Leaders in the technology industry from across the globe shared insights on building effective collaborations between tech companies, health authorities, and fact-checking organisations at the Misinformation in Medicine Summit 2020.

By Varadarajan Ananthakrishnan

The third Medical Misinformation Summit that was held online on November 20 and 21, featured a panel discussion on how digital companies are getting more aggressive to combat misinformation during the current pandemic.

The leaders in the technology space that were a part of the discussion included Google, TikTok, and Facebook, apart from the World Health Organization.

The discussion, moderated by Sameer Pujari, Unit Head for Digital Country Capacity and Collaboration at the World Health Organization, overwhelmingly came out in support of tech giants forging strong partnerships with journalists and the fact-checking community to stop the spread of misinformation through these popular platforms.

Andrew Pattison, Digital Business Solutions Manager at the World Health Organization, said that WHO is using a multi-pronged strategy to curb the spread of misinformation.

“It is human nature to spread alarming news. But, unfortunately, the alarming news that is being shared these days is a lot of misinformation. So, we want to raise good content, and at the same time, fight misinformation because misinformation will thrive in a vacuum,” said Pattison.

He emphasised the need is to counter misinformation by raising really good content.

While highlighting Google’s contribution to fighting misinformation, Irene Jay Liu, Asia Pacific Lead for the Google News Lab, said that Google wanted to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful for the general public.

She added, “We work very closely with news organisations and fact-checking communities to ensure that whatever users are getting is high quality and locally relevant. We also partner with governments and collaborate with international organisations and experts. And our solutions are tailored to keeping users in mind.”

Besides, Irene Jay Liu also listed Google’s way of combating misinformation at its level. While explaining, she said, if a user will Google Search different terms related to coronavirus, it will take them to an information panel that is curated in partnership with the WHO to provide highly authoritative, universal information in multiple languages.

Similarly, she added, if a user will go to YouTube and do a similar COVID-19 related search on YouTube, they will see info-boxes that will direct them to the WHO as well as local departments or health ministries.

“The whole idea is to make sure that there is a fine balance between authoritative information that is global as well as local,” she said.

Arjun Narayan, Director Trust and Safety for the Asia-Pacific region for TikTok said that their platform has introduced in-app reporting to flag false information. “In fact, we were probably the first few platforms to launch misinformation in-app reporting,” he said.

While explaining, Narayan further added, “When a user goes on TikTok and if they come across any video or content that isn’t appropriate, they can flag the content to us. We would get it fact-checked and find a way to either corroborate that information as being accurate or will remove it off the platform.”

He also spoke about the advantage of having the Gen Z users on the platform who use and consume the available information and then educate their families.

Aya Lowe, Strategic Partner for Development, at News APAC representing Facebook said, “We partner with third-party fact-checkers who can independently fact check on Facebook as well as Instagram. As of now, we have about eighty partners, globally and our focus is on expanding partnerships within the Asia Pacific now.”

He further added, “Partnerships like this have been a huge part in keeping a check at misinformation and reducing it on the platform which means its visibility is much less.”

WHO’s constant effort has been to reach the masses with the right information. Andrew Pattinson said, “We want to reach people beyond demographics, interests, and geographies.”

Finally, while cautioning the users, panelists highlighted that the pandemic is far from over yet, and in terms of misinformation, this is probably just the start. The next wave of misinformation is likely to be around the vaccine and the vaccine hesitation. Therefore, these digital companies will have to brace themselves for the second wave of infodemic.