Alliances with fact-checkers, expanding on AI: Instagram goes global with misinformation battle

Instagram is taking its battle against misinformation global. The Facebook-owned photo-sharing social media platform is making alliances with fact-checkers around the world to "help identify, review, and label false information".

Earlier, these efforts were restricted to the US, Instagram announced yesterday that they were going global with partners who will "independently assess false information" and "reduce its distribution". The fact-checking program in the US was launched earlier this year.

"Today's expansion is an important step in our ongoing efforts to fight misinformation on Instagram…photo and video based misinformation is increasingly a challenge across our industry, and something our teams have been focused on addressing," Instagram said.

"When content has been rated as false or partly false by a third-party fact-checker, we reduce its distribution," Instagram said. This basically means that not only will these posts start getting ignored by Instagram's search and recommendation tools, it will also be branded with a warning label if you do come across it - "It will be labeled so people can better decide for themselves what to read, trust and share".

"We use image matching technology to find further instances of this content and apply the label, helping reduce the spread of misinformation," Instagram explained adding that, "If something is rated false or partly false on Facebook, starting today we'll automatically label identical content if it is posted on Instagram (and vice versa)."

"The label will link out to the rating from the fact-checker and provide links to articles from credible sources that debunk the claim(s) made in the post. We make content from accounts that repeatedly receive these labels harder to find by removing it from Explore and hashtag pages," Instagram added.

Instagram is also expanding the anti-bullying feature they had developed earlier this year. The platform's AI software will be scanning captions and comments and will be notifying users if their comments are considered or can be considered offensive.

"We've found that these types of nudges can encourage people to reconsider their words," Instagram said.