Was Fact-Checking Yesterday’s Fix

How facts lost their footing

Nov 04, 2025

There was a period when fact-checking was starting to assume real institutional status. We are thinking about this as Get Fact joins a World Press Freedom Canada panel this week on misinformation, disinformation, and AI.

Facts once held greater authority, and that only changed recently. The shift came from a rapid upheaval in how information is created, shared, and trusted.

For much of the twentieth century, skepticism toward power was the norm. Governments, journalists, and public institutions were expected to provide verifiable information and were condemned when they failed. Then the surge of digital content changed everything.

As we know, social platforms reshaped the public sphere. Engagement replaced accuracy as the main incentive. By 2015, Facebook had 1.5+ billion monthly users, amplifying every signal, including false ones, by orders of magnitude. No surprise verification couldn’t keep up. Obvious now, but a revelation then.

Journalists stepped up, helped professionalize modern verification through routines and handbooks.

Craig Silverman

’s Verification Handbook series codified digital verification practices used globally. Reporters such as Daniel Dale mainstreamed real-time political fact-checking for mass audiences. Newsroom standards were made clear, including Kathy English’s public-editor initiatives, reinforced correction and transparency norms in Canada. Canadian Association of Journalists

Governments followed. The EU’s Digital Services Act now requires major platforms to assess and reduce systemic risks, including those tied to disinformation, while acknowledging that much of it remains lawful but harmful. France introduced election-period “manipulation of information” laws to enable faster responses to falsehoods that could influence voters. And here is Sweden’s response, outlined in our last post.

In this flood of content, now supercharged by AI, facts have clearly lost their footing. Once powerful and undeniable, they are now often dismissed as just another form of opinion.

Studies comparing Snopes, PolitiFact, and other fact-checking organizations show they rarely disagree, even across political perspectives. In most analyses, conflicting verdicts are almost nonexistent. Misinformation Review

Platforms did respond with new investments and policies. In 2019, Facebook pledged $300 million to strengthen news ecosystems and expanded its third-party fact-checking efforts.

By this past January, Meta ended its U.S. third-party fact-checking program and replaced it with a crowd-notes model. As we know, Zuckerberg said the old system had become politically biased. This change recast fact-checking for many users, turning a tool of accountability into one seen as censorship and influenced by opinions

The good news is that we know misinformation spreads easily because it’s designed to capture attention and when attention shifts back to accuracy, research shows the quality of what people share measurably improves. Thus, Get Fact.

Facts have to be seen like calories listed on a menu or ingredients on a label. You don’t have to agree with them, or like them, but it matters that they’re there.