i think peta has found a new friend! now it's time for a look at the weather with chris fawkes. most of you have seen a beautiful day with plenty of sunshine, the early—morning cloud day with plenty of sunshine, the ea rly—morning cloud clearing day with plenty of sunshine, the early—morning cloud clearing away to give blow in sunny skies, a couple of exceptions, east scotland and northern ireland but as we go through this evening and overnight, the cloud is already breaking up in northern ireland and will start to thin and break a little in eastern scotla nd thin and break a little in eastern scotland as well. we're left with clear skies and a fairly brisk south—easterly wind and a cold one, much colder than recent nights, temperatures in towns and cities down to 2—4. tomorrow, notice northern ireland joins in on the sunny story and not much cloud for eastern scotland. what cloud we have in the morning should tend to fizzle out. in the sunshine, temperatures close to average for the time of year, highs of around 10—12, something like that. but then the weather over the next few days is going to turn cloudy. some damp weather around but more significantly, it will start to feel freezing cold with highs of about five foot on tuesday. that the

weather. the world. hello this is bbc news. the headlines: five ministers in theresa may's cabinetjoin forces to try and persuade her to make changes to the draft brexit agreement. other ministers voice their support for the prime minister. president trump is visiting california, where wildfires have killed at least 71 people and left thousands homeless this is the kind of destruction, in fact, they are telling me this is even not as bad as some areas, some areas are even beyond this that are just charred. so one thing we have, we have the greatest people in the world looking and helping first responders. according to reports in us media, the cia believes the saudi crown prince ordered the murder of the journalist jamal khashoggi. the broadcaster, writer and former newsreader, richard baker, has died at the age of 93.

now on bbc news — matthew amroliwala hosts a discussion by social media executives in delhi to discuss the fake news crisis and the roles their platforms play in the problem, and the solution — in the tech giants: beyond fake news. ladies and gentlemen, welcome here to our panel discussion. welcome to everyone who is watching around the world. and finally, welcome to our panellists who have joined us. let me start by introducing them, we have manish khanduri from facebook, irene liu from google, and vijaya gadde from twitter. thank you for all being here with us. i will start by asking all of them for 30 seconds each — your analysis of the seriousness of the fake news problem. let's start with you, manish. thank you. we think it is an existential threat to the platform.

and we take this problem very seriously for two reasons. the first one is that as a social media platform, we are focused on the quality of interaction and misinformation impacts that. the second reason is that, again, as a social media platform, you do things in the social good, and misinformation is the exact opposite of that. we think that it is a pretty serious problem. at google, we think it is an incredibly serious problem. and google has a responsibility to be part of the solution. when people come to google, they expect answers and so, we hope that we can, through technology and through partnerships with journalists and others, that we can provide high quality, authoritative content, when they come to us for those questions. thank you matthew. twitter's mission is to serve the public conversation. people come to twitter to find out what is going on and tell the world what is happening. if we can't be a source of quality information for them, then they will stop using the product, so it is incredibly important for us as a platform, but also for us to recognise the impact of this type of news out in the world. manish, are all of you part of

the problem or part of the solution? mark zuckerberg admitted to congress he had been slow to respond to fake news. has he also been slow to respond to the lynchings in india? so this is an interesting way of looking at it. the first thing i would like to say is that as a social media platform, we have always been upfront with the mistakes that we have made. we go back to 2016, a certain amount of mistakes were made, as far as the elections were concerned. we learn from what we have undergone, and i think, to answer your question, as a platform, facebook is incredibly interested in actually being part of the solution. it is incredibly interested in making sure that the quality of content on the platform is of a very high nature. it is incredibly interested in fighting this movement. specific to those lynchings, i haven't seen mark zuckerberg give a television interview about it. i can't speak for mark zuckerberg, but i can tell you it is incredibly and intensely...

