Governments and civil society have tried a number of different approaches to fight misinformation. But the barriers are formidable. Latin America has among the world’s highest rates of social media use, making countries fertile territory for fake news. But several of the proposed solutions infringe on free speech or can be easily abused by authoritarian governments with their own agendas, among other flaws.
Below, AQ compiled five categories of initiatives being tested, discussed or implemented in parts of Latin America.
1. Government-run fact-checking and monitoring services
In June 2019, Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador launched Verificado, a fact-checking operation, as part of the government’s newswire Notimex. As of August 2021 it had no activity. Civil society and journalism groups expressed concerns the tool could be politicized and undermine the credibility of independent fact-checkers. (Verificado also faced a legal battle over the name itself, as several Mexican fact-checkers were already using it.) In Argentina, the Public Defender’s Office launched the Observatory of Disinformation and Symbolic Violence on Digital Media and Platforms (NODIO) in October 2020, to “detect, verify, identify and disarticulate malicious news.”
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Source: How Latin American Governments Are Fighting Fake News | Americas Quarterly