This post is published on the IFCN website (in English, Portuguese and Spanish), on Maldita.es (in Spanish) and on Full Fact (in English).
The online traffic and reach of fact-checking organizations’ work receives a major boost from Facebook and Google, according to figures these companies have shared about the impact of our fact-checks:
“Fact checks appear more than 11 million times per day across global search results and Google News in five countries (Brazil, France, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States). That adds up to roughly 4 billion impressions per year.”
“During the month of March, we displayed warnings on approximately 40 million pieces of COVID-19–related content on Facebook, based on around 4,000 articles from our independent fact-checking partners. When people saw those warning labels, 95% of the time they did not go on to view the original content.”
The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) hosted a panel during Global Fact 2020 (the annual fact-checking conference) and co-facilitated a panel with Full Fact to explore how fact-checkers would like to partner with platforms in the future, and how we should rethink the value of the data we distribute online.
Allowing access to our data for reuse while ensuring economic sustainability
In recent months, several nonprofit as well as commercial organizations have approached the fact-checking community — sometimes through the IFCN, sometimes through small groups that emerged from Global Fact sessions — to request the use of certain data. One example would be an organization asking to scrape the results of fact-checks that appear through ClaimReview in order to display them in another context (the ClaimReview schema is a tagging system that allows search engines and social media platforms to show our fact-checks in other places, such as news results or search results).
It is exciting to see proposals for new ways to use our work online, but these situations raise questions about how prepared the fact-checking community is to respond to such proposals. What ethical and legal agreements should exist for third parties that want to use this data, in order to ensure it is used correctly? While many fact-checkers may agree to donate these data to organizations for public benefit, what happens if some fact-checking organizations do not want to? Do we risk setting a precedent that makes it harder later to charge commercial organizations for the same data? If, as an industry, we decide to establish a monetization structure to cover the cost of producing and collecting these data, what form should it take, what would the ownership structure be, and who would manage it?
Expanding fact-checking to other platforms under collective principles
During interviews for Full Fact’s report on the challenges of online fact-checking (forthcoming), researchers found that fact-checkers see deep value in Facebook’s third-party fact-checking program beyond the funding it provides. The program offers greatly improved monitoring capacity, increased public visibility, and the ability to influence publishers on other websites and media outlets to correct misinformation. It is therefore not surprising that many support the introduction of similar structured payment programs on other platforms.
Some fact-checkers at Global Fact raised the possibility of a union or collectively owned platform to distribute fact-checks and negotiate payment for ratings and data with third parties, such as platforms or other commercial organizations.
Based on the discussions at our Global Fact workshop, we believe fact-checkers would benefit from holding private discussions about the design of new programs. Fact-checkers should also consider what collective requirements, if any, we should make as an industry — for example on standards, transparency commitments, or impact reporting — before potential partners approach us individually under non-disclosure agreements. Internet companies rarely share publicly available data about the spread of disinformation on their platforms. Academic research must have access to meaningful and up-to-date information.
Fact-checkers need to have these conversations collectively so that we can build better relationships with internet platforms and others in the future. Current partnerships with platforms, distribution systems, and funding models are not unlimited, and in some cases they should not be. Fact-checkers uphold standards of integrity and truth in societies at a time when these cannot be taken for granted in any country in the world. We can and must make decisions now to ensure our effectiveness and long-term sustainability.
The IFCN has reached out to a representative sample of fact-checkers around the world to structure these conversations and share ideas and suggestions with the wider community. In the coming weeks and months, fact-checkers will be invited to take part in individual and collective discussions on some of the key issues related to the sustainability and scalability of our efforts as a community.
We see this as a complementary effort to the work already being done by individual fact-checking organizations to build stronger and more sustainable paths toward accurate and reliable information in their respective countries.
Signed by Angie Drobnic Holan (PolitiFact) | North America, Baybars Orsek (IFCN), Clara Jiménez Cruz (Maldita.es) | Europe, Cristina Tardaguila (IFCN), David Schraven (Correctiv) | Europe, Gemma Mendoza (Rappler) | Asia, Glenn Kessler (Washington Post) | North America, Govindraj Ethiraj (Factchecker.in) | Asia, Gulin Cavus (Teyit) | MENA, Laura Zommer (Chequeado) | South America, Noko Makgato (Africa Check) | Africa, Phoebe Arnold (Full Fact) | Europe, Tai Nalon (Aos Fatos) | South America, Tijana Cvjetićanin (Zašto ne) | Europe, Will Moy (Full Fact) | Europe