This month, elections kick off in at least five countries around the world. As a result, Facebook and other tech platforms have been doing some last-minute preparation to try to protect their platforms from misinformation.
In India, where voters have been stricken with misinformation in the lead-up to the start of the general election this week, WhatsApp announced a new research project aimed at learning how rumors spread on the messaging app. That move, which launched just last week and was initially billed as a verification project (it isn’t), came more than a year after fact-checkers started debunking hoaxes on their own institutional accounts.
[…]