Will Canada fight against fake news?
Canuck fact-checking group seeks to join U.S advocates opposing false information
If you charted fake news online, from satire on The Onion to Pizzagate, it has gone from being an amusement to a conspiratorial nuisance to a potential worldwide power broker, depending on how much you feel it affected the outcome of the U.S. election.
Facebook has finally heeded the call for action on the issue, and it’s a move that Dana Wagner and her colleagues at FactsCan, a Canadian political fact-checking organization, are watching with interest, with the hopes they can take part if the opportunity arrives here.
“I get asked sometimes, ‘Do we need this in Canada? Isn’t it more of an American thing to have fake news or politicians misleading or bending the truth?’ And it absolutely happens here,” says Wagner, a parliamentary affairs adviser in the Sen- ate and one of FactsCan’s three co-founders.
Last week, Facebook announced it is undertaking steps to tackle fake news and hoaxes, though those initiatives are a pilot project operating only in the U.S. So the rest of the world will have to wait and see how the program goes, and find out how it might be implemented elsewhere.
“We are currently testing this experience in the U.S. only and hope to learn and improve the experience based on feedback from our community. We will be working to expand this globally in the coming months,” said a company spokesperson, when asked when the new fake news initiatives might come to Canada.
“Fact-checking has been picking up around the world, but we didn’t have an equivalent in Canada.” DANA WAGNER CO-FOUNDER, FACTSCAN
After Facebook executives, including founder Mark Zuckerberg, downplayed the role of suspect news in the U.S. election, the company did an about-face and detailed a fourpoint plan to deal with hoaxes and fake news last week.
As detailed in a blog post from Dec. 12, those efforts include easier reporting from the community, flagging stories, monitoring if articles are shared less due to questionable content and cutting off advertising for spammers and hoaxers.
As part of its efforts, Facebook is partnering with third-party factchecking organizations that are signatories of the International FactChecking Network’s fact-checker’s code of principles, which was created by a global network of fact checkers.
The only Canadian organization on that list is FactsCan, which is a nonpartisan political fact-checking organization that tracks the three federal parties.
It was started in 2015 during the election campaign.
“When we started, we were in an election year. And fact-checking has been picking up around the world, but we didn’t have an equivalent in Canada — we didn’t have a dedicated and independent fact checker,” Wagner says.
Wagner says that FactsCan was started with an Indiegogo campaign, and is a volunteer-run, non-partisan organization.
The crowdfunding campaign covers the operational costs of the site, and the three co-founders — Wagner, Tyler Sommers and Jacob Schroeder — function as reporter-editors, but on the side in addition to their fulltime jobs.
Wagner says they are applying for further funding to support FactsCan.
Most of the staff has been students, usually those studying journalism, political science or law.
At its height, FactCan had about 15 volunteers and was most active during the last federal election, but is now down to five active members.
When FactsCan started, it became involved in the International FactChecking Network, a group of likeminded organizations around the world that share experiences, collaborate and discuss best practices about fact-checking.
After the group’s annual conference this past year, the organization sent an open letter to Zuckerberg and Facebook outlining their concerns about the rise of fake news online.
“A lot of organizations signed onto that and from that letter and subsequent negotiations, Facebook did what I think is an incredible move and start to be proactive about identifying and hopefully try to stop the spread of fake news online,” Wagner says.
Wagner says fact-checking organizations around the world are watching the U.S. pilot project, and want to see how groups are vetted and then given the authority to dispute a story and be recognized as an approved fact-checker. But that’s just the start. “Facebook will ultimately decide which fact-checkers it will allow to engage in this process,” says Wagner.
“But that is just the start. Beyond figuring out who is conducting this work, after it’s what the effect is. Does it work? Does it stop people from sharing? Is it enough? Or does the disputed or fact-checked page also get shared with the original?”
At its height FactsCan had about 15 members, but is now down to five