he is incredibly and intensely interested in what is happening in india. i know for a fact that he has created a large number of teams which are looking at this issue. he is also looking at a number of other areas, including creating a war room in washington, dc, which is looking at elections. also, in terms of the misinformation, i think we are doing a number of things that i would love to speak about if i get the opportunity. just specifically though, around whatsapp and all of the lynchings and all of the problems we have seen in india, the indian government has said whatsapp cannot be a mute bystander, they have to take responsibility. are they right? before i answer that question, let me try and preface that. i work for facebook, and i am more than happy to answer questions on behalf of whatsapp, but this is my personal interpretation of what i have seen. but facebook owned whatsapp, so... yes, but again, these are two organisations which operate somewhat independently. i am a facebook representative, not necessarily from whatsapp, but i am happy to talk about it. i think it is a learning process for all of us, there is an incredible amount of good that happens

in the platform. there is an incredible amount of knowledge that is shared on the platform. as far as whatsapp is concerned, i think they are making some changes within india in terms of restructuring the operations, in terms of looking at the quality of information that is flowing. so we have done a number of things, which try to combat the nature of the problem and we believe that it is a serious problem. whatsapp believe it is a serious problem. and it is trying to address those. i will come back to some of those changes that have been made and what facebook is doing in a moment or two. before moving on, i would like to invite the audience, a quick show of hands, how many people use whatsapp, let's say on a daily basis? so that's just about everybody here. how many people here think it's a problem, fake news on social media? so again, virtually the whole of the audience. irene, in terms of google, argue also part of the problem? you own youtube, so much fake video there, it's out there on your platform. so you're speaking about youtube? yes. i would say that youtube is a unique

entity, as you saw earlier today, there was a panellist who was on youtube, was a youtuber, who actually works to debunk news and information. i think what is interesting about youtube is that when it was launched, most of the users were focused on lifestyle and entertainment. i think that we have learned that more and more people are coming, particularly in places like india, for more news and hard news and information content. as a result, we have been learning and we have been adjusting. we have actually been leveraging what we have found from google. are you learning? are you adjusting fast enough in terms of youtube? because you look at something like the florida shooting, you have a video where people are saying it's a government put up job, emma gonzales, the student who became famous after the school shooting, a video of her doctor tearing up the us constitution, when she was actually tearing up a target. all of that is on that platform. i would say that we have actually learned from those specific incidents and earlier this year,

about one month ago, we announced that we were going to implement a number of product changes to youtube, to give users more context. it's always a balance between free speech and giving people an opportunity and a voice, and also ensuring that it is a safe platform for people to use, that they aren't subject to bullying. so we have guidelines to fix that, and in addition to that, providing more opportunities in breaking news situations, so that if someone is going to youtube for that kind of content, they will actually get news from authoritative sources, including from text, which often moves faster than video. vijaya, in terms of twitter, us election, facebook, twitter, they were the playground for fake news. what are you doing to combat fake accounts? because often, what starts as fake on twitter then cascades down in india, across all social media platforms. yes, we have learned a lot of lessons, i would say, from the 2016 us election in particular.

and how the platform was manipulated by certain parties to spread certain types of information, and to actually sew division within the population. we have taken a lot of those learnings and put them into work, very specifically, last week, for the us midterms. a lot of what we have focused on is behavioural patterns, so we were able to identify when people are either using malicious automation or human coordinated automation to amplify trends, to insert fake news. these are things that we are learning very fast and adjusting, so that fake accounts do not have that ability. with fake accounts in particular, we have gone through the process of eliminating millions and millions of those accounts. you will notice that follower counts... but those accounts reappear? they do reappear, but our technology is getting better at identifying them when they come back and also, we have taken the stance of removing a lot of these fake accounts from follower counts so that has

been a global phenomenon that we have been able to do. here, the level of trolling is something else, off the scale, in india. rape threats, death threats, it is almost impossible to get that stuff taken down. why? it shouldn't be. our number one priority at twitter is to focus on the health of the public conversation, and that is not healthy. this type of information needs to come down. if it is not, you would accept that is a major failing? absolutely. we do have reporting structures in place for that type of content to be reported, but the problem today is that the burden of reporting is often on the people who are suffering from the harassment. it is our responsibility and our goal to be more proactive so people don't have to report the content to us. the problem is that people report it and they complain that nothing happens, it stays there, and that is their fundamental problem. i hear that so often and i interview people and talk to people about different times when they feel they are targeted. manish, can i come back to fake news and facebook? why is it proving so

