IIT Bombay launches fact-checking website to combat fake news on COVID-19

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. 

Fact-checking application

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 coronavirus. The application is available at  http://kkfactcheck.in/. 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.

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. According to reports, 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.

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As per reports, 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. As per reports, Chebrolu has stated that the team wishes to expand their capacity so that their fact-checking application is able to tell their users that the article or piece of news they have submitted for a query that appeared on a site this is known for its biased opinion and therefore further research into the topic is needed and should not be taken on face value.

The application reportedly also performs other functions such as task merging, identifying language, possible category of these articles, gathering existing evidence on the Internet via automated means. After gathering the information, it is presented in the same organized fashion.

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

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