← About
Claim ledger
This site says that every factual claim links to its source. The claims that carry a number, a date, a named study or a quotation are checked here — 466 of them, each with how it was checked and against what.
The ledger is the record of the verification passes the English text went through before the first translations went out: every sentence carrying a number, a date, a named study, a quotation or a specific event was read against the source it cites, and the result written down — including the claims that turned out to be wrong. Sentences of argument are not listed; they are not checkable facts, and the ledger says so with its own letter. What was corrected is also in the corrections log, which says what the page used to claim.
This page is built from the ledger file itself every time the site is published, so it cannot drift from it, and a check fails the build if it ever does.
The five letters
Each claim carries at least one status letter, in the ledger's own words:
| Letter | What it means | Claims |
|---|---|---|
| P | Verified against the primary source (the paper, ruling, report, filing or company statement itself) in September 2026. | 300 |
| S | Verified against an institutional or reputable secondary account (press release, university news, established press), because the primary source is paywalled or not online. | 42 |
| C | Was wrong or overstated; corrected in this pass. What changed is in CORRECTIONS.md. | 180 |
| V | A vendor, advocacy-group or self-reported figure. Kept because it is the only figure, and labelled as such on the page. | 12 |
| O | Framing, argument or opinion, not a checkable fact. Reviewers judge these for fairness, not accuracy. | 10 |
A few claims carry two letters — a figure verified against a primary source and also corrected, say — so the counts add up to more than 466.
Claims with a shelf life
Some claims are true when checked and will not stay true: a case under appeal, a count that moves every month, a price that drifts. Each of these 28 is re-checked against its own source on or before the date below. A re-check that only refreshes a number is recorded in the change log; one that finds a claim has become wrong goes in the corrections log as well.
| Claim | Last checked | What the check found | Checked against | Next |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brazil run-off post — that no authority has documented a foreign influence operation through social media; the complaint about the foreign paid posts (no ruling); the Lupa and NetLab figures; the TSE links, read on Wayback copies (Blog: Before Brazil's run-off) | 10 Oct 2026 | Added with the post | the TSE notes and resolutions live (tse.jus.br reopens after the electoral period), the TSE and STF dockets, Lupa's VigIA final report (due November), NetLab's bulletins | 26 Oct 2026 |
| Brazil visibility post — the TSE injunction of 15 October and its merits; Meta's filing figures (reported only); the MPF/PFDC procedure; Google's answer to the TSE president's 24-hour order of 13 October; the vendor figures (Blog: Everywhere and nowhere) | 22 Oct 2026 | Trigger fired: injunction 15 Oct, plenary referendum 16 Oct, merits pending; the post carries a dated update. Searched again 22 Oct 2026 (#153): no published outcome for Google's 24 hours (13 Oct) or for the MPF/PFDC five-day notices to Meta and X (14 Oct; deadline about 19 Oct, no reply reported). The post states the orders, not outcomes, so it stands as dated | the TSE decision and Meta's filing once public, tse.jus.br live, the MPF procedure's outcome, Google's reply to the TSE | 26 Oct 2026 |
| MDL 3047 pending count (Courts) | 21 Sept 2026 | Updated: 3,208 pending on 1 Sept 2026 | JPML Pending MDL Dockets by District | 1 Dec 2026 |
| MDL 3047 docket — any disposition (settlement, bellwether verdict, dismissal), not only the named cases | 23 Sept 2026 | Added after the states' settlement of 26 Aug 2026 went unseen for a month | MDL 3047 docket; N.D. Cal. news; state AG releases | 1 Dec 2026 |
| Common Sense Education Digital Citizenship Curriculum — that it is free and independent, and that it "will be archived in December 2026" (Get Help registry; Educators) | 19 Oct 2026 | Registry text no longer says "used across US schools" (no school count on any Common Sense page) | commonsense.org/education | 1 Dec 2026 |
| NM v Meta: $375m jury penalties, $567m abatement, $942m judgment; appeal (Courts; Lawmakers) | 21 Sept 2026 | Updated: final judgment 6 Aug 2026; Meta says it will appeal and seeks a stay; no appellate ruling | NM DOJ; Santa Fe New Mexican | 21 Dec 2026 |
| K.G.M. (LA): $6m, 70/30; appeal (Courts; Lawmakers; Timeline) | 21 Sept 2026 | Updated: post-trial motions denied 9 June 2026; Meta and YouTube appealed July 2026; no appellate ruling | CNBC; Fortune (court docket not online) | 21 Dec 2026 |
| OECD age-restriction count, "by April 2026" (Age Restrictions; Laws landing; Yes, but…) | not re-checked | Dated in the text, so still true as written | OECD blog, April 2026 | 21 Dec 2026 |
| Meta Family daily active people, 3.60 billion for June 2026 (Yes, but… "The media is just as bad") | 23 Sept 2026 | Added; Q2 2026 is the latest release | Meta's quarterly results release, as filed with the SEC | 21 Dec 2026 |
| Ofcom enforcement under the Online Safety Act — the named fines, the investigation and programme counts, and which duty each penalty was for (Online Safety Act) | 23 Sept 2026 | New page; every figure taken from a published Ofcom decision or the quarterly industry bulletin. To add at the 23 Dec 2026 re-check (#153, confirmed 22 Oct 2026): the two largest penalties so far, both for age checks on pornography sites and neither named on the page — AVS Group Ltd £1m plus £50,000 for unanswered information requests (4 Dec 2025) and 8579 LLC £1.35m plus £50,000 (23 Feb 2026). The page claims no "largest", so nothing on it is wrong meanwhile | Ofcom confirmation decisions; the online safety industry bulletin; Ofcom, Ofcom fines porn company £1million for not having robust age checks (4 Dec 2025) and Ofcom fines porn company £1.35 million for not having age checks (23 Feb 2026) | 23 Dec 2026 |
| AI Act application dates — Art. 50 from 2 Aug 2026, the Art. 50(2) grace period and the new Art. 5 prohibitions from 2 Dec 2026, high risk from 2 Dec 2027 / 2 Aug 2028 (AI Act; Timeline) | 23 Sept 2026 | Checked against the Official Journal text of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 as amended by (EU) 2026/1744; a further omnibus could move them again | EUR-Lex; the Commission's AI Act timeline page | 2 Jan 2027 |
| Dutch gift and foundation rules — the 1% threshold, the deduction cap (37.56% in 2026), the periodic gift of at least five years, the eight-week ANBI decision (Donate) | 23 Sept 2026 | Linked to the Belastingdienst's own pages; the cap is a figure that changes every tax year | Belastingdienst (three gift pages + the ANBI decision page) | 1 Feb 2027 |
| Meta–states consent decree (Courts, Lawmakers, Timeline) | 23 Sept 2026 | Entered 26 Aug 2026; first compliance milestones; five-year and ten-year terms | Consent judgment; independent auditor reports when published | 1 Mar 2027 |
| WhatsApp €225m; C-97/23 P, back to the General Court (Data Combination) | 21 Sept 2026 | Still true; no General Court ruling found | CJEU press release 11/26; CURIA T-709/21 | 21 Mar 2027 |
| X €120m DSA fine, challenged (DSA) | 22 Oct 2026 | Still pending, no judgment. Annulment actions lodged 16 Feb 2026. On 24 Sept 2026 the United States applied to intervene in support of X (T-114/26) and Musk (T-121/26), citing Art. 40 of the Court's Statute; no ruling on the application found (#153). The DSA page does not mention the application, and its "the case is pending" stays true | CURIA T-114/26, T-120/26, T-121/26; US Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, United States Files Request to Intervene in Case Brought by X Corp. and Elon Musk Seeking to Annul Decision by European Commission (24 Sept 2026); AP, 25 Sept 2026, as carried by CBC News | 21 Mar 2027 |
