Facebook Adds Kiswahili To Its Fact Checking Programme To Curb Fake News

Kiswahili and other nine African languages have been added to Facebook’s third-party fact-checking after the company partnered with Africa Check and will include 10 African languages.

Facebook uses the Third-Party-Fact-Checking program to help its algorithms assess the accuracy of news on the Facebook community and also, seek to reduce the spread of misinformation/fake news.

Africa Check is an independent fact-checking organization that was launched in 2018 and they are collaborating with Facebook to add the following languages to Facebook’s 3rd-Party program:

• Yoruba and Igbo, adding to Hausa which was already supported in Nigeria
• Kiswahili in Kenya
• Wolof in Senegal
• Afrikaans, Zulu, Setswana, Sotho, Northern Sotho and Southern Ndebele in South Africa

“We continue to make significant investments in our efforts to fight the spread of false news on our platform, whilst building supportive, safe, informed and inclusive communities. Our third-party fact-checking programme is just one of many ways we are doing this, and with the expansion of local language coverage, this will help in further improving the quality of information people see on Facebook. We know there is still more to do, and we’re committed to this.” Noko Makgato who is the Executive Director of Africa Check

Facebook will be fact-checking alongside the verification of images and videos of all local articles. If any of Facebook’s partners in the program identifies a story as false, that story will feed will be censored and suppressed to significantly reduce its distribution.

“We’re thrilled to be expanding the arsenal of the languages we cover in our work on Facebook’s third-party fact-checking programme. In countries as linguistically diverse as Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, and Senegal, fact-checking in local languages is vital. Not only does it let us fact-check more content on Facebook, but it also means we’ll be reaching more people across Africa with verified, credible information.” Noko Makgato said.