difficult for facebook? the un savaged facebook about the way it was used to whip up hate against the rohingya muslims. in sri lanka, one of the presidential staff recently spoke of an attack on muslims, saying, the seeds are ours, the wind is facebook. i'd like to answer that question in two ways. one is that it is essentially the nature of misinformation and social media. what we are finding over a period of time is combating against misinformation is notjust a platform problem, it is notjust facebook that is involved in this, it is a societal issue. and i think the response at facebook has been notjust to learn from the mistakes that we have made, but to tackle that on three different fronts. the first one is essentially looking at the product, and trying to combat misinformation by cutting down on incidents of fake news on the platform. the second is through education. and the third is essentially looking at some of these trends and how do we get better at them, through a mixture of increased

participation of humans, and machine learning. but you accept you have to get better, a lot better, because, i spoke about the rohingya crisis, mark zuckerburg talked about hiring more burmese speaking experts, we still don't know how many have been hired. that is your problem across the board. you need many more humans and you need much better algorithms? we do. and it is a continuous process of learning. just to that, we are increasing the number of people looking at this problem, we are always doubling that number. so we are going from around 8000 around the world now, to around 20,000 by the end of the year. as acknowledgement of the problem that there needs to be greater human interface. as far as the algorithms are concerned, yes, there is a continuous process of improvement and we are trying to get better at it. but we do realise that this is not a solution that only facebook can implement. it is probably a challenge that will persist. misinformation, i know for a fact in india as a journalist, it was there when i was in journalism in the 905. it is probably going to be there for a very long time.

the effort to combat it... sure, but it feels like it has been weaponised now with social media. that is the difference between say a generation ago and now. its ability has spread and its ability to spread so quickly and cause such havoc. you are absolutely correct, that is a challenge. that is why we are trying to combat that at facebook. and we do that by a mixture... so for example, a third—party fact checking programme that we have launched. it is notjust humans looking at that content, but it is an algorithm that tries to determine the validity of that content and then human beings take a look at it. so we are trying to do several things, we are not the company that is... i am not going to stand up and say we are perfect, i am not going to say we have been successful time, we learn from ourfailures. irene, let me bring you in in terms of google and the search engine, because why, and i did it only a couple of days ago, why if i type in, "where was barack 0bama born?", does google take me to a conspiracy story, a story we know has been debunked, we know it is a lie, it is still there as the number one hit?

are you more interested in clicks than the truth? as a search engine, we are not more interested in clicks than the truth. our goal is to make sure that if you are asking a question of google, that you get authoritative content. but that's not authoritative content. it should be where he was born, and you should be able to find conspiracy theories, if at all, way further down. that is not the case, and that is the case with so many other things that attract so many clicks. i can't speak to that specific incident because have not looked at it myself, but one of the things we think is really important is strengthening authoritative sources, so when people ask questions those rise up. we are doing that in a number of ways. we are working with news organisations and journalists, doing training on verification and on the technology side, making sure that when news organisation and others are creating fact—checked content that it surfaces on google and surfaces in a prominent way. why isn't stuff that is

fake just be taken off? google is a search engine, we are not hosting that content, we are pointing, and so... you are disseminating fake content to billions. that is not what we want to do, and certainly... maybe not what you want to do, but that is the reality of what is happening. the reality is that it is a constant battle to train the algorithm to ensure that it is actually surfacing the content we want. we have thousands of search raters around the world, in local language and local contexts, trying to hone that specific search. a few really quickfire governance questions to all of you. which of your companies has a head of fake news that has been appointed at board level? we don't have that position at twitter. facebook? no. google? we do not.

do any of your companies have a head of department that is totally concentrating on attacking fake news? like you have a head of sales, head of marketing, head of finance. i can speakfor india... speak for facebook. for facebook as as a whole, or facebook india. i can do either. in india we do. in india we have recently made a new hire which we are announcing in a while. we have a committee of product policy... a committee. yes, because it is a multi—faceted problem. you have a head of finance, you have a head of sales, why, when you started by saying you are taking this seriously, why do you not have a head that is looking specifically at attacking the problem of fake news? because we need to look at this from all angles within the organisation. you can say that of sales or marketing, finance, any of those departments. specifically to the issue of misinformation, it is a multifaceted problem that requires product engineers as well as people who understand the policy and ecosystem who can talk and collaborate together.