| Semrush AI Overviews share (Search) | 21 Sept 2026 | Updated: Nov 2025 figure (15.69%) added; no newer overall figure | Semrush AI Overviews study | 21 Mar 2027 |
Help-line numbers, hours and cost — every entry in src/data/resources.mjs that prints a number or hours, and first the international layer of 23 Sept 2026 (BR 188, EG 16328, IN 14416, MX 800 911 2000, SA 937; Find A Helpline's country and topic coverage; F.E.A.S.T.; econsumer.gov) | 23 Sept 2026 | Added with the layer. Two caveats to carry forward: EG 16328's cost is still unread (the ministry page does not state it), and SA 937 is not a suicide line — if a later source lets either be stated, state it then, not before. SA 937's "psychological" (dropped 19 Oct 2026, restored 22 Oct 2026, #153) rests on the NCMH FAQ (ncmh.org.sa/faqs, through its public API), not on an MOH page: re-read it at each re-check, and drop the word again if it no longer says so. Added 19 Oct 2026 (#147): 112 India moved to mha.gov.in/emergency-response-support-system-erss; Action Fraud → Report Fraud; cybercrime.gov.in bare host times out from outside India (the www host answers); actionfraud.police.uk, reportfraud.police.uk, internetmatters.org and dnsc.ro answer 403 to automated clients — hand-check before removing; Offlimits' contact page and home page give different hours; Get Help prints only the hours both agree on, Mon–Thu 07:00–23:00, Fri 09:00–17:00, Sun 10:00–18:00 (card offlimits-hours = b, 19 Oct 2026) — widen them if Offlimits confirms the contact page's Mon–Sat 07:00–23:00 | each organisation's own page or government portal, as listed above; the country dossiers in docs/research/ | 23 Mar 2027 |
| Wikipedia's Category 1 status under the Online Safety Act (Online Safety Act) | 22 Oct 2026 | Ofcom notified the Wikimedia Foundation on 10 July 2026 that Wikipedia is not currently a Category 1 service, and that it stays on Ofcom's "watch list" of platforms that could become Category 1 (the Foundation's words; "remains under review" until 22 Oct 2026, #153) | Wikimedia Foundation; Ofcom's categorisation decisions | 23 Mar 2027 |
The organisations roster — that every organisation named on Organisations still exists and still does what the page and src/data/resources.mjs say (First Draft closed in 2022 and had to be replaced by Information Futures Lab; the CvdM roadmap will be followed by enforcement steps) | 23 Sept 2026 | Ecosystem merged into Organisations; the five closest organisations now render from the registry, so their links are covered by node scripts/check-resources.mjs --live | each organisation's own site; node scripts/check-resources.mjs --live | 23 Mar 2027 |
| Ofcom's "highly effective age assurance" method list and criteria (Yes, but… "Age checks just mean everyone has to hand over their ID") | 23 Sept 2026 | Added; the list and the four criteria are as published, and Ofcom says numerical accuracy thresholds may be added later | Ofcom, Age checks to protect children online | 23 Mar 2027 |
| EU age-verification blueprint: the quoted "over 18, without any other personal details", the single-use proof, and the five piloting Member States (Yes, but… "Age checks just mean everyone has to hand over their ID") | 23 Sept 2026 | Added from the 14 July 2025 release; the blueprint is still in development and the pilot list can grow | European Commission, Commission makes available an age-verification blueprint, and its successors | 23 Mar 2027 |
| Tools, prices and offers — Proton €4, Kagi $5, uBlock Origin availability per browser, Ecosia's seven-day IP anonymisation (live policy, 21 May 2026), Data Detox languages, Bad News age ranges, Google Ad Grants $10k/month, KvK fee and notary ~€650 — now ~€1,200, the project's own first-year estimate (15 Oct 2026) (Tools; Things; Educators; Donate) | 23 Sept 2026 | Sourced on the pages themselves (decision 11b): every one of these now has a bullet linking the vendor's or the authority's own page. Corrected in the same pass: the KvK fee is €85.15, not €82; Ecosia anonymises the IP address after a maximum of seven days and passes the IP address and search terms to its search partner (this sentence said "deletes … sends it obfuscated, never with the query" until 19 Oct 2026, from a 2022 mirror of the policy; CORRECTIONS.md); Firefox's maker is a taxable subsidiary; Safari never had Google's restriction, uBO simply stopped supporting it | the vendors' own pricing and support pages; uBlock Origin's wiki; KVK Inschrijfvergoeding; a notary quote | 23 Mar 2027 |
| The site's own running costs — Cloudflare free plan, the rented server the Plausible instance runs on, the domain at €15/year, €50–100/year in total (Donate) | 23 Sept 2026 | Linked to the providers' own pages where a public price exists (Cloudflare Workers pricing; Plausible community edition, free and open source). The server and the domain are the project's own invoices, not a published price, and the page now says so; the quarterly transparency report is where the actual figures land | Cloudflare Workers pricing; plausible.io self-hosting; the project's invoices | 23 Mar 2027 |
| GDPR fines under appeal — the DPC's imposed and collected totals, every Big Tech fine "Pending Appeal" or "Not Confirmed"; Amazon's €746m annulled and back with the CNPD (GDPR) | 15 Oct 2026 | Added with the turnover comparison; the CNPD may decide a new sanction, and Irish appeals (Meta €1.2bn, TikTok €530m) may be decided | DPC Fines page; justice.public.lu and cnpd.public.lu | 15 Apr 2027 |
| W3Techs Google Analytics share (Tracking & Targeting demo) | 19 Oct 2026 | Updated: 46.8% of all sites, 82.1% of those with analytics (October 2026) | W3Techs | 19 Apr 2027 |
| RSF World Press Freedom Index description and methodology link, "2026 Index" (Journalism) | 1 Oct 2026 | Added: 180 countries and territories, five indicators, 0–100 score | RSF methodology page for the current edition | 1 Jun 2027 |
| Bundeskartellamt closed 10 Oct 2024, not all concerns eliminated (Data Combination) | 21 Sept 2026 | True; caveat added from the press release | Bundeskartellamt, 10 Oct 2024 | 21 Sept 2027 |
| Backlinko CTR 27.6%; autocomplete 23% (Search) | 21 Sept 2026 | Unchanged (pages updated April 2025) | Backlinko | 21 Sept 2027 |
A live link check can fail on a link that works. Two of the government pages behind the help-line rows — www.mohp.gov.eg (Egypt) and telemanas.mohfw.gov.in (India) — serve an incomplete certificate chain. Browsers and curl fetch the missing intermediate and accept them; Node's fetch does not, so node scripts/check-resources.mjs --live reports them as unreachable (TypeError / UNABLE_TO_VERIFY_LEAF_SIGNATURE). Both answered 200 to curl on 23 September 2026 and both carry their help line's number. The Egyptian dossier warns of a second, different failure for the same host family: some Egyptian government sites refuse connections from outside Egypt. Neither is a dead link — check by hand before removing an entry a live run flags.
The ledger, page by page
Grouped as the ledger groups them — by section of the site, then by page. The claim is given as the ledger records it, in the shorthand of someone checking it against a document, not as the page words it.
Each claim has a permanent number, from C-001 on, and the number is a link to the claim itself — C-042, for instance — so a claim can be cited by its number or its address. A number always means the same claim: when a claim is corrected it keeps its number, and when one is removed its number is not given to another.
