Fact Checkers Take Stock of Their Efforts: ‘It’s Not Getting Better’ – The New York Times
After President Biden won the election nearly three years ago, three of every 10 Americans believed the false narrative that his victory resulted from fraud, a poll found. In the years since, fact checkers have debunked the claim in lengthy articles, corrections posted on viral content, videos and chat rooms.
This summer, they received a verdict on their efforts in an updated poll from Monmouth University: Very little has changed. Three of every 10 Americans still believed the false narrative.
With a wave of elections expected next year in dozens of countries, the global fact-checking community is taking stock of its efforts over a few intense years and many dont love what they see.
The number of fact-checking operations at news organizations and elsewhere has stagnated, and perhaps even fallen, after a booming expansion in response to a rise in unsubstantiated claims about elections and the pandemic. The social networking companies that once trumpeted efforts to combat misinformation are showing signs of waning interest. And those who write about falsehoods around the world are facing worsening harassment and personal threats.
Its not getting better, said Tai Nalon, a journalist who runs Aos Fatos, a Brazilian fact-checking and disinformation-tracking company.
Elections are scheduled next year in more than 5,500 municipalities across Brazil, which a few dozen Aos Fatos fact checkers will monitor. The idea exhausts Ms. Nalon, who has spent recent years navigating a disinformation-peddling president, bizarre theories about the pandemic, and an increasingly polluted online ecosystem rife with harassment, distrust and legal threats.
Ms. Nalons organization, one of the leading operations of its kind in Brazil, started in 2015 as attention to the fight against false and misleading content online surged. It was part of a fact-checking industry that bloomed around the world. At the end of last year, there were 424 fact-checking websites, up from just 11 in 2008, according to an annual census by the Duke University Reporters Lab.
The organizations used an arsenal of old and new tools: fact checks, pre-bunks that tried to inform viewers against misinformation before they encountered it, context labels, accuracy flags, warning screens, content removal policies, media literacy trainings and more. Facebook, which is owned by Meta, helped spur some of the growth in 2016 when it started working with and paying fact-checking operations. Online platforms, like TikTok, eventually followed suit.
Yet the momentum seems to be idling. This year, only 417 sites are active. The addition of new sites has slowed for several years, with just 20 last year compared with 83 in 2019. Sites such as the Baloney Meter in Canada and Fakt Ist Fakt in Austria have gone quiet in recent years.
The leveling-off represents something of a maturing of the field, said Angie Drobnic Holan, the director of the International Fact-Checking Network, which the nonprofit Poynter Institute started in 2015 to support fact checkers worldwide.
The work continues to draw interest from new parts of the world, and some think tanks and good-government groups have begun offering their own fact-checking services, experts said. Harassment and government repression, however, remain major deterrents. Political polarization has turned fact-checking and other misinformation defenses into a target among right-wing influencers, who claim that debunkers are biased against them.
Yasmin Green, chief executive of Jigsaw, a group within Google that studies threats like disinformation and extremism, recalled one study in which a participant scrolled past a fact check shared by a journalist from CNN and dismissed it out of hand. Well, who fact-checks the fact checkers? the user asked.
Were in this highly distrustful environment where youre evaluating just on the basis of the speaker and distrusting people who you decided their judgment is not trustworthy, Ms. Green said.
Intervening against misinformation has a broadly positive effect, according to researchers. Experiments conducted in 2020 concluded that fact checks in many parts of the world reduced false beliefs for at least two weeks. A team at Stanford determined that education about misinformation after the 2016 election had probably contributed to fewer Americans visiting websites in 2020 that were not credible.
Success, however, is inconsistent and contingent on many variables: the viewers location, age, political leaning and level of digital engagement, and whether a fact check is written or illustrated, succinct or explanatory. Many efforts never reach crucial demographics, while others are ignored or resisted.
After falsehoods swarmed Facebook during the pandemic, the platform instituted policies against Covid-19 misinformation. Some researchers, however, questioned the effectiveness of the efforts in a study published this month in the journal Science Advances. They determined that while the amount of anti-vaccine content had declined, engagement with the remaining anti-vaccine content had not.
In other words, users engaged just as much with anti-vaccine content as they would have if content had not been deleted, said David Broniatowski, a professor at George Washington University and an author of the paper.
The remaining anti-vaccine content was more likely to be misleading, researchers found, and users linked to less trustworthy sources than they did before Facebook put its policies in place.
Our integrity efforts continue to lead the industry, and we are laser-focused on tackling industrywide challenges, Corey Chambliss, a spokesman for Meta, said in an emailed statement. Any suggestion to the contrary is false.
In the first six months of this year, more than 40 million Facebook posts received a fact-check label, according to a report that the company submitted to the European Commission.
