BOOM, AFP, Digit Eye, and others in India; and Fact Crescendo in Myanmar and Sri Lanka (WhatsApp Help Center 2021). TikTok has launched an Asia-Pacific factchecking program, partnering with fact checkers AFP and Lead Stories (Bettadapur 2020b). Both Google and Facebook have been known to work with threat intelligence company Graphika to identify potentially harmful content. Google has terminated thirty-six YouTube channels, one ad account, and one blog as part of its investigation into coordinated influence operations linked to Pakistan in June 2021. Google had received leads from Graphika for this investigation (Google 2021). In 2018, Facebook removed nine pages and six accounts for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB) on the platform in Bangladesh. The investigation began partly based on a tip from Graphika (Facebook 2018). FUNDING JOURNALISM, RESEARCH, AND DIGITAL LITERACY In addition to managing information disorder on their platforms, companies such as Facebook and Google have also taken the initiative to combat it on a wider scale by raising digital awareness through various initiatives and providing journalists and fact checkers with the funding and tools to fight misand disinformation. One such initiative is Facebook’s We Think Digital, which is a multi-phase awareness campaign to promote digital literacy in the Asia-Pacific region. Launched in 2019, the campaign involves Facebook working with experts, academics, NGOs, civil society organizations, and governments in various countries (Facebook 2021d). The modules and resources designed for the programs in each country can be downloaded or viewed for free by educators and the general public from the We Think Digital website.6 In some countries, the program is targeted at specific groups of people. For example, Facebook partnered with the National Commission for Women (NCW) and the Cyber Peace Foundation in India to provide digital literacy training to women. The aim was to train 100,000 women across seven Indian states, namely Uttar Pradesh, Assam, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, and Bihar (Majumdar 2020). In 2018, Google launched Google News Initiative, a journalism-focused program that aims to help publishers earn revenue and combat fake news globally.7 In 2019, Google News Initiative worked together with the Communications and Information Ministry of Indonesia and Mafindo to run a training I N FO R M ATI O N D I SO R D ER IN THE GLOBA L SOUTH program for the public on identifying disinformation online (The Jakarta Post 2019). Also in 2019, Google took action to expand digital literacy in South Korea as well. The company announced that it would help expand the digital and media literacy education program nationwide to educate the public on making sound judgements on digital media platforms and how to use a variety of digital media tools. The South Korean education program, which has been hosted by the Center for Digital Literacy since 2016, received 500 million won from Google.org (the charitable arm of Google) in 2017, allowing it to become one of the official programs at middle schools in Seoul and Gyeonggi province. In September 2019, LINE Thailand held its first workshop (in Bangkok), as part of its Stop Fake News campaign, in collaboration with its parent company LINE Plus Corporation and the Associated Press (AP). The campaign is aimed at young people and college students, especially those studying mass communication and journalism, and is also supported by the Thai Media Fund and LINE TODAY. In 2019 the campaign released an animated video to educate viewers on how to ascertain the reliability of information before sharing it (The Nation 2019). FORWARDING LIMITS In 2018, WhatsApp began to limit the number of times a message could be forwarded. While its global limit was twenty times, WhatsApp imposed a limit of five times on its biggest market, India, before bringing the global limit to five in 2019 (Liao 2018; Reuters 2019). In 2020 it narrowed down the limit of frequently forwarded messages to one chat at a time (Singh 2020). In May and June of 2021 WhatsApp blocked over 2 million accounts in India on the grounds of rule violations. WhatsApp stated that 95 percent of those users were blocked for exceeding the forwarding limit (BBC News 2021a). California-based Signal too has imposed a forwarding limit of five times on its platform, while Facebook Messenger has taken measures to do the same (Signal Support 2021; Singh 2020). MONITORING AND AWARENESS Social media companies generally make a point of monitoring their platforms for questionable content, with the help of dedicated teams and Asia – 2 1 0