- The Attention Machine — 67 claims
- Symptoms — 98 claims
- Laws & Regulation — 44 claims
- What is Truth? — 15 claims
- For You / Educate / Share — 100 claims
- Part 2 — the remaining pages (demos, Search, State Actors, laws, What is Truth, Educate, Share, audiences, objections, About) — 109 claims
- Blog — 33 claims
The Attention Machine
How It Works
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-001 | Haugen documents: "misinformation, toxicity, and violent content are inordinately prevalent among reshares" | P | WSJ Facebook Files (2021) |
| C-002 | Fixes resisted because they would reduce engagement | C was "the company chose growth" | WSJ, 15 Sept 2021 |
| C-003 | Engagement ranking amplifies divisive, out-group-hostile content | P source added | Milli et al. 2025, PNAS Nexus 4(3) |
| C-004 | More than three billion people a day on Meta's apps | C was "three billion users simultaneously", unsourced; 17 Oct 2026 | Meta Q2 2026 results (SEC exhibit 99.1, 29 July 2026): DAP 3.60bn, June 2026 |
| C-373 | Facebook launched in 2004 | P added 19 Oct 2026, #147, for the Timeline's 2004 entry | Meta, Company information ("When Facebook launched in 2004"); Facebook Form S-1 (2012), "incorporated in July 2004", corroborates the year |
| C-005 | 2018 MSI change; Germano, Gómez & Sobbrio 2026, US + Italy survey data, increased extremism and affective polarisation | PC How It Works said the change "had political consequences at national scale"; now "on this evidence … survey data, not an experiment", 23 Oct 2026, #166 | J. Public Economics 255, 105589; abstract |
| C-431 | How It Works · the 2020 US election experiments run with Meta: three months of a chronological feed, or a third less like-minded content, did not measurably change polarisation or political attitudes | P added 24 Oct 2026, #172, card en-read-election-experiments = a | Guess et al. 2023, Science 381, 398–404; Nyhan et al. 2023, Nature 620, 137–144 (abstracts; DOIs checked on Crossref) |
| C-006 | 64% of extremist-group joins via recommendation tools, Germany, 2016 slide, WSJ May 2020 | C (main text said "64% of the people who joined"; a share of joins, 17 Oct 2026); C (main text said "on the platform"; now confined to the German political groups the slide studied, as the Deeper box says, 23 Oct 2026, #166) | Horwitz & Seetharaman, WSJ 26 May 2020 ("64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools") |
| C-007 | Creators' incentive: after the 2018 MSI change, publishers and political parties told Facebook they had shifted to more divisive posts (How It Works, the home loop's node 4) | P internal memos as reported | Hagey & Horwitz, WSJ 15 Sep 2021 (The Facebook Files) |
| C-355 | How It Works · Narayanan: the feed system built by "large teams of highly skilled engineers"; a change is tested by A/B testing on real users | P 19 Oct 2026: Knight Institute, 9 March 2023, "large teams of highly skilled engineers work on them"; "A simple way to test an algorithm change is to A/B test it" | Narayanan 2023, Knight First Amendment Institute |
| C-405 | How It Works · recommenders decide "overwhelmingly, on one kind of signal", engagement; where accuracy or wellbeing enter at all (a hate-speech score, a survey-trained classifier) they are adjustments layered on top | C was "based on one signal" and "Those are simply not inputs to the model", 23 Oct 2026, #166 | Narayanan, Knight Institute, 2023: "the part that calculates engagement may be only a small fraction. Yet it is the core logic"; "A canonical example is a score representing the likelihood that a post is hate speech"; Facebook's "bad for the world" classifier — "The training data was generated by surveying users" |
Your Brain
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-008 | Negativity bias (Rozin & Royzman 2001; Baumeister 2001) | P | both papers |
| C-009 | Negative words raise click-through (each word +2.3%), ~105,000 headline variants from one site, Upworthy | C was "news publishers themselves", 17 Oct 2026 | Robertson et al. 2023, Nat. Hum. Behav. 7 |
| C-010 | Moral-emotional words raise diffusion ~20% per word | PC (source added); C (Your Brain's body said threat content "consistently outperforms content that produces calm"; Brady measured moral-emotional words in political messages — now "tends to spread further … about 20%", 23 Oct 2026, #166) | Brady et al. 2017, PNAS 114(28) |
| C-011 | Berridge & Robinson wanting/liking dissociation | P | Brain Res. Rev. 1998; Am. Psychol. 2016 |
| C-012 | Eisenberger 2003 dACC; Izuma 2008 striatum (social approval and money — the glossary's "food or money" narrowed to "money", and the section heading's "food" and its first sentence's "food or physical pleasure" to "money", 22 Oct 2026, #153; Izuma tests no food reward) | PC the glossary said the brain processes rejection and pain "in shared circuits, not separate ones"; whether the overlap is shared circuitry is debated — Woo et al. 2014, Nature Communications 5, 5380, added for the other side, 23 Oct 2026, #166 | Science 302; Neuron 58 |
| C-013 | Like button 2009 | P | Facebook, Feb 2009; Kincaid, TechCrunch, 9 Feb 2009 (linked on the page 17 Oct 2026) |
| C-014 | Anderson & Wood 2025: 18% self-labelled addicted, 2% meet clinical criteria; labelling reduces perceived control | P | Sci. Rep. 2025 |
Advertising & Surveillance
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-015 | DoubleClick 1996; Abacus 1999; FTC closed 2001 (the closing was no finding that the law had been kept); privacy advocates' outcry in 1999 | PC (source added for the cookie tracking, 17 Oct 2026; sources added and "without finding a violation" reworded, 19 Oct 2026); C (Advertising said the concern was "documented, regulated, and then set aside"; the FTC closed the file without action — now "investigated", 23 Oct 2026, #166) | DoubleClick 10-K for 2000 (SEC); FTC staff letter, 22 Jan 2001; Angwin, ProPublica, 21 Oct 2016; Kristol 2001, ACM TOIT 1(2) (DoubleClick incorporated January 1996, footnote 21) |
| C-016 | Google–DoubleClick announced 2007, completed 2008 | CP (was "acquired in 2007"); P (press release and blog linked, 19 Oct 2026) | Google press release, 13 April 2007 (SEC EX-99.1); Google, 11 March 2008 |
| C-017 | Interest-based advertising 2009 profiled browsers by the sites visited, not named people; Google kept DoubleClick browsing data separate from account names until 2016 | C was "precisely the combination of online behaviour and identity profiling that advocates had warned about a decade earlier", 19 Oct 2026 | Wojcicki, Official Google Blog, 11 March 2009; Angwin, ProPublica, 21 Oct 2016 |
| C-018 | RTB ~100 ms; 376/day EU, 747/day US | PC the 376/747 figures were given as measurements; they are the ICCL's 2022 estimate from industry data — now "an estimated" on Advertising and Tracking, "the ICCL's 2022 estimate" on Lawmakers, 23 Oct 2026, #166 | Wang, Zhang & Yuan 2017, FnTIR 11(4–5) ("usually within 100ms", linked 17 Oct 2026); ICCL 2022 |
| C-019 | Bidders can keep a copy | C was "retains" | ICCL; OpenRTB spec |
| C-020 | Belgian DPA Decision 21/2022; CJEU C-604/22 (TC String personal data), a preliminary ruling on referred questions | C was "upheld key parts", 17 Oct 2026; now "confirmed" | APD decision; CJEU press release 44/24, 7 March 2024 |
| C-021 | Cookie phase-out abandoned July 2024; fingerprinting allowed Feb 2025; ICO "irresponsible" | P | Google Privacy Sandbox blog; ICO 19 Dec 2024 |