can i respond to that question? 0ur number one objective at twitter, that applies to the entire company, product, engineering, policy, everyone, is the health of the public conversation. you don't have somebody at board level... answer me another question then. for your r&d budget, looking at new ways to attack this problem, what proportion is spent on combating fake news? i don't know the specifics of that number but what i can tell you is that it is the number one objective of our product and engineering teams is the health of the public conversation. manish, i know what you said about speaking for facebook but not for whatsapp, whatsapp has a grievance officerfor india, that is based out of the us. yes. that is extraordinary, isn't it? i don't think so, no. everybody has the right to their opinion. what we have found and discovered is that the grievance officer, typically the experience with it companies also has been, goal location of the grievance officer, where there are the teams that can actually help in a product solve is the most efficient way

of solving that problem. let me ask about some of the things you are doing in more detail. all of you said you are learning, manish, i want to look at the scale of what you are actually doing. facebook is working here in india with boom as a third party fact checker. that is great, it is in all your literature, we've been looking at it through the course of this week. boom employs six people. facebook had revenues for q1 2018 at $11 billion. there is a massive mismatch there, isn't it? what is the mismatch you are talking about, if i can ask you? i am talking about the scale of facebook‘s response. when facebook talk about working with boom, boom has six people trying to debunk all of this tidal wave of stories we are talking about. in fact we just added

another third—party fact checker recently, afp. just to that point. nobody at facebook, or me at this point in time is going to say that it is a one—day solve or... i am asking you about the scale of your response. is it in any way sufficient to match the scale of the problem? my answer is that is that it is a work in progress. we have to increase the network of third—party fact checkers in india. i know that, that is a job i am personally responsible for. we have to increase and improve the ways we combat misinformation on the platform, we have to scale up, there is absolutely no doubt about that. but to say there is a mismatch i feel is personally unfair because we are trying to combat the problem, we are trying to do a serious job of it, from three or four perspectives. and if that mismatch exists, as you say it is, we found that over a period of time improvements have been made. there is research out there that i can share, including university research, that says facebook‘s response to fake news from 2016 until now has improved significantly. but i wonder, just

a final point on this — i wonder if part of the reason that the scale of it is not sufficient is simply because what is in the uppermost of perhaps all the platforms' minds, and the tech giants, is your business model. we talked about whatsapp earlier, basic to that is encryption. the indian government say look, there has to be a workaround, but whatsapp says no, encryption is our thing. facebook too, is obsessed by growth, growth, growth. you say you are serious about fake news but perhaps that is trumped by your business model. you have to ask me a question. is it? crowd laughs. no. google? i should say our business model is fundamentally different in this way. people for the most part are coming for search.

if they are coming to us, it is our goal fundamental to make sure they get good answers. what i'm asking is, what is the most important thing, is it the business model or is it taking this problem as seriously as you said right at the start? our business model is not fundamentally at odds with tackling this issue, or trying to be part of the solution at all. in fact, if we succeed in making sure our platform is a place where people can get high quality information, that helps our business model. what about twitter's business model, and that being the pre—eminence... i'm sorry, what being the pre—eminence? does that again supersede tackling the problem we have with fake news? absolutely not. as we said, our number one objective above any other at the company is the health of the public conversation. if you ask any executive what their responsibility is... why is it so problematic then to take down fake sites? there are a couple of issues, there's the philosophical issues and then there is practical scale issues involved.

philosophically, there is the question to be answered, and one everyone should participate in — do you want individual companies like ours making decisions about what is true and not true? i get there are going to be certain circumstances when those are obvious... do you think your company should be doing that? i think it would be enormously challenging, and i think if we did we would be sitting here having a discussion about how we were not successful there as well. i don't think there are easy answers. but i do think it is important that we have these dialogues and are open to... we are not looking for easy answers, we are looking for any answers into how to improve the situation. exactly, and one of the things you are going to see is each of us trying different things and learning from each other to improve this. it is certainly not in service to our business model to have information that is inaccurate on our platform. i want to ask a question to all of you once again, how long should we give you, the authorities give you, to sort this all out before taking tougher action, sanctions perhaps, breaking you up, perhaps you are too big? tougher legislation?

