How AI, political pressure, and tech shifts threaten information integrity
Fact-checkers are regrouping to respond to challenging new circumstances, but it is not just our fight. The line we are holding is to defend the very idea that facts are building blocks of a shared reality, determined by evidence, not proclaimed by dictators or fabricated by artificial intelligence. The outcome should concern us all.
In 2021, Maria Ressa, a Filipino/US journalist and a CEO of Rappler, won a Nobel Prize for her work and efforts to safeguard freedom of expression. In her Nobel lecture Ressa famously stressed the importance of facts and sounded the alarm about hate speech and disinformation on social networks’ working as an invisible bomb that exploded into our information ecosystem, leaving us standing on the rubbles of a world we knew, in dire need to create a better one.
Three years later, Ressa delivered a keynote at GlobalFact 11, a yearly summit of The International Fact-checking Network (IFCN), held in Sarajevo. Things have gotten way worse and can be expected to deteriorate further, Ressa said. “We are electing illiberal leaders democratically, so it is a choice. And part of that is because of the way we consume news, the way we get facts.” In a “Super election year” with half of the world population voting in the polls, artificial intelligence further blurring the line between facts and fiction, and populist movements exploiting the “toxic sludge” of social networks, the work to preserve facts has never been more important, she said.
Ressa also appealed to the representatives of tech companies, whose accountability she has long demanded, to step up their support for fact-checkers and make meaningful changes to their products to protect information integrity.
“This is gonna be the moment where, a decade from now, you’re gonna wanna look up and know you did everything you could, everything, because the world will be transformed. (…) So we go back to the design of the companies. You can make a fraction less money to preserve the reality of the world.”
Ressa’s message resonated strongly with the audience of 500 fact-checkers, reporters and researchers in the field of disinformation. For the platforms, other factors were more decisive.
In January 2025, after Donald Trump won the US Presidential election, Meta’s owner Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company is “getting rid of fact-checkers, starting in the US”. The company’s Third Party Fact-checking program (TPFC) made it possible for independent fact-checkers to label false and misleading content on Facebook and Instagram. Zuckerberg used to praise it as a state of the art approach to curb disinformation.
With a new political reality, however, his discourse changed abruptly to match the narratives of Trump politics. The TPFC has become “too politically biased”, Zuckerberg said, and the fact-checkers used it to somehow execute a downright Orwellian censorship on the program of Meta’s own making. The “censorship” was forced on the platform by the previous administration and all eyes were now on Trump to protect the apparently fragile tech giant from another attacker that was previously treated as an ally in protecting democracy and information integrity: the European Union and its Digital Services Act.
These false accusations echoed eerily in one of the first executive orders signed by Donald Trump, “Restoring Freedom Of Speech And Ending Federal Censorship”. A month later, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launched a Request for Public Comments Regarding Technology Platform Censorship, calling users who have been “banned, shadow banned, demonetized, or otherwise censored” to describe their experiences. The very word choices reflected the long established narrative of the US right wing media, where fact-checking has consistently been disparaged as “censorship” targeting conservatives and undermining freedom of speech, despite well established evidence that social networks actually contributed to visibility and virality of precisely that side of the isle.
This is the parallel universe in the making, one where policies are not based on evidence, but on perceptions built on misinformation and the alleged fight for freedom of speech is, expectedly, an alibi for actual censorship. In the US, the new administration is now banning the use of words they don’t like, as well as policies based on scientific consensus about health and medicine. In Serbia, the police raided premises of several civil society organisations based on imaginary “investigations of USAID corruption”.
The tech companies have long allowed their algorithms to abide this parallel reality by prioritizing the viral and engaging over credible content. Now some are willing to actively contribute to its creation. This was the turn for the worse that Maria Ressa warned about. And it might get even worse.
For fact-checkers, it’s a triple threat. One is reputational, as we could see in the all-out jubilant response of hyper-partisan media, tabloids, conspiracy theorists and autocratic politicians in the region to Zuckerberg’s disownment of fact-checkings, who all felt vindicated by his statements. They have portrayed fact-checking as “censorship” for years, particularly the TPFC that put visible labels on false claims they wanted to present as facts. Now the owner of the company that created the program told them they were right.
In some parts of the world, reputational attacks are but an instrument to justify harassment and repression – something that fact-checkers have already been facing in large numbers. In celebratory reactions to Zuckerberg’s announcement, Istinomer – the oldest fact-checking initiative in the region and one of Meta’s partners in Serbia – was specifically mentioned as one of the “media tyrants” whose time has come. CRTA, the parent organisation of Istinomer, was called by president of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić one of the “worst liars ever”. Weeks later, it was raided by the police based on fabricated claims.
Another threat that is already hampering the work of fact-checking initiatives is financial. As noted in the IFCN’s latest State of the fact-checkers report, Meta’s TPFC and grants from donors are the two largest revenue sources for fact-checking organisations. The new US government has already carried out an assault on USAID, one of the largest donors and sources of humanitarian aid in the world. Other US-based donors met their own challenges as well. For US-based fact-checkers, Meta funding is about to disappear as well.
Why is this everyone’s fight?
Fact-checking is a branch of journalism dedicated specifically to establishing facts about claims that have been made in the public and it does so by rigorous investigations aiming to gather evidence. It is not glamorous – or even well liked among large parts of some media communities themselves – but it performs an essential service in the world where opinions are trying to replace facts in public debate, thus dismantling the very idea that the society should function based on factual information rooted in the knowledge of the real world.
As noted in the specialised issue of “Media and Communication” dedicated to fact-checking, we have built “a cohesive and coherent global movement, with its own annual conference, professional association, standards bodies, and growing ties to platform companies as well as public institutions”. Fact-checkers don’t just focus on single claims and their veracity.
Over the course of the years, the body of work produced through this basic function has grown to include unique databases on information ecosystems tools and methodologies to follow complex situations and real time disinformation; research and evidence of patterns, narratives, actors and tactics used to create information disorder; insights into media, political and online environments that has not existed before, cooperation amongst each other and with other expert communities to analyse, inform and provide recommendations on policy. Institutions such as European Commission and initiatives dedicated to defense of democracy rely on this enormous treasure throve of knowledge, expertise and data. Users of online platforms rely on it to navigate the overwhelming amount of information with the help of professionals who verify it using reliable and certified methodologies.
Fact-checking is a “movement” that has grown from about a dozen initiatives in 2008 to 451 active projects in 111 countries all over the world. But now, for the first time in years, we face a threat of stagnation, or even decline rather than development of this branch of journalism essential for defending the integrity of information that shapes our lives, politics and society.
Fact-checking platforms as sources for journalists: How to get to the ‘unproblematic’ fact
There is no intent to retreat from the fight – quite the contrary. The community continues its work to utilise the knowledge, experience and data it gathered to expand its efforts against disinformation. To conclude, fact-checking is not going away. But the challenges are also bigger than ever and the support from the media, academia, donor communities and institutions working in public interest will be critical for those efforts to work.