| C-022 | Cambridge Analytica 87m, 2014–15; FTC 2019 order; ICO Oct 2020 letter; £500k; $5bn | PC Advertising said Cambridge Analytica "used it to build psychological profiles for political micro-targeting in the 2016 US presidential election. This is a confirmed fact"; the cited sources confirm the harvesting and the transfer, not the campaign the data served nor what the "profiles" were. Now: "used it in its work for US political campaigns in the 2016 cycle. The harvesting and the transfer are confirmed facts", 24 Oct 2026, #172, card en-read-cambridge-analytica = a; the 2016 presidential election is now named only as the ICO's suspicion, not determined, 25 Oct 2026, C-435 | Facebook 4 Apr 2018; Senate hearing 10 Apr 2018 (S. Hrg. 115-683); FTC; ICO letter; ICO report to Parliament 6 Nov 2018 (£500k, linked 17 Oct 2026) |
Search
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-023 | >5 trillion searches/year (~14bn/day) | P | Google, 2025 |
| C-374 | Google incorporated in California in September 1998; its first office a garage in Menlo Park | P added 19 Oct 2026, #147, for the Timeline's 1998 entry | Google Form S-1, 29 April 2004 ("incorporated in California in September 1998"); Google, How we started and where we are today ("from the dorms to their first office: a garage in suburban Menlo Park, California") |
| C-024 | 2024 ad revenue $264.6bn, ~75% search | P | Alphabet 10-K 2024 |
| C-025 | First organic result 27.6% of clicks (4m results) | V industry study, labelled | Backlinko 2023 |
| C-356 | Search · glossary "Organic results": in 2013 the FTC told search engines the cues separating ads from natural results had "become less noticeable to consumers"; in a 2015 UK survey (Ofcom 2016) only half (49%) of adults who use search engines identified the sponsored links on Google as advertising (the "deliberately faint" and "almost identical" wording removed, 19 Oct 2026) | P | FTC letter to search engines, 24 June 2013; Ofcom, Adults' media use and attitudes: Report 2016 |
| C-026 | Autocomplete chosen ~23% of the time | V industry study, labelled | Backlinko user-behaviour study |
| C-027 | Cornell eye-tracking, trust in position | P | Pan et al. 2007 |
| C-028 | Allam, Schulz & Nakamoto 2014 | P | JMIR 16(4) e100 |
| C-029 | AI Overviews 6.49% Jan 2025 → ~25% July 2025 → 15.69% Nov 2025 | V Semrush, labelled; re-checked 21 Sept 2026, Nov 2025 figure added | Semrush AI Overviews study (updated 15 Dec 2025) |
| C-030 | Tow Center: eight AI search tools, >60% of queries about news articles answered incorrectly — now named in the prose and in Sources (23 Sept 2026; the claim was previously unsourced on the page) | S | Jaźwińska & Chandrasekar, AI Search Has A Citation Problem, Tow Center for Digital Journalism / CJR, March 2025 |
| C-031 | Cadwalladr, Observer 4 Dec 2016 | S | Observer |
| C-308 | Clicks are factored into Google's ranking: Navboost, trained on 13 months of users' click data | P was "Engagement signals", unsourced; 17 Oct 2026 | United States v. Google LLC, D.D.C., Memorandum Opinion 5 Aug 2024, ¶¶ 94–96 |
| C-306 | Google acknowledged in May 2024 that some AI Overviews misread pages and presented inaccurate information, others drew on sarcastic or troll-y forum posts (glue on pizza) | C was "repeatedly been found" to err, mix sources and "present contested claims as settled", 17 Oct 2026 | Reid, Google, AI Overviews: About last week, 30 May 2024 |
State Actors
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-032 | IRA: Mueller 2019, Senate Vol. 1–5, platform testimony | P | reports |
| C-033 | ODNI/FBI/CISA joint statement, 4 Nov 2024, quotation ("additional influence operations…") | SC odni.gov blocks fetch; quotation matches the agencies' copy; the row said 1 Nov until 22 Oct 2026, #153 — State Actors has cited the 4 November update since 22 Sep 2026, see C-211 | Joint ODNI/FBI/CISA statement of 4 November 2024 (FBI copy linked; dni.gov News Release No. 29-24) |
| C-034 | Meliorator advisory July 2024 (FBI, AIVD, MIVD, Dutch police, CCCS) | PC the description of Meliorator was the advisory's, in the site's voice; now attributed to the advisory and corroborated by the DoJ's court-warranted seizure — see the row below, 23 Oct 2026, #166 | joint advisory 9 July 2024 |
| C-422 | State Actors · the US Department of Justice announced on 9 July 2024 the seizure of two domain names and the search of 968 X accounts used by the bot farm, under court warrants | P added 23 Oct 2026, #166 | US DoJ, Office of Public Affairs, 9 July 2024 ("the seizure of two domain names and the search of 968 social media accounts"; affidavits for the search and the domain seizure), read via the Wayback Machine (justice.gov blocks automated reads) |
| C-458 | fr only (local addition, FR.md proposal 32; item 32 Include, 25 Oct 2026) · VIGINUM (June 2026): "depuis l'élection présidentielle de 2017 en France, aucun rendez-vous électoral ou référendaire majeur n'a en effet été épargné…"; 77 Storm-1516 operations, Aug 2023 – Mar 2025, incl. the July 2024 snap election; its February 2025 review judged Russian operations' reach "relativement limitée" | P "not one of the intelligence services" is our description, marked in the source note | VIGINUM municipal report (11 June 2026), Storm-1516 report (6 May 2025), Guerre en Ukraine : trois années d'opérations informationnelles russes (24 Feb 2025); docs/research/FR.md §3 A2 |
| C-457 | State Actors · VIGINUM (France), June 2026: since the 2017 presidential election no major French election or referendum spared foreign information-manipulation attempts (quoted in our translation); 77 Storm-1516 operations, Aug 2023 – Mar 2025, incl. the July 2024 snap legislative election; its February 2025 review judged Russian operations' reach "relatively limited" (France Additions Review item 43, 25 Oct 2026; the French edition carries it as item 32) | P "not one of the intelligence services" is our description, marked in the source note; the sgdsn.gouv.fr PDFs read on Wayback captures | VIGINUM municipal-elections report (11 June 2026), Storm-1516 report (6 May 2025), Guerre en Ukraine : trois années d'opérations informationnelles russes (24 Feb 2025); docs/research/FR.md §3 A2 |
| C-035 | AIVD 2025 annual report (23 April 2026), Smit quotation; the report's findings: young people now a third of its jihadist caseload; a minor mapped the digital networks of embassies and other organisations in The Hague at the request of a Russian state-backed hacking group | SP for the quotation (19 Oct 2026: the sentence is not in the report PDF the page linked; NOS, 23 April 2026, carries it as the Director-General's words — attribution changed to NOS, #147); P for the two findings (19 Oct 2026, #147: they replace "young people being radicalised online and deployed by state actors", a looser paraphrase); the jihadist-caseload finding moved from State Actors to Radicalisation ("What the security services see") with its sources, 24 Oct 2026, #172, card en-read-state-actors-agencies = a; the minor working for a Russian state-backed hacking group stays on State Actors | NOS 23 April 2026 (nos.nl/l/2611683); AIVD Jaarverslag 2025, aivd.nl ("Jongeren vormen inmiddels een derde van de jihadistische onderzoekspopulatie"; p. 42: "een minderjarige digitale netwerken van ambassades en andere organisaties in Den Haag in kaart bracht … op verzoek van een Russische staatsgesteunde hackergroepering") |
AI & The Next Layer
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-039 | Georgescu 23% (22.94%); polled behind at least five other candidates | C was "polled single digits", 19 Oct 2026, #147 | BEC results; PBS/AP 6 Dec 2024 ("putting him behind at least five other candidates") |
| C-040 | EP 2024 "regarded as a testing ground" (the abstract's attribution, not the authors' own verdict; 22 Oct 2026, #164); Farooq et al. 2025 | C venue was "Political Communication", 17 Oct 2026 | Int. J. Press/Politics, 2 Oct 2025 (doi 10.1177/19401612251376060), abstract |
