Facebook, in partnership with fact-checking organisation Africa Check, has started checking for fake news in African languages.
The program, which was launched in Sub-Saharan Africa last year, will now add languages including Yoruba, Igbo, Swahili, Wolof, Afrikaans, Zulu, Setswana and Sotho.
Stories deemed false will appear further down in Facebook users’ newsfeeds, in the hope that they won’t be shared as much.
Facebook says it relies on feedback from the Facebook community to raise potentially false stories for review.
Facebook has previously been under fire over the spread of fake news and hate speech on its platform.
In Africa alone, more than 130 million people use Facebook.
