What People Are Getting Wrong This Week: How Fact-checking Works

Every year, the world's fact-checkers issue a report on how it's going. Spoiler: It's going poorly.

April 2 was International Fact-Checking Day, a “global initiative recognizing accurate information’s important role in an interconnected world.” (In my family, we celebrate by leaving each other gifts under the fact-checking tree, but we do not suggest they came from some mythical Arctic elf.) 

The fact-checking and media-ethics kingpins at Poynter are behind the initiative, and they mark the occasion by releasing an annual State of the Fact-Checkers Report, a survey of 137 organizations across at least 69 countries that are devoted to making sure that the media is accurate. Good luck, fellas! 

Below are some of the most interesting findings from the 2023 State of the Fact-Checkers report.

There isn't much money in fact-checking

In 2023, 35% of fact-checking organizations that responded to the survey said they operate with budgets between $100,000 and $500,000. Only about 12% have budgets of more than $1 million annually; about 10% operate on $20,000 a year or less. Sixty-eight percent of fact-checking organizations have 10 or fewer employees.

Conclusion: If you are hoping to get rich in the fact-checking game, you might want to consider a career in international finance. 

Mark Zuckerberg is the king of fact-checking payouts

The predominant source of that sweet fact-checking lucre is Mark Zuckerberg, or, more accurately, Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program. More than 63% of surveyed fact-checkers participate in Meta’s program. Another revenue source: grants. Unsurprisingly, “funding” is listed as the biggest challenge by 83% of fact-checking organizations. 

Almost no one is checking TikTok facts

Despite being the world’s most popular social media platform, very few members of the International Fact-Checking Network have partnered with TikTok, as only just over 14% participate in TikTok’s third-party fact-checking program. 

The report doesn’t delve into why fact-checkers surveyed prefer Meta’s fact-checking program to TikTok's. But that’s probably only because they don’t want to reveal that an international cabal of globalist reverse-vampires are pulling the strings at Poytner’s fact-checking racket in order to shape the narrative and make sure that Joe “Obama” Biden wins the 2024 election. Check those facts, assholes!

(If you are interested in busting TikTok myths, check out Lifehacker Senior Health Editor Beth Skwarecki's "TikTok Myth of the Week" column.)

Almost all fact-checking concerns matters of politics and health

More than 95% of fact-checking organizations surveyed cover “election and politics” and “public health.” The exact percentage of fact-checkers who cover “weird things your aunt posts on Facebook” (like I do in this column), is unknown, but 29.93% of fact-checkers do say they cover “other.”

Twitter/X really is the worst

No surprise, but when it comes to hotbeds of weaponized misinformation, fact-checkers are most concerned about Twitter/X, with 36.50% listing Elon Musk’s digital garbage dump at the top of the disinformation charts. Next is TikTok, with 21.17% concerned, then YouTube, drawing raised eyebrows from 13.14%. Fact-checkers are least concerned about Instagram—or at least, less than 1% named it as the platform that concerns them the most. Lie away, Instagrammers.

Thinking about fact-checking is really depressing

I know members of the International Fact-Checking Network aren’t the only fact-checkers in the world—there are in-house fact-checkers at many major publications, and let's not discount the efforts of wildcat fact-checkers like me and CallofDutyRulez4206969 on Reddit. But it’s hard to not see the entire collection of fact-checkers as a tiny gaggle of barely-paid cranks, probably with bad haircuts, facing off against a massive network of shady politicians, crooked media sources, and amoral corporations that don’t care about the truth at all, so long as telling a lie is more profitable.

Still, there is cause for hope: According to a study in Nature Human Behavior, there was a huge drop-off of Americans visiting fake news websites in 2020 versus 2016. Some 44% of Americans surveyed reported visiting questionable websites during the 2016 U.S. election cycle, compared to 26.2% in 2020. Other research concludes that, “shifting attention to the concept of accuracy” results in people sharing less misinformation on social media. 

So keep plugging away at them facts, fellow enjoyers-of-accuracy. You may be earning a pittance, and you may have to beg Mark Zuckerberg to get even that, but at least you can be content that you are correct on the internet. Isn’t that more important than money? (Fact check: It is not.)