| C-041 | CETaS: no conclusive evidence AI altered 2024 US result; did influence discourse, amplify harmful narratives and entrench political polarisation | P re-read 22 Oct 2026, #153, via the Wayback copy of 14 Nov 2024; the live page is behind a bot challenge | CETaS, Nov 2024, publication page abstract: "revealing no conclusive evidence that such content manipulated the results. However, deceptive AI-generated content still influenced election discourse, amplified harmful narratives and entrenched political polarisation"; report §2: "deepening political polarisation" |
| C-396 | AI · the DSA is being enforced (Commission fine on X, €120 million, 5 Dec 2025, transparency breaches) and the AI Act's Article 50 transparency duties have applied since 2 Aug 2026; how far either reaches AI-enabled influence operations is not yet settled | C 22 Oct 2026, #153: was "None are yet fully implemented or enforced", untrue since the X fine at the latest | Commission press release IP/25/2934, 5 Dec 2025 ("Today, the Commission has issued a fine of €120 million to X for breaching its transparency obligations under the Digital Services Act"); Commission FAQ on Article 50 ("Article 50 of the AI Act applies as from 2 August 2026") |
| C-309 | Generative text, image and video tools since 2022; a voice clone from seconds of audio; researchers expect them to drive down the cost of influence campaigns and make them easier to scale, so such operations can be run far more cheaply | C (sources added 17 Oct 2026; the glossary's "cheap enough to produce at scale" dropped 22 Oct 2026, #153 — in none of the entries; the AI page's "at near-zero cost, at any scale, in seconds" and "at near-zero marginal cost" replaced 22 Oct 2026, #153 — the AI Index has no output-cost, scale or speed claim; now the researchers' expectation, sourced to Goldstein et al. 2023, a forecast about text, a joint report on arXiv, not peer-reviewed, with OpenAI one of the three institutions); C (the AI lead, description and card said generative AI "makes" manipulation dramatically cheaper and the body that it "removes that constraint"; the source is a forecast — now "is expected to make", "is removing"; the Timeline's 2022 entry follows, 23 Oct 2026, #166) | Stanford AI Index 2023; Wang et al. 2023 (VALL-E, arXiv:2301.02111, "3-second enrolled recording"); FTC consumer alert 20 Mar 2023; Goldstein et al. Jan 2023 (arXiv:2301.04246, CSET/OpenAI/SIO), p. 8: "Language models drive down the cost of generating propaganda … will become easier to scale" |
| C-310 | The Romanian annulment criticised by the US administration (Vance, Munich Security Conference, 14 Feb 2025) | S source added 17 Oct 2026; the scholars' half sourced in the row below, 17 Oct 2026 | RFE/RL, 14 Feb 2025 |
| C-341 | AI · the Romanian annulment criticised by constitutional-law scholars (no basis in the constitution or the law for an ex officio review or for annulling the whole process; "generally cryptic" intelligence reports) and defended by others as "an expression of militant democracy" (Cornea's words, since 22 Oct 2026, #164) — the criticism marked contested in the sentence | S was an unsourced "legal scholars", uncontested; 17 Oct 2026 | Kuti, Verfassungsblog, 10 Dec 2024 (doi 10.59704/c9c08659ed569160); Iancu, Review of Democracy (CEU Democracy Institute), 13 May 2025; Cornea, Verfassungsblog, 1 Apr 2025 (doi 10.59704/1a0400f2b9629e46) — editorially reviewed academic blog and institute journal, not peer-reviewed |
| C-357 | AI · the Romanian annulment as "an unprecedented step" in the EU; "an annulment without precedent in the EU" | S 19 Oct 2026, #147: PBS/AP calls the Constitutional Court's decision "unprecedented"; the page no longer says "first in EU history" | PBS/AP, 6 Dec 2024 (Romania's Constitutional Court) |
| C-358 | AI · the declassified Romanian notes state that Georgescu's campaign had coordinated amplification and paid promotion on TikTok (body: "stating", was "showing", 19 Oct 2026); the notes' words as reported by the state news agency, with TikTok's confirmation of US$381,000 in payments; the CCR ruling itself carries undeclared financing and unlabelled promotion, not "TikTok" or "paid" | SC (the page said "the algorithmic amplification is confirmed" — it rests on the declassified note alone, which also carries TikTok's confirmation of the payments; now "rests on the declassified intelligence note, which the Court accepted and critics dispute"; the paid influencer campaign is documented outside the note by the Snoop.ro / tax-authority finding (Euronews, 23 Dec 2024), 23 Oct 2026, #166); C ("previously unknown" → "little-known", 23 Oct 2026, #166) | AGERPRES, 4 Dec 2024 (the notes themselves on presidency.ro answered 503); Hotărârea nr. 32/2024, ¶¶11, 14, 18 |
| C-380 | AI, Elections · the Atlantic Council analysis of the Romanian annulment (6 Dec 2024) is a New Atlanticist piece "By Atlantic Council experts", not a publication of the Digital Forensic Research Lab | C 22 Oct 2026, #153: the Sources entries and the CIB glossary entry said "Atlantic Council (DFRLab)" | atlanticcouncil.org, New Atlanticist, 6 Dec 2024 |
Data Combination
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-042 | Panoptispy: 17,260 apps, no audio exfiltration | P | PoPETs 2018(4) |
| C-043 | Target pregnancy model; the father anecdote rests on one unnamed employee's account, and whether the model sent the coupons is disputed | S wording made precise 17 Oct 2026 | Duhigg 2012; Piatetsky (with Siegel), KDnuggets 7 May 2014 (industry publication) |
| C-044 | Bundeskartellamt 2019; CJEU C-252/21 (2023); closed 10 Oct 2024 (Accounts Centre), not all concerns eliminated | P re-checked 21 Sept 2026; caveat added | Bundeskartellamt press release 10 Oct 2024 |
| C-045 | WhatsApp €225m (2021); CJEU C-97/23 P, 10 Feb 2026, admissibility, back to General Court | P re-checked 21 Sept 2026; CJEU judgment added to sources | CJEU press release 11/26 |
Tracking & Targeting demo / Gamification / demos
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-046 | Google Analytics on close to half of all sites, 47% (82% of those with analytics) | CV (was "more than half"); V, refreshed 19 Oct 2026 (was 83%, September; entry now labels it a vendor survey of the top 10 million sites — an industry estimate) | W3Techs, October 2026 |
| C-047 | Skinner variable-ratio (Skinner 1953; Ferster & Skinner 1957, also on Gamification since 22 Oct 2026, #153); Schüll "machine zone"; Eyal Hook Model 2014, and his follow-up Indistractable (2019, BenBella Books; on Gamification since 22 Oct 2026, #153); Kivetz 2006 goal gradient | P | texts |
| C-311 | Gamification · the feed as a slot machine; apps "sprinkle intermittent variable rewards all over their products because it's good for business" (Harris) | P was "built to feel like … not an accident", sourced to a homepage; 17 Oct 2026 | Harris, Thrive Global (Medium), 18 May 2016 |
| C-312 | Gamification · streaks work on loss (loss aversion) | P was "the most effective of all", unsourced; 17 Oct 2026 | Kahneman & Tversky 1979, Econometrica 47(2) |
| C-313 | Gamification · no clean clinical category of internet or social-media addiction: DSM-5-TR lists only Internet Gaming Disorder, for further research | P source added 17 Oct 2026 | APA, Internet Gaming, Psychiatry.org, Jan 2023 |
| C-048 | Tracking & Targeting demo · fingerprinting needs consent in the EU | C was unsourced; source added 23 Sept 2026 | EDPB, Guidelines 2/2023 on the Technical Scope of Art. 5(3) ePrivacy Directive |
| C-049 | Tracking & Targeting demo · Belgian DPA Decision 21/2022; CJEU C-604/22 | P sources added to this page 23 Sept 2026; they were already on Advertising | APD decision; CJEU 7 March 2024 |
Symptoms
Mental Health
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-050 | Mental Health · Ferguson et al. 2022 meta-analysis (33 studies, small associations); Allcott et al. 2020 deactivation (+0.09 SD wellbeing); Braghieri, Levy & Makarin 2022 college roll-out (+0.085 SD poor mental health) — the same three sources as Yes, but… "Haidt has been debunked" | P | the three papers (AER; Professional Psychology) |