Social platforms where false narratives and conspiracy theories still spread widely have scaled back anti-disinformation resources over the past year. Researchers found that fact-checking organizations and similar outlets grew gradually more dependent on social media companies for a financial lifeline; misinformation watchers now worry that increasingly budget-conscious tech companies will start reducing their philanthropy spending.
If Meta ever cuts the budget for its third-party fact-checking program, it could decimate an entire industry of fact checkers that depend on its financial support, said Mr. Roth, now a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. (Meta said its commitment to the program had not changed.)
X has undergone some of the most significant changes of any platform. Its billionaire owner of less than a year, Elon Musk, embraced an experiment that relied on its own unpaid users rather than paid fact checkers and safety teams. The expanded fact-checking program Community Notes allows anyone to write corrections on posts. Users can deem a note helpful so it becomes visible to everyone; some notes have appeared alongside content from Mr. Musk and President Biden and even a viral post about a groundhog falsely accused of stealing vegetables.
X did not respond to a request for comment. Tech watchdogs fretted this week about the quality of content on X after The Information reported that the platform was cutting half the team dedicated to managing disinformation about election integrity; the company had said less than a month earlier that it planned to expand the team.
Crowdsourced fact-checking has shown mixed results in research, said Valerie Wirtschafter, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. An article she co-wrote in The Journal of Online Trust and Safety found that the presence of a Community Note did not keep posts from spreading widely. Users who created misleading posts saw no change in the engagement for subsequent posts, suggesting that they paid no penalty for sharing falsehoods.
Since most popular posts on X get a surge in attention within the first few hours, a Community Note added hours or days later would do little to reach people who had read the falsehoods, said Mr. Roth, who resigned from the company after Mr. Musks arrival last year.
Ive never found a way around having humans in the loop, he said in an interview. My belief, and everything Ive seen, is that on its own, Community Notes is not a sufficient replacement.
Defenders against false narratives and conspiracy theories are also struggling with another complication: artificial intelligence.
The technologys reality-warping abilities, which still manage to stump many of the tools designed to identify their use, are already keeping fact checkers busy. Last week, TikTok said it would test an A.I.-generated label, automatically appending it to content detected as having been edited or created with the technology.
Tests are also being run using A.I. to quickly parse the enormous volume of false information, identify frequent spreaders and respond to inaccuracies. The technology, however, has a shaky track record with truth. After the fact-checking organization PolitiFact tested ChatGPT on 40 claims that had already been meticulously researched by human fact checkers, the A.I. either made a mistake, refused to answer or arrived at a different conclusion from the fact checkers half of the time.
Between new technologies, fluctuating policies and stressed watchdogs, the online information ecosystem is in its messy adolescent years its gangly, and its got acne, and its moody, said Claire Wardle, a co-director of the Information Futures Lab at Brown University.
She is hopeful, however, that society will learn to adapt and that most people will continue to value accuracy. Misinformation during the 2022 midterm elections was less toxic than feared, thanks partly to media literacy efforts and training that helped the authorities respond far more quickly and aggressively to rumors, she said.
We tend to get obsessed with the very worst conspiracies the people who got radicalized, she said. Actually, the majority of audiences are pretty good at figuring this all out.
Audio produced by Adrienne Hurst.
Go here to see the original:
Fact Checkers Take Stock of Their Efforts: 'It's Not Getting Better' - The New York Times
- Indonesian Blockchain Company, Kita Foundation, Unveils Groundbreaking Social-Fi Platform, Pioneering the Evolution of Social Networking - Coinspeaker - May 15th, 2024 [May 15th, 2024]
- Lens Network to Migrate to zkSync: Scaling Social Networking on the Blockchain - CryptoDaily - May 15th, 2024 [May 15th, 2024]
- AI-generated spam is starting to fill social media. Here's why - NPR - May 15th, 2024 [May 15th, 2024]
- Exclusive Decentralization Unleashed: How Mask Network is Rethinking Social Media and Privacy - BeInCrypto - May 15th, 2024 [May 15th, 2024]
