US internet giants Google and Facebook are teaming up with French journalists to fight misinformation and propaganda online in view of the upcoming presidential elections.
French daily Le Monde is one of eight media organisations working with social networking site Facebook to fact-check content ahead of France’s presidential poll.
Non-profit First Draft News announced it will be launching CrossCheck , a verification project with the aim of helping French voters “make sense of what and who to trust online”.
Other countries such as Germany and the US have seen similar efforts by media organisations.
Google’s News Lab is also involved in the effort to tackle fake news in France.
“Fake news” is a term often used to describe the spread of hoaxes, conspiracy theories and propaganda – which Google and Facebook have both committed to scrutinise.
Le Monde said the collaboration is “an experiment”.