| C-051 | >3 h/day: internalising problems ~60% higher odds (aRRR 1.60 at 3–6 h; 1.78 >6 h); ~double for internalising+externalising (2.01; 2.44); n=6,595 | C was "roughly double the risk" | Riehm et al. 2019, JAMA Psychiatry, Results |
| C-052 | Association stronger for girls | C was "consistently worse"; and Lawmakers and Parents said "several large studies" for what is one study, until 19 Oct 2026 — now "a large UK cohort study"; Lawmakers also credited it with a finding about passive use until 22 Oct 2026, #153 — it measures hours of use, and the Lawmakers sentence now says "heavier social media use" | Kelly et al. 2018, EClinicalMedicine 6 (n=10,904; "The magnitude of association … was larger for girls than for boys") |
| C-053 | Passive use: the form most consistently linked to lower well-being (Verduyn 2015; Verduyn et al. 2017 review: the negative link with passive use "more robust" than the positive link with active use), marked contested in the same sentence (Valkenburg, van Driel & Beyens 2022: of 40 survey studies, "Most studies did not support the hypothesized associations") | PC 22 Oct 2026, #153: hedge restored; both reviews added to the Mental Health and Parents glossary entries; Parents no longer lists "worse for passive use" as established, and Lawmakers marks it contested — C-052; the main text of Mental Health and Parents marks it contested in its own sentence, with Valkenburg 2022 cited and added to the Mental Health Sources — it said "correlates more strongly", under "not seriously disputed", and "other research finds it stronger" until 22 Oct 2026 | JEP: General 144(2); Social Issues and Policy Review 11(1), 274–302; New Media & Society 24(2), 530–549 |
| C-054 | Haugen: 1 in 3 of girls who already felt bad; 13% UK / 6% US suicidal ideation | P | WSJ 14 Sept 2021 |
| C-055 | Orben & Przybylski 2019 "potatoes/glasses" — technology use generally | C scope | Nat. Hum. Behav. 3 |
| C-056 | Odgers 2024 critique of Haidt | PC (added); C (Mental Health credited her with "most of the causal experiments it cites were run on adults", which the review does not say, 17 Oct 2026) | Nature 628, 29–30 |
| C-057 | Sleep pathway: Carter et al. 2016 (JAMA Pediatrics meta-analysis, 20 studies, 125,198 children; bedtime use OR 2.17 inadequate sleep, access-without-use OR 1.79); Alonzo et al. 2021 (Sleep Med Rev, 42 studies; sleep a likely mediator) — cited on Mental Health, Parents, Teens, What to Do | P added 23 Sept 2026; observational, hedged | PubMed abstract; doi 10.1016/j.smrv.2020.101414 |
| C-058 | Anderson & Wood 2025 | PC for Parents' "shame" (the paper says reduced perceived control and increased self-blame for overuse; reworded 19 Oct 2026); C (Mental Health called the addiction framing "inaccurate" without qualification; the paper found most self-described addicts did not meet clinical criteria — now "usually inaccurate", 23 Oct 2026, #166) | Sci. Rep. 15, 39388 |
| C-416 | Mental Health · Meta's reply to the Haugen slides: the research was for internal discussion, some of it rested on 40 teenagers, and it did not measure causal relationships | P added 23 Oct 2026, #166 | Raychoudhury, Meta, 26 Sept 2021, What Our Research Really Says About Teen Well-Being and Instagram ("some of which relied on input from only 40 teens"; "It did not measure causal relationships") |
| C-329 | Adolescent decline from ~2012, when smartphones spread to most US teens: 37% had one in 2012, 73% had access by early 2015 | C (was "smartphone ownership among teenagers crossed 50%" around 2012; 17 Oct 2026); C (the 2012 timing was stated flat and marked contested two paragraphs later; now attributed to Haidt's measures, with his critics' objection in the same sentence, 23 Oct 2026, #166) | Pew, Teens and Technology 2013 (survey Jul–Sep 2012); Pew, Teens, Social Media & Technology Overview 2015 |
| C-059 | nl only (local addition, #60 option 3, 29 Sept 2026) · Trimbos-instituut statement, 1 Aug 2024, by 18 scientists (17 at Dutch institutions, one at Cambridge) on Haidt's book: correlational research shows an association, not which phenomenon is the cause; HBSC 2025 (Universiteit Utrecht & Trimbos, published 21 Sept 2026): problematic social-media use, secondary school 12–16, 5.9%, stable since 2021 after a rise 2017–2021 — never "it got better" | P | trimbos.nl blog "Waarom Haidts boek 'Generatie Angststoornis' niet het hele verhaal vertelt"; HBSC 2025 report TRI-52-007 (pp. 7, 44, 102–104); docs/research/NL.md §"The youth mental-health debate" (Fable-verified) |
| C-359 | Mental Health · Haidt and Twenge argue that six analytical decisions Orben and Przybylski made resulted in lower effect sizes | P 19 Oct 2026, #147; ledger gap | Twenge, Haidt, Joiner & Campbell 2020, Nature Human Behaviour 4, 346–348: "Orben and Przybylski made six analytical decisions that resulted in lower effect sizes" |
Radicalisation Pipelines
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-060 | Berger & Morgan 2015: ≥46,000 ISIS-supporter accounts | P | Brookings Analysis Paper 20 |
| C-061 | Christchurch RCI 2020; Buffalo NY AG report 2022 (4chan; Christchurch footage) | P | reports |
| C-062 | Ribeiro 2020: migration to more extreme channels; "little insight" into cause | P | FAT* 2020 |
| C-063 | Hosseinmardi 2021: 309,813-person panel; "little evidence" algorithm drives it | P | PNAS 118(32) |
| C-064 | Chen 2023: resentful users; subscriptions and external links | P | Sci. Adv. 9 |
| C-330 | Incel grievance has preceded real-world violence (no perpetrator named) | P source added 17 Oct 2026 | Hoffman, Ware & Shapiro 2020, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 43(7), abstract |
| C-036 | MI5 Oct 2025: 1 in 5 of 232 terrorism arrests were of children; Home Office: 43 of 232 in Great Britain in the year to March 2025 aged 17 or under | C (was "in 2024 … under 17", 19 Oct 2026, #147; aligned with C-324); moved from State Actors to Radicalisation ("What the security services see") with its sources, 24 Oct 2026, #172, card en-read-state-actors-agencies = a | MI5 threat update 16 Oct 2025; Home Office, TACT statistics to March 2025 (12 June 2025) |
| C-037 | MI5 Oct 2024: 13% of investigations under 18, threefold rise | P moved from State Actors to Radicalisation ("What the security services see") with its sources, 24 Oct 2026, #172, card en-read-state-actors-agencies = a | MI5 threat update 8 Oct 2024 |
| C-038 | BfV 2024: 57,701 extremist crimes (+46.3%); right-wing potential 50,250 (+23.8%) | P moved from State Actors to Radicalisation ("What the security services see") with its sources, 24 Oct 2026, #172, card en-read-state-actors-agencies = a | BMI/BfV VSB 2024, 10 June 2025 |
| C-210 | Radicalisation (State Actors until 24 Oct 2026) · BfV: extremist chat groups "catalysts" of radicalisation; the internet an easily reached space for young actors, some minors; 57,701 extremism crimes in 2024, up 46% on 2023 (39,433), an all-time high in the federal government's words; NRW "younger and more digital" | C (was "primary infrastructure"; then "the internet a catalyst" on State Actors, corrected 19 Oct 2026, #147; Lawmakers also said "all-time high" and "the internet" as the catalyst, neither in the report, until 19 Oct 2026; 22 Oct 2026, #153: "all-time high" on State Actors linked to the federal government's account, which says it); moved from State Actors to Radicalisation ("What the security services see") with its sources, 24 Oct 2026, #172, card en-read-state-actors-agencies = a | BfV VSB 2024 ("Einschlägige Chatgruppen dienen dabei als 'Katalysatoren'"; "Insgesamt wurden 57.701 Straftaten … (2023: 39.433)"); Bundesregierung, 10 June 2025 ("ein Höchststand und eine Steigerung von mehr als 46 Prozent"); NRW press release 9 Apr 2025 |
