“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.”
Popular social networking platform, Facebook, has said that it will fight fake news using Yoruba and Igbo languages.
Facebook’s Head of Public Policy, Africa, Kojo Boakye, in a statement on Wednesday in Lagos said that the two languages were in addition to Hausa already supported by the platform.
Boakye said that Facebook was collaborating with Africa Check to add new local language support for several African languages as part of its Third-Party Fact-Checking programme, according to the News Agency of Nigeria.
He said that the programme would help to assess the accuracy of news on Facebook and reduce the spread of misinformation.
According to him, the programme was launched in 2018 across five countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, which included South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and Cameroon.
He said, “Facebook has partnered with Africa Check, Africa’s first independent fact-checking organisation, to expand its local language coverage across Nigeria (Yoruba and Igbo), adding to Hausa which was already supported.
“We have also expanded our local language coverage across Kenya (Swahili), Senegal (Wolof), as well as South Africa (Afrikaans, Zulu, Setswana, Sotho, Northern Sotho and Southern Ndebele).
“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.”
Executive Director, Africa Check, Noko Makgato, said that the organisation was delighted to be expanding the arsenal of the languages it covered in its work on Facebook’s third-party fact-checking programme.