i think the answer to that is the reason that some of us are here today is to have these sorts of conversations, where we can participate with all members of society to come to some sort of way to improve the platform. i don't think it is a question of time. i think what is shown over the past couple of years is we have improved, made changes on our platform, and tried to bring a lot of resolution, infrastructure to solve the problem. we realise it is a challenge, but the number of people, and i'll speak to facebook and whatsapp, there is a lot of good that comes out of facebook and whatsapp. it is the story is that comes out that are the outliers. that is the gun lobby defence. it is not, that is not true. the guns are good, the people are bad. i am not making that argument, matthew. what we are saying is we are understanding the problem, we are grappling with the problem. this is not a one—day process — it is probably not even going to be a six month solve. we are sitting here out of a genuine desire to make an impact. out of the interest, when were the three of you, in terms of companies,

in the same room trying to battle through solutions for all of us to solve this problem? it's a great idea, i haven't thought about it. hasn't happened so far? no, it actually has. i worked very closely with the head of news integrity at facebook and we have done trainings together. last week, all of the companies were together in the united states ahead of the election working together on these very issues. in the united states they were murmuring about that. i'm going to go back to the audience, i asked you for a show of hands at the start, i'm going to have a final show of hands. in terms of what you have heard so far, who here is more optimistic about trying to get to grips with this problem, in terms of what the tech companies are doing, given what you have just heard? who is more optimistic? we have a lot of work to do. a lot of work, you talked about a lot of learnings, i can't let you come back but i think that shows you the scale of the challenge for all of you.

there are many problems but that is just a little glimpse. i want to thank you, the audience, i want to thank you for watching there at home, around the world, and i want to thank our panellists forjoining us here on today's discussion. for most parts of the uk, it has been a glorious day with plenty of afternoon sunshine, and some gorgeous autumn colours as well. we did start off with a lot of cloud. most of it melted away, although it did stay in northern ireland and eastern scotland. when the sunshine came out, what a glorious day it was, with blue skies overhead. and to end the day, another shot of the sunset. our weather around the planet is interlinked, temperatures

in iceland reached 16 celsius, that is 13 degrees 01 than normal. the significance is that it builds high—pressure westwards, meaning cold air comes into western europe and it is on the way to us. toward the middle of the week, temperatures will be around 5 degrees in a number of areas. so cold weather is just around the corner. it is all linked with the one going into the arctic. overnight tonight, we will have clear skies, temperatures will plunge. it would be a really cold fa ct, plunge. it would be a really cold fact, but the breeze will stay up, it will make it feel cold, but temperatures will just stay on it will make it feel cold, but temperatures willjust stay on the right side of freezing. perhaps some of the deeper valleys in the scottish highlands could get down below freezing. high pressure with us on below freezing. high pressure with us on sunday, we will start to get easterly winds. we continue to drag in dry air, so it'll be a fine and sunny day. we could start off with some cloud in eastern areas of scotland. there will be more sunshine here than today, and northern ireland, and other big improvement with sunny skies

overhead. so sunshine across the board, and not feeling bad in the sunshine, if it wants to these uncommon but in the breeze it will feel quite cool. temperatures are 10-12 feel quite cool. temperatures are 10—12 degrees, close to normal for this time of year. they change coming into monday, it will turn cloudy, and around some of the north sea coasts, the cloud could be thick enough to bring some light rain. the temperatures will go down, the trend continues into tuesday when the really cold air strikes to arrive. it is coldest across england and wales, temperatures for some will be around for mac or five celsius. it will feel like winter has arrived with eight cold wind. temperatures down to the middle of the week, winter is on the way. this is bbc world news today. i'm tanya beckett. our top stories. president trump sees for himself the devastation caused by california's worst ever wildfires. more than 70 people are dead and about 1000

are still unaccounted for. more than 200,000 people demonstrate across france against rising fuel prices and the cost of living. supporters of the theresa may dismiss calls for her to try and renogotiate her brexit deal with the eu. and, alexander zverev has done it! the 21—year—old german is through to his first atp final after defeating roger federer.