- CanMar Health and Wellness Hub promises censorship-free social networking | GreenState - GreenState - May 15th, 2024 [May 15th, 2024]
- Introducing Wayve: The Revolutionary Social Media Platform Redefining Privacy and Security - PR Newswire - May 15th, 2024 [May 15th, 2024]
- How AI-powered smart contracts shape the future of social networks - Cointelegraph - May 15th, 2024 [May 15th, 2024]
- Billionaire Frank McCourt's Project Liberty forms consortium to bid for TikTok's U.S. operations - The Globe and Mail - May 15th, 2024 [May 15th, 2024]
- Raising Voices, revelations and social networking in a teen drama on Netflix - Sortiraparis - May 15th, 2024 [May 15th, 2024]
- Of social media 'likes', fake friends and the true reflections on life - Nation - May 15th, 2024 [May 15th, 2024]
- Social Media Reacts to Oregon State, Washington State Playing Pac-12 Games on CW Network - Heartland College Sports - May 15th, 2024 [May 15th, 2024]
- Alia Bhatt lands on 'Blockout' list over Gaza crisis silence - NewsBytes - May 15th, 2024 [May 15th, 2024]
- 3 reasons WhatsApp could be your next big social network - Android Police - May 15th, 2024 [May 15th, 2024]
- Happy 40, Zuckerberg! If You Invested $1000 In Meta Platforms Stock When Mark Zuckerberg Turned 30, Here' - Benzinga - May 15th, 2024 [May 15th, 2024]
- Why removing protections on social media in the name of free speech is bad for peacebuilding - The Conversation - May 15th, 2024 [May 15th, 2024]
- Can U.S. Soccer punish Korbin Albert for social media activity? The policies and guidance in play - The Athletic - April 8th, 2024 [April 8th, 2024]
- Does social media content creation impact the professional identity of preventive health professionals? - Sciencenorway - April 8th, 2024 [April 8th, 2024]
- Social Networking in Bangladesh: Navigating the Online World - Daily Sun - April 8th, 2024 [April 8th, 2024]
- A photo taken on April 3, 2024 shows the logo of US online social media and social networking service Facebook on a ... - KTBS - April 8th, 2024 [April 8th, 2024]
- Trump sues two Trump Media co-founders, seeking to void their stock in the company - The Associated Press - April 8th, 2024 [April 8th, 2024]
- Donald Trump's net worth plunges $1 billion as his Truth Social stock tumbles - WLS-TV - April 8th, 2024 [April 8th, 2024]
- Q4 Earnings Roundup: Snap (NYSE:SNAP) And The Rest Of The Social Networking Segment - Yahoo Finance - April 5th, 2024 [April 5th, 2024]
- TikTok says it helped SMBs make billions last year - TechRadar - April 5th, 2024 [April 5th, 2024]
- A photo taken on April 3, 2024 shows the logo of US online social media and social networking service Facebook on a ... - Islander News.com - April 5th, 2024 [April 5th, 2024]
- A photo taken on April 3, 2024 shows the logo of US online social media and social networking service Facebook on a ... - The Mountaineer - April 5th, 2024 [April 5th, 2024]
- TikTok ban, social media rules for kids weighed in PA - Spotlight PA - April 5th, 2024 [April 5th, 2024]
- In case you missed it: This week's Top 5 stories on social media - Mayo Clinic - April 5th, 2024 [April 5th, 2024]
- Social Media Driving Force Behind Increased Visits to National Parks | News Center - Georgia Tech News Center - April 5th, 2024 [April 5th, 2024]
- 'The Social Network' Might Have Been a Very Different Movie Without This Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross Cue - GQ - April 5th, 2024 [April 5th, 2024]
- Meta's Threads app: Instagram's text-based platform competing with X - Business Insider - April 5th, 2024 [April 5th, 2024]
- Meta asks a judge to throw out an FTC antitrust case - Yahoo Finance Australia - April 5th, 2024 [April 5th, 2024]
- The link between smartphones and social media addiction - Computerworld - April 5th, 2024 [April 5th, 2024]
- Truth Social: why Donald Trump's social media 'meme stock' surged and fell by over US$1 billion within a week - The Conversation Indonesia - April 5th, 2024 [April 5th, 2024]
- School board social media lawsuits: For too long we've sought individual solutions to a collective problem - The Conversation Indonesia - April 5th, 2024 [April 5th, 2024]
- Is social network X falling out of favour with Americans? - The Star Online - April 5th, 2024 [April 5th, 2024]
- Where Will Trump Media (Truth Social) Stock Be in 10 Years? - The Motley Fool - April 5th, 2024 [April 5th, 2024]
- Is the clock ticking for TikTok? Computerworld - Computerworld - April 5th, 2024 [April 5th, 2024]
- Let's be honest, social media isn't driving a teen mental health crisis - City A.M. - April 5th, 2024 [April 5th, 2024]
- Social media use and health risk behaviours in young people: systematic review and meta-analysis - The BMJ - December 2nd, 2023 [December 2nd, 2023]
- Kids who use social media more prone to making dangerous decisions - Study Finds - December 2nd, 2023 [December 2nd, 2023]
