Facebook is bringing its news index for media and publishers to India.
The social network introduced the news index in September 2018 as a way to help determine which publishers should be included in its Ad Library for political and issue ads and content run by advertisers.
Facebook said in a blog post that news pages in the English, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil and Marathi languages can follow these instructions to begin the process.
Those pages must focus primarily on reporting about current events and information, cite their sources and include dates.
Facebook said pages that primarily publish ads or promotional content will not be eligible, and neither will pages with a history of publishing articles that have been rated as false by the social network’s third-party fact-checking partners.
While going through the application process, publishers can submit information that will be included when users click the context button in News Feed, including links to their fact-checking, ethics and corrections policies, as well as information on their ownership and funding and their editorial teams.
The social network said in the blog post, “Our goal is to be as inclusive as possible. A page that is a news service with dozens of bureaus could apply, as well as a page run by a small local newspaper reporting neighborhood news. We want to include the widest reasonable range of news pages on Facebook. Pages included won’t look any different on Facebook, and inclusion won’t impact page verification (blue checkmark) status.”
The company added, “We will meet with news organizations, academics and industry groups to ensure that the process for registration is as smooth as possible and to figure out more beneficial uses of the index, including identifying pages eligible for Facebook products and programs.”
