Facebook has acquired five new partnerships to further widen its fact-checking program in India, ahead of a 2019 general election taking place in May.

The company is now partnering with India Today Group, Vishvas.news, Factly, Newsmobile, and Fact Crescendo. Each of these outlets are all certified through an international fact-checking network. The partners will go over news stories posted onto Facebook for both facts and rate of accuracy.

These new partnerships allow Facebook's fact-checking capability to expand into three new languages, monitoring posts and news in English, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Malayalam and Marathi.

“We are committed to fighting the spread of false news on Facebook, especially ahead of the 2019 General Election campaign season," said Facebook India news partnership head Manish Khanduri.

£And one way to do that is by growing our partnership with third-party fact-checkers. We know this is going to be a long-term commitment for us because the tactics used by bad actors are always changing. So we're trying to take action in the short-term but also invest in partnerships, tools and technology we'll need to stay ahead of new types of false news as well."

The new partners can also write articles that give additional information on various posts, which can appear below stories that are flagged as false within the user’s news feed. Facebook will also compliment this by notifying users when false news is shared. Outlets and pages that repeatedly share what is deemed to be "fake news" will be penalised by Facebook.