Crowdsourcing a Better World

Verificovid was started by a group of friends to combat pandemic-related misinformation in Mexico. They work with a group of government doctors to identify, track, investigate, and disprove misinformation. The group posts infographics with updated COVID-19 statistics on social media – mainly Whatsapp and Telegram – and offers medical tips via short audio messages and texts. They prioritize fast-moving misinformation that could cause the most harm and, along with sharing the truth, they investigate the origin of the misinformation and teach the public how to identify and stop fake news.

Digital sleuths preserved a trove of evidence from the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by acting quickly to "scrape" and archive videos, images, and other data from social media. Investigative journalists from Bellingcat, the Toronto-based Citizen Lab, and Czech data archive Intelligence X were among those who responded before rioters, worried about criminal charges, began deleting posts. Crowdsourcing calls for assistance also produced a robust response from people anxious to aid law enforcement or debunk post-riot disinformation.

11Alive, a Georgia news station, runs a program called "Verify" that helps residents get accurate information and slow the spread of disinformation. Viewers submit a form online or via an app to request any piece of information be debunked or verified. If deemed a verifiable request, a 13-member team of reporters, editors, and producers investigate it by reaching out to experts and other sources. Since disinformation spreads quickly, “Verify” uses Google Analytics and search engine optimization (SEO) to get the most exposure and gain traction when a verification article is posted.

CekFakta is a collaborative network that fights misinformation with around 6,000 fact-checkers from major Indonesian media organizations, citizens, and academics. The group holds training sessions to help journalists identify doctored images and misinformation, with the idea that participants will pass the skills on to their colleagues. CekFakta impacted 2019 presidential debates with large-scale, real-time, collaborative fact-checking that enabled a quick release of fact-checked information. The collaborative process is key to helping people find high-quality information amid so much online content.

The freewheeling discussion platform Reddit has spawned many conspiracy theories, but it also plays host to anti-disinformation activists. By striking back at those who spread propaganda and potentially harmful disinformation, forums such as r/Disinfo, rDisinformationWatch, and r/trollfare share news and research debunking conspiracy theories and unmasking disinformation campaigns. The audience for false information remains much larger, and the truth squad has not slain the propaganda dragon singlehandedly. But the anonymous, volunteer moderators see value in educating people searching for trustworthy news.

The NewsRun is “a daily newsletter that summarizes Pakistan’s major stories of the day." It’s helping Pakistani people stay on top of the news. Some Pakistani people who live in the country get overwhelmed with the daily news cycle, while Pakistani’s living abroad might have a language barrier or lack the context to understand the news. The clear, direct language of the newsletter makes the news accessible. "The way it’s written is clear and it highlights all the key points I need to know." The newsletter has thousands of Instagram followers and a “20 to 30 percent daily open rate.”

The coronavirus pandemic has invigorated organizations working in the Baltics to counter disinformation, particularly from Russia, by flagging suspicious accounts, fake news, and hate speech. For example, Covid-19 led hundreds of Lithuanian medics to a group called the Elves to flag disinformation about the virus and related government responses. The groups partner with and receive funding from local and international sources, including Facebook and the Google News Innovation Fund. Some question whether highlighting stories, websites, and user accounts as fake might actually help to disseminate them further.

In what started as a series of posts on Twitter and evolved into a public database published by an investigative media outlet, Mediapart, a lone reporter documented police violence against France's Yellow Vest protesters in an act of accountability that had been neglected by other journalists and the government. David Dufresne's “Allô Place Beauvau” (a "hello" to France's interior ministry) documented 800 cases of police violence or misbehavior. Many of the cases came to Dufresne as tips from the public, which he then verified. His work was cited by French and international authorities.

Teaching students to fact check encourages resilience and builds resistance to the post-truth phenomenon. In Finland, a school curriculum implemented at the national level equips elementary and high school students with a digital literacy toolkit geared toward recognizing disinformation online. In addition to specific exercises spotting fake news on social media platforms, a critical thinking curriculum is built into all subjects. Finland's success in fostering a social resilience against disinformation also draws on lessons from the country's oftentimes fraught history with its eastern neighbor.

Independent journalists and upstart news organizations in Mexico have banded together to counter potentially deadly or disruptive fake news with a highly organized fact-checking campaign calling itself Verificado. Besides debunking hundreds of false political rumors in the 2018 elections, the coalition has fact-checked the sort of fake news that has prompted mobs to carry out hundreds of lynchings. One WhatsApp fact-verifying account enabling anyone to submit requests for debunking stories has been used extensively by mostly young readers.