The Digital Economy and Society (DES) Ministry is developing a mobile application to facilitate internal communication among state agencies in the fight against fake news.
The DES Ministry established the Anti-Fake News Centre (AFNC) and is seeking cooperation from more media agencies as part of a network to counter disinformation spreading online.
At present 10 media agencies are part of the network. Two people from each cooperative news agency are assigned to work with the centre.
The move is part of the AFNC's development plan in its second year of operation. The centre was founded in November last year.
DES permanent secretary Ajarin Pattanapanchai stressed that the AFNC is operating in line with the practices upheld by the International Fact-Checking Network, a forum for fact-checkers worldwide.
The AFNC aims to improve public awareness and cooperation in preventing the spread of fake news, supplying accurate information from related agencies to the public.
The centre classifies items in healthcare, state policies, disaster and economy categories.
The centre has six communication channels where the public can send complaints about suspicious information: a website, Facebook, Twitter, Line, a call centre and the Fake News Notification Centre.
Ms Ajarin said the ministry is developing a mobile app for state agencies involved in the fight against fake news, which should shorten the process of information notification, verification and clarification all the way through to legal action against violators.
"Even though legal action is not the AFNC's priority, the prosecution of offenders is still needed when they breach the law," she said.
Ms Ajarin said about 400 people from state, private and independent agencies take part in the anti-fake news network.
She said news agencies can give effective support to stop the spread of fake news as they are trusted by people.
In its 11 months of operation, 17.3 million messages have been sent to the AFNC for verification with 18,479 messages falling under the four identified categories.
The AFNC found 6,411 of them required examination. Of them, 3,539 involved healthcare issues; 2,499 concerned government policies; 125 were related to disasters; and 248 were associated with financial and economic issues.
Ms Ajarin said the police's Technology Crime Suppression Department received more than 600 complaints from the AFNC and 157 people have been prosecuted during the 11 months of the centre's operation.
Most offenders violated the Computer Related Crime Act and the rest breached the Emergency Decree, especially during the outbreak of the coronavirus in the country, she said.
The AFNC has adopted a range of technologies, such as artificial intelligence, cloud and big data, to help collect, sort and analyse information spreading online, said Ms Ajarin.