- Social networking and fear of missing out (FOMO) among medical ... - BMC Psychology - December 2nd, 2023 [December 2nd, 2023]
- Meta warns that China is stepping up its online social media ... - NPR - December 2nd, 2023 [December 2nd, 2023]
- Q&A: What Is Social Media Doing to Our Kids and Our Sport? - Horse Network - December 2nd, 2023 [December 2nd, 2023]
- Both/And: Mixed methods analysis of network composition ... - BMC Public Health - December 2nd, 2023 [December 2nd, 2023]
- Attachment styles influence the tendency to form emotional bonds ... - PsyPost - December 2nd, 2023 [December 2nd, 2023]
- Executives On Social Media: The Value Of Social Leadership - Dataconomy - December 2nd, 2023 [December 2nd, 2023]
- YouTube is the UK's favourite social media - The Star Online - December 2nd, 2023 [December 2nd, 2023]
- How to Build Your LinkedIn Presence as a C-Suite Executive or ... - The Social Media Butterfly - December 2nd, 2023 [December 2nd, 2023]
- Rise of Social Media and its Impact on Global Communication - Daily Times - December 2nd, 2023 [December 2nd, 2023]
- Supreme Court to Hear Challenges to State Laws on Social Media - The New York Times - October 1st, 2023 [October 1st, 2023]
- Problem drinking linked to alcohol on social media - University of Queensland - October 1st, 2023 [October 1st, 2023]
- Threads still poses a threat to X despite slowed growth, analysis finds - Marketing Dive - October 1st, 2023 [October 1st, 2023]
- Supreme Court will look at new state laws that attempt to control ... - WREX.com - October 1st, 2023 [October 1st, 2023]
- New York Bans Employers From Requiring Disclosure of Personal ... - Perkins Coie - October 1st, 2023 [October 1st, 2023]
- Passionate Horror Fan Now Earns Thousands Teaching Creepy ... - Good News Network - October 1st, 2023 [October 1st, 2023]
- How The Social Network Turned a By the Numbers True Story Into a ... - MovieWeb - October 1st, 2023 [October 1st, 2023]
- Networking boosts Yugorithm's virtual and social media marketing ... - BusinessMirror - October 1st, 2023 [October 1st, 2023]
- Patrick Surtain Takes to Social Media To Express Discontent With ... - Pro Football Network - October 1st, 2023 [October 1st, 2023]
- The dark side of AI on social media - asianews.network - October 1st, 2023 [October 1st, 2023]
- Reddit Is Removing Ability To Opt Out of Ad Personalization Based ... - Slashdot - October 1st, 2023 [October 1st, 2023]
- FCC To Reintroduce Rules Protecting Net Neutrality - Slashdot - October 1st, 2023 [October 1st, 2023]
- Instagram's new Threads social network is live and growing fast - Android Central - July 6th, 2023 [July 6th, 2023]
- The Power of Social Media for Mobilizing and Networking - YR Media - July 6th, 2023 [July 6th, 2023]
- So where are we all supposed to go now? - The Verge - July 6th, 2023 [July 6th, 2023]
- Leaders don't need another social media platform - we need to use ... - HR Grapevine - July 6th, 2023 [July 6th, 2023]
- Adapting to the Changing Social Media Landscape - CMSWire - July 6th, 2023 [July 6th, 2023]
- Reddit News: One Million Dollar Bounty to Copy - ReadWrite - July 6th, 2023 [July 6th, 2023]
- Court rulings vary in cases of blackmail, privacy violation on social ... - Roya News English - July 6th, 2023 [July 6th, 2023]
- Enjoyed Celebrity on Netflix? 12 Movies and Shows About Social ... - Leisure Byte - July 6th, 2023 [July 6th, 2023]
- In the year since I quit social media, my screen time has fallen, my mood is up even my resting heart rate is lower - The Guardian - May 20th, 2023 [May 20th, 2023]
- Virtual Business Cards: The Future of Networking - Eye On Annapolis - May 20th, 2023 [May 20th, 2023]
- Sex Offender Charged with Sexual Exploitation of a Minor - Department of Justice - May 20th, 2023 [May 20th, 2023]
- Platform Powerplay: How to choose the ultimate social media ... - The Sanford Herald - May 20th, 2023 [May 20th, 2023]
- LikeRE, A Leading EdTech And Social Network For Real Estate Professionals, Adds Muriel Williams-Thompson To - EIN News - May 20th, 2023 [May 20th, 2023]
- Experts Say These Are the Best Social Media Platforms for Money Advice - GOBankingRates - May 20th, 2023 [May 20th, 2023]
- Students agree to give up social media during their exams to boost ... - Nottinghamshire Live - May 20th, 2023 [May 20th, 2023]
- Elon Musk Moves Twitter Closer To 'Super App' Status With Startup ... - Crunchbase News - May 20th, 2023 [May 20th, 2023]
- BJP leader's daughter to marry a Muslim, photo of wedding card goes viral on social media - Devdiscourse - May 20th, 2023 [May 20th, 2023]
- Survey Unveils Disturbing Prevalence of Sexual Harassment ... - Business Cheshire - May 20th, 2023 [May 20th, 2023]
- Ghana school students talk about their social media addiction, and how it affects their use of English - The Conversation Indonesia - May 16th, 2023 [May 16th, 2023]