All posts tagged: factcheckers

Latin American Fact-Checkers Brace for Meta’s Next Moves

Latin American Fact-Checkers Brace for Meta’s Next Moves

This 180-degree change is a response to Donald Trump’s imminent second presidential term and to the methods of the competition, such as X’s Community Notes. Meta decided not to invest any more money in its program. Now, it hopes that Facebook and Instagram users themselves will be the ones to decide what content is disinformation or not. In the statement where Zuckerberg announced that he will dismantle the program, he said that fact-checkers succumbed to political bias, destroying more trust than they’d created in the US. However, for Laura Zommer, former director of Chequeado (one of the most important Spanish-speaking verifier organizations) and LatamChequea, and now leader of Factchequeado (a verification media aimed at the Latino community in the US), Zuckerberg’s statements are not a surprise, and he does not have scientific evidence for his claims. “Far from censoring, fact-checkers add context,” Zommer says. “We never advocate for removing content. We want citizens to have better information to make their own decisions.” Zommer, who is skeptical of how the dissolution of this program might benefit …

From beef noodles to bots: Taiwan’s factcheckers on fighting Chinese disinformation and ‘unstoppable’ AI | Taiwan

From beef noodles to bots: Taiwan’s factcheckers on fighting Chinese disinformation and ‘unstoppable’ AI | Taiwan

Charles Yeh’s battle with disinformation in Taiwan began with a bowl of beef noodles. Nine years ago, the Taiwanese engineer was at a restaurant with his family when his mother-in-law started picking the green onions out of her food. Asked what she was doing, she explained that onions can harm your liver. She knew this, she said, because she had received text messages telling her so. Yeh was puzzled by this. His family had always happily eaten green onions. So he decided to set the record straight. He put the truth in a blog post and circulated it among family and friends through the messaging app Line. They shared it more broadly, and soon he received requests from strangers asking to be connected to his personal Line account. “There wasn’t much of a factchecking concept in Taiwan then, but I realised there was a demand. I could also help resolve people’s problems,” Yeh said. So he continued, and in 2015 launched the website MyGoPen, which means, “don’t be fooled again” in Taiwanese. Within two years, …

Hire factcheckers to fight election fake news, EU tells tech firms | Social media

Hire factcheckers to fight election fake news, EU tells tech firms | Social media

Social media firms including TikTok, X, Facebook and Instagram will be required to put an army of factcheckers and moderators in place with a collective knowledge of 24 EU languages amid fears that the European parliamentary elections will be a prime target for disinformation campaigns run by Russia and others including the far right. The new rules flow from the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which regulates content on social media, and follows a public consultation with civil society and election observation groups in February. “The European parliament elections are particularly vulnerable and they need to put special measures in place,” said an EU official unveiling the new processes. Under the guidelines, tech companies will be required to take six actions including the installation of native-language factchecking teams and of risk assessment units. Content generated by AI will have to be labelled as such. Escalation protocols and rapid alert systems to combat potential spikes in disinformation before and after voting, which takes place between 6 June and 9 June, must also be in place. These …