• The project's goal was to stop false information from being spread.
• In India, false information spreads quickly, primarily via social media.
• Recently, Google did a test in Europe.

According to a senior official, Google's Jigsaw division is starting a new anti-misinformation effort in India to stop false information that has been accused of instigating violence. The campaign will make use of 'prebunking' videos shared on the company's YouTube channel and other social media platforms, which are intended to refute erroneous claims before they gain traction. 

In contrast to rival Twitter, which is reducing its trust and safety teams despite new owner Elon Musk's assurances that it won't turn into a 'free-for-all hellscape,' Google is making an attempt to combat the spread of disinformation. Throughout the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Google recently tested a strategy in Europe to counter anti-refugee web sentiments. 

The experiment in India will have a wider reach because it will deal with several regional tongues—Bengali, Hindi, and Marathi—and various regions of a nation with over a billion inhabitants. According to Beth Goldman, head of research and development at Jigsaw, 'this provided an opportunity to explore prebunking in a non-western, global south market.'

 Officials from the Indian government have urged tech giants like Google, Meta, and Twitter to do more to stop the dissemination of false information. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) has regularly used 'special powers' to block Twitter and Facebook accounts, YouTube channels, and other supposedly damaging misinformation-spreading accounts.

Whatsapp, the messaging software from Meta, which has more than 200 million users in India, has also been used to send inflammatory messages. Following widespread beatings of more than a dozen people, some of whom died, caused by bogus allegations of child abductors in 2018, the firm limited the number of times a message may be sent.

 Jigsaw has created five movies in three languages in cooperation with the Alfred Landecker Foundation, a German pro-democracy organisation, the charitable investment company Omidya Network India, and a variety of smaller regional partners. Following the viewing of the films, viewers will be required to complete a quick multiple-choice survey in order to assess their understanding of disinformation. 

According to the company's most recent study on the subject, seeing such movies increased viewers' likelihood to spot disinformation by 5%. According to Goldman, the Indian project will concentrate on topics that are important to the nation. People become more resistant to being misled in the future by being warned about it and given the tools to recognise and reject it.