Manosphere
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-065 | r/TheRedPill created 2012 | P source added 17 Oct 2026 | Horta Ribeiro et al. 2021, ICWSM 15: "Since its creation in October 2012" |
| C-331 | Roose 2019: Caleb Cain's path from a self-help video recommended in late 2014 into far-right politics; history of 12,000+ videos from 2015 | C was "over eighteen months", main text and Deeper box; 17 Oct 2026 | Roose, NYT, 8 June 2019 |
| C-066 | ISD 2022: 10 experimental accounts, all recommended manosphere content; Shorts more aggressive | P | ISD/Reset Australia report |
| C-067 | Cousineau 2025 | S university news; labelled as argument | Dal News 15 July 2025 |
| C-068 | Botto & Gottzén: vulnerability | P | J. Gender Studies 33(5) |
| C-069 | MI5 Oct 2024 13% | PC the page said intelligence agencies "are treating this", the manosphere, "as a security concern"; MI5's figure covers all terrorism investigations and the AIVD/BfV passages young right-wing extremists — now given as the wider pattern, the manosphere strand sourced to the Dutch forensic services via NOS, 23 Oct 2026, #166 | MI5 |
| C-397 | Manosphere · AIVD and BfV 2024 reports: right-wing extremists mostly young, some of them minors, radicalised largely online (neither report is about the manosphere) | P 22 Oct 2026, #153; the page said "similar patterns" | AIVD Jaarverslag 2024 ("de aanhangers veelal jongvolwassen zijn, een aanzienlijk deel zelfs minderjarig"); BfV Verfassungsschutzbericht 2024 ("Anwerbung überwiegend junger, teils minderjähriger Akteure … deren online stattfindende Vernetzung und Radikalisierung") |
| C-070 | De Waag / Fivoor / Transfore 2026 | S | NOS, May 2026 |
| C-071 | "reliably reinforces a worldview" | C was "reliably produces a population" | framing |
Health Misinformation
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-072 | Wakefield 1998; retraction 2010; struck off | P | Lancet retraction; GMC |
| C-073 | WHO 2019 ten threats; "2–3 million deaths" prevented | P | WHO 2019 spotlight (wording) |
| C-074 | Loomba 2021 RCT: ~6 points lower intent, UK and US | P | Nat. Hum. Behav. 5 |
| C-075 | Allam 2014 search experiment | P | JMIR |
| C-406 | Search · "Position moves belief — in that study, measurably" | C was "Position controls belief. Whoever controls position influences what most people think about a topic" — one lab study, against the page's own Deeper box, 23 Oct 2026, #166 | Allam, Schulz & Nakamoto 2014, JMIR 16(4) e100 |
| C-076 | Surgeon General 2021 "urgent threat"; harassment of health workers | P | advisory |
| C-077 | Measles 869,770 in 2019; deaths +50% 2016–19 | PC the paragraph laid the return of measles at slipping coverage in near-eliminated countries, on a page about misinformation; the WHO release attributes the surge to "a failure to vaccinate children on time with two doses of measles-containing vaccines" and does not mention misinformation — now said, 23 Oct 2026, #166 | WHO 12 Nov 2020 |
| C-078 | Alternative medicine alone: HR 2.50 | P source added | Johnson et al. 2018, JNCI 110(1) |
| C-079 | CCDH "Disinformation Dozen"; disputed by Meta ("about just 0.05% of all views of vaccine-related content") | V (advocacy, labelled); Meta's reply sourced 17 Oct 2026; 22 Oct 2026, #153: the organisation is now the Center for Countering Digital Harm (same EIN 86-2006080; counterhate.com redirects to counterharm.com) — the entry keeps the 2021 name and links the new address | CCDH 2021 (counterharm.com/research/the-disinformation-dozen: "65% of anti-vaccine content can be traced to the leading online anti-vaxxers"); Bickert, Meta, 18 Aug 2021 |
| C-332 | MMR–autism: "very large subsequent studies" — a Danish cohort of 657,461 children, HR 0.93; a meta-analysis of cohort studies covering 1,256,407 children (both named on the page) | P sources added 17 Oct 2026 | Hviid et al. 2019, Annals 170(8); Taylor et al. 2014, Vaccine 32(29) |
| C-360 | Health Misinformation · in a nationwide Danish cohort, early statin discontinuation rose with negative statin-related news stories, and stopping early was associated with more heart attacks and cardiovascular deaths | PC as to the study; C (22 Oct 2026, #153: the page cited it for misinformation leading people to "reject treatment for heart disease"; the study is about news coverage and stopping statins — H-9 of the 19 Oct 2026 verification) | Nielsen & Nordestgaard 2016, Eur Heart J 37(11), 908–916: "Early statin discontinuation increased with negative statin-related news stories … also associated with increased risk of myocardial infarction and death from cardiovascular disease" |
Elections & Democratic Harm
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-080 | IRA reach: 126m Facebook, ~20m Instagram, 1.4m Twitter notified, 1,108 YouTube videos / 309k views | C (was "millions more on Instagram and YouTube"); C (17 Oct 2026: Instagram and Twitter figures re-sourced — the PBS report carried neither; Twitter's notice came in Jan 2018, "later") | PBS/AP, 31 Oct 2017 (Facebook, YouTube); Reuters via Fortune, 1 Nov 2017 (Instagram, Stretch to Senate Intelligence); Twitter, 19 Jan 2018 updated 31 Jan (1.4m) |
| C-333 | Elections · 2016 internal Facebook study, German political groups: 64% of all joins to extremist groups came through recommendation tools | C was "64% of the people who joined"; 17 Oct 2026 | Horwitz & Seetharaman, WSJ 26 May 2020 |
| C-081 | Germano et al. 2026 | PC Elections said "measurable effects on political opinion at national scale" and filed the study under Confirmed; now one study, observational, under Contested, 23 Oct 2026, #166 | abstract |
| C-432 | Elections · the 2020 Facebook and Instagram election experiments run with Meta: a chronological feed, no reshares, or a third less like-minded content, for three months around the 2020 US election, did not measurably move polarisation or political attitudes; limits: three months, one election, and Meta's post-election emergency ranking changes, which critics (a letter to Science) say changed what the comparison group saw | P added 24 Oct 2026, #172, card en-read-election-experiments = a | Guess et al. 2023, Science 381(6656) 398–404, abstract ("did not significantly alter levels of issue polarization, affective polarization, political knowledge, or other key attitudes during the 3-month study period"); Guess et al. 2023, Science 381(6656) 404–408, abstract ("does not significantly affect political polarization"); Nyhan et al. 2023, Nature 620 137–144, abstract (23,377 users, like-minded exposure cut "by about one-third", "no measurable effects on eight preregistered attitudinal measures"); Bagchi et al., Science eLetter 26 Sept 2024, arXiv:2409.18393 ("temporary emergency changes" after the election) — DOIs checked on Crossref |
| C-407 | Elections, Democracy · the system amplifies "inflammatory and polarising content, true or false" | C was "false, inflammatory, and polarising content" — the evidence on the pages is about emotional and polarising content, not falsehood, 23 Oct 2026, #166 | Milli et al. 2025; Germano et al. 2026 |
| C-082 | Romania: 23% (22.94%), polled behind at least five other candidates; annulment 6 Dec 2024; declassified documents contested; PNL-funded campaign (Snoop.ro investigation, tax-authority source); "reported as the first time" an EU country annulled an election over claims of online interference; TikTok's disclosure of a 78-account network promoting Georgescu; US Vice President's criticism | C (caveat added); C (17 Oct 2026: "the first EU presidential election annulled" now reported, not asserted; TikTok and US sources added); C (19 Oct 2026, #147: the 23% now sourced to the ECHR decision, 22.94%, not PBS/AP, which gives no share; "single digits" replaced by AP's "behind at least five other candidates"; the "tax-authority investigation" and the hashtag change dropped — Euronews carries the PNL payment and the ANAF source); C (Elections called Georgescu "previously unknown" — now "little-known"; AUR had proposed him for prime minister in December 2020 — and said the declassified documents were "showing" the amplification, now "stating", 23 Oct 2026, #166) | ECHR, Georgescu v. Romania, no. 37327/24 (22.94%); PBS/AP, 6 Dec 2024; Euronews 23 Dec 2024 / Snoop.ro; GZERO 6 Dec 2024; TikTok newsroom 6 Dec 2024 (updated); RFE/RL 14 Feb 2025 |
