How Instagram's Fact-Checking Tool Will Effect Advertising & Political Propagandas

Fake news may be a scorching topic now but the truth is, fake news has always been there. Brands, political and social leaders have been using fake news for ages to gain personal and political benefits. While the increasing reach of the Internet is leveraging fake news, the growing technology is also coming with new ways to tackle the same.

From Facebook to Twitter, each social media stake-holder is making efforts to deal with this increasing trend of fake news. Recently, Facebook-owned  Instagram rolled out a new update which will help users identify the fake news with an independent fact-checker. The new fact-check tool by Instagram will leverage third-party software to detect and fact-check news and partnering with various organizations and media literacy experts.

We talked to industry experts to know their reaction on Fake news and the efforts to curb the same. We also spoke to some political leaders to understand what role it will play in political propaganda during elections in Delhi?

Fake news has always helped in crafting political agendas. Known as rumours, their scale and speed of influence has increased significantly in this era of social media," asserted Sanjeev Singh, Founder & Managing Director, MYO Research Services Private Limited,  Center for Empowerment Studies.

When it comes to political agendas, today digital messages have the potential to reach more than half the population directly. If in 2014 India had the first ‘social media’ election, 2019 India saw the first election being fought on mobile devices. The national-capital is soon going to witness elections and with this, such tools to curb fake news can be both good and bad for political parties.

Social media and modern technology are being blatantly used by major political players. There were many instances of all political parties in the country engaging in peddling fake news. Apart from videos, old and unrelated images are shared on the platform with falsified claims on a daily basis.

Anup Sharma, an independent Political Communications said, unfortunately, the politicians are key culprits turning the term “fake news” into a weapon.

He believes politicians and political parties across the world have been successfully using Fake news to describe information that they don’t like.

Since Sharma has worked with three Chief ministers and two ministers he shared some inside tactics of political parties that they use to make things viral. "Today the organized online supporters of with the support of the IT cells of the political parties use various tools to get a topic trend and bring to the forefront," he revealed.

Besides political leaders, it is the brands that excessively use fake news. Interestingly, the entire advertisement world is based on fake news. From Fair n Lovely promising to make you fair in few seconds to Kesh King promising to regain your hair within three months, it is all led-by fake news or we can say misinformation.

Sameer Makani, CO-Founder and Managing Director, Makani Creatives also shared his thoughts on Instagram identifying the fake news with an independent fact-checker.

This new update from Instagram will surely help the users to identify and eradicate misinformation and enable them to better decide for themselves what they want to read and share, said Makani.

Applauding this new initiative by Instagram, Makani said, it will help users to make informed judgments, this will largely increase transparency on social media and help in dampening the fake news on which tends to spread like a wildfire.

"As photo and video-based misinformation is increasing, Brand Safety and Clean content is what brands want and they will be more open to building their ecosystems and content experiences within these platforms if the news and content remain to be clean and clear," said Dharika Merchant, COO, WORD and Alchemy Group.

At the same time, this tool by Instagram will also stop the brands to spread wrong agendas led by misinformation, she added.

Sharing her thoughts on how such tools affect political propagandas, Merchant said, it could swing both ways since all social platforms are clamping down on political content and advertising hence curbing the growth of business, with this fact-checker, the content, news and ads will be safe to run so it might be all in or all out.

Sai Sangeeta Israni, GM Marketing, Spykar Lifestyle Pvt. Ltd told, besides the internet, all other mediums are trackable through tools and each media has a governing body that confirms the performance.

Going forward, advertisers and consumers will both value privacy and transparency and may eventually not mind their data being captured if it results in better value for both, the consumer and advertiser, concluded Israni.