Meta, parent company of Facebook, includes Venezuela in its data verification program

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, included Venezuela in its data verification program with the addition of Cotejo.infoa Venezuelan digital communication platform created by the Civil Association Medianalysis that puts the magnifying glass, above all, in the speeches of the authorities.

“The alliance with Meta to verify false information on Facebook and Instagram is important to strengthen the task that we as journalists are carrying out in the fight against disinformation”, said Andrés Cañizález, director of Cotejo.info, according to a press release from the parent company.

According to Cañizález, many Venezuelans turn to social networks in search of news, in addition to using them to exchange with family and friends.

“With the experience of Match.Info in the verification and checking of data, we can contribute to having better quality information. For us, it is a professional challenge and a way to provide a service to the public in Venezuela.”, he added.

Cotejo.info will be the first local partner of Meta in Venezuela and, like the rest of the members of the program, has the certification of the International Fact-Checking Network of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies.

In Latin America, the project also includes media outlets and verification platforms.

“Meta uses community reports and signals captured by artificial intelligence to detect potentially misleading or inaccurate posts, which are sent to fact-checkers for examination.”, detailed the American company in the statement.

He assured that the distribution in the Feed (flow of content through which users scroll) of the publications marked as misleading by Cotejo.info and other independent data checkers will be significantly reduced and they will not be able to be promoted through payments.

“Our goal is to help people have more information to decide what they read, who they trust and what they share. For that, every time Cotejo.info writes texts about a certain content, people will be able to see them in Related Articles below the publication in the Feed to have a better context”, added Meta.

According to Cotejo, Venezuelan society “is suffering at the citizen level a limited circulation of exhaustive, balanced, transparent and timely information on national events in the traditional media”.

He pointed out, on his website, that this lack of truthful information is a consequence “of a castrating dynamic of the free flow of information, derived from the deliberate action of different State institutions and through a ‘communicational hegemony’ promoted until now by the Venezuelan Government”.