Over the past few days, the most used social media platforms across the world are working round the clock to combat the wave of false reports, fake videos and falsities that have spread across countries as they threaten to disrupt all efforts to inform & prepare people on ways to deal with this global pandemic.

So while panic and fear continues to mount around the coronavirus outbreak, the spread of false information has been rapid. These forwards or messages cannot just be categorized as annoying spam. It can be very dangerous. Therefore CNBC-TV18's Startup Street team decided to focus on players who are working relentlessly to debunk some of the most circulated COVID-19 messages, misinformation and false stories that we encounter on a daily basis on social media as well as mainstream media.

One such startup is Alt News. Megha Vishwanath spoke to Pratik Sinha Co-Founder of Alt News, Berges Malu Dir - Public Policy at ShareChat and Aakrit Vaish Co-Founder & CEO of Haptik to decode the fake news menace.

Moreover, now with most people across the country confined to their homes, usage of books, comics and gaming apps have skyrocketed. Mobile browsing app activity too has surged by nearly 40 percent, this according to a report by Bengaluru based In-Mobi Group, titled 'COVID-19 Consumer Insights: India'.

The report has analysed aggregated data signals from the first week of January to March 11 2020. To talk about the emerging trends in the report Megha Vishwanath also spoke to Vasuta Agarwal, MD - APAC at InMobi.

First Published:Mar 24, 2020 7:07 PM IST