims in those articles. According to reports, this platform can verify news articles, text messages on social media, pictures as well as videos especially about news regarding the deadly COVID-19 virus pandemic. 

The platform is called the ‘KauwaKaate’ and was developed by students and faculty of the department of computer science engineering to combat fake news regarding the deadly virus. The app can also be downloaded onto any android phone and works for textual, image and video queries. One can even WhatsApp their queries to the number provided on the website if they wish to know if a viral or forwarded message is true.

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According to reports, when a query is submitted, it is first checked if the news has been fact-checked previously by a predefined set of India-focused fact-checking sites such as check4spam.com, boomlive.com, Alt News, and other leading news sites. Kameswari Chebrolu, Associate professor, IIT Bombay has said that if the query does not match on any of these sites then automated checks are then carried out.

This fact-checking platform is a part of a three-year project that is funded by the government of India. The team of researchers and developers behind the site aim to scale up their operations in the future and enable the app to do more automated checks.

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