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The Hindu
The Hindu
National
Sowmya Ramasubramanian

Facebook to curb hate speech related to State Assembly elections

Facebook will also send election day prompts to users to encourage voting, that can be shared with friends on WhatsApp and Facebook. (Source: Reuters)

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Facebook Inc said on Tuesday it will reduce distribution of hate speech and violent content related to ongoing State Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Assam, Kerala and Puducherry.

The social network said it will use its AI-powered detection technology to identify hate speech content and remove it if it violates Facebook’s policies.

It will also deploy its technology to identify new words and phrases associated with hate speech and either remove the posts with that language or reduce their distribution, Facebook said in a statement.

The California-based company is still under international scrutiny over its inability to curb hate speech and misinformation from its platform. Over 290 million Indian users account for Facebook’s largest audience yet.

Also Read | Twitter launches multi-lingual ‘info prompt’ ahead of Assembly elections

Facebook said it will continue removing accounts that repeatedly violate community standards and will temporarily reduce the distribution of content from those accounts.

The world’s largest social networking platform also said it will work with third-party fact-checkers to provide context about the content visible on Facebook. The company has partnered with eight fact-checkers in India certified by the International Fact-Checking Network, it added. The process will also include content in 11 Indian languages including Tamil, Bengali, Assamese and Malayalam.

Facebook will also send election day prompts to users to encourage voting, that can be shared with friends on WhatsApp and Facebook.

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