| C-342 | Elections · the Romanian annulment drew criticism from constitutional-law scholars, while others defended it as "an expression of militant democracy" (Cornea's words, since 22 Oct 2026, #164) | S was an unsourced "legal scholars", uncontested; 17 Oct 2026 | Kuti, Verfassungsblog, 10 Dec 2024; Iancu, Review of Democracy, 13 May 2025; Cornea, Verfassungsblog, 1 Apr 2025 |
| C-361 | Elections · the European Commission opened formal proceedings against TikTok on election risks under the Digital Services Act, 17 December 2024, in the context of the Romanian presidential elections | P 19 Oct 2026, #147; ledger gap | European Commission IP/24/6487, 17 Dec 2024: "the Commission has opened formal proceedings against TikTok … notably in the context of the recent Romanian presidential elections on 24 November" |
| C-362 | Elections · Cambridge Analytica harvested data from up to 87 million Facebook profiles; the UK ICO found the data related to US-registered voters and could not have been used in the Brexit referendum | PC (19 Oct 2026, #147; ledger gap on this page — C-022 and C-227 cover Advertising and Timeline); C (the main text said "87 million" without the source's "up to", 23 Oct 2026, #166); C (said Cambridge Analytica used the data "to build psychological profiles for political micro-targeting in the 2016 US presidential election", and that "the infrastructure existed and was used" is confirmed; now its "political micro-targeting work for US campaigns in the 2016 cycle", with how the data was used in the presidential campaign contested, 24 Oct 2026, #172, card en-read-cambridge-analytica = a; C (now: the ICO "suspected" use in the 2016 presidential election and found it "not possible to determine" which data served any part of a campaign, 25 Oct 2026, #172, C-435) | Facebook, 4 Apr 2018 ("up to 87 million people — mostly in the US"); ICO letter, Denham, 2 Oct 2020 ("SCL/CA were not involved in the EU referendum campaign in the UK"; the Kogan data "related to US registered voters") |
| C-435 | Advertising, Elections · the UK ICO suspected that some of the Facebook data was used in the 2016 US presidential election, but could not determine which data was used in any specific part of a campaign | P 25 Oct 2026, #172, card en-read-cambridge-analytica = a; the letter read by the administrator, action 172-ico-letter, since it returns 403 to automated reads | ICO letter, Denham, 2 Oct 2020, Annex 2 para 18 ("At least some of the shared data (or modelled data) is understood to have subsequently been used in connection with political campaigning, including (it is suspected) the 2016 US presidential election") and para 30 ("whether or which specific data from GSR was then used in any specific part of campaign has not been possible to determine from the digital evidence reviewed") |
| C-363 | Elections · the IRA operations are documented in the Mueller Report (2019) and the US Senate Intelligence Committee five-volume report | SC (19 Oct 2026, #147; ledger gap on this page — C-032 covers State Actors, C-136 Democracy); both files are bot-walled (justice.gov, intelligence.senate.gov) and could not be opened in the citation check | Mueller Report vol. I (2019); Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Russian Active Measures, vols 1–5 (2019–2020) |
| C-351 | Elections · AIVD 2025 annual report, published 23 April 2026, its Director-General quoted by NOS calling the threat picture unprecedented in the service's 80 years; BfV Verfassungsschutzbericht 2024: 57,701 extremism-related crimes (+46%), online chat groups as "catalysts" of radicalisation | C 19 Oct 2026, #147: the "80 years" sentence is the Director-General's, as NOS quotes it, not in the report PDF — the page credits it to NOS; "the internet" as catalyst became online chat groups; "all-time high" is the federal government summary wording ("Höchststand"), and the Sources entry credited it to the BfV report until 22 Oct 2026 (#153); ledger gap on this page — C-035, C-038 and C-210 cover State Actors | NOS, 23 Apr 2026 (nos.nl/l/2611683): "In de tachtig jaar dat de AIVD en zijn voorlopers bestaan, was er niet eerder een dreigingsbeeld zoals nu"; BfV VSB 2024: 57.701 against 39.433 crimes; "Einschlägige Chatgruppen dienen dabei als „Katalysatoren“" |
| C-083 | ODNI statement 1 Nov 2024 | S | CISA/ODNI |
| C-084 | CvdM "Naar democratisch gezonde feeds", May 2026, "aantoonbaar riskant voor onze democratie" (report ch. 5 and p. 8; wording also confirmed via iBestuur, 19 May 2026; the cvdm.nl news page is dated 18 May 2026 and says "uit democratisch oogpunt riskant") | P the report PDF linked beside the news page (19 Oct 2026, #147: the quotation is in the report, ch. 5, not on the news page) | cvdm.nl news page; report PDF, cvdm.nl/documents/3858/Naar_democratisch_gezonde_feeds.pdf |
| C-085 | ro only (local addition, docs/research/MD.md proposal 14, approved 1 Oct 2026) · Moldova 2024: ODIHR final report (14 Mar 2025, Romanian version) — „caracterizat de îngrijorări privind interferența străină ilegală și eforturi active de dezinformare” (the IEOM preliminary conclusion of 21 Oct 2024, as quoted in the final report); SIS public report on the 2024 electoral process — over 160 Telegram channels, over 90 TikTok channels and (70+, written "dozens of") Facebook groups distributing pro-Kremlin narratives; Moldova 2025: ODIHR final report (18 Feb 2026) — serious foreign interference, illicit financing, cyber-attacks and widespread disinformation; more than 138,000 accounts and transactions in vote-buying schemes since the 2024 election (Promsvyazbank, cryptocurrency, cards); around 1,000 take-down requests to platforms, the majority "not acted upon"; Meta, Alphabet and Telegram did not respond to the mission's meeting requests | P SIS: security-service reporting, corroborating ODIHR, never carrying a claim alone | ODIHR final reports (PDF 593438_0; odihr.osce.org/odihr/662251); SIS public report PDF; docs/research/MD.md §3 (confirmed, Fable-verified 25 Sept 2026). The dossier draft's "90 de conturi TikTok" was corrected to "canale", as the SIS report writes |
| C-459 | fr only (local addition, FR.md proposal 31; items 31, 42, 45 Include) · VIGINUM created by décret n° 2021-922 of 13 July 2021 within the SGDSN; its definition of foreign digital interference; "since the 2017 presidential election" no major French vote spared (June 2026); 77 Storm-1516 operations, Aug 2023 – Mar 2025, incl. the fake "Ensemble" site offering €100 before the July 2024 snap election; 205 by June 2026, Storm-1516 "described as attributed to" GRU unit 29155; four interference operations in the March 2026 municipal elections, two through known pro-Russian operations, visibility limited per the RCPE, no measure of effect on votes (only the election judge); a growing threat expected for 18 April / 2 May 2027; the 2018 référé (three months, 48 hours), upheld only where falsehood and risk are manifest (2018-773 DC §23) | P VIGINUM's own caveat: it cannot confirm the unit's direct involvement; the sgdsn.gouv.fr and Légifrance pages read on Wayback captures | VIGINUM municipal-elections report (11 June 2026) and Storm-1516 report (6 May 2025); décret 2021-922 and loi 2018-1202 (Légifrance); Conseil constitutionnel 2018-773 DC; service-public A15053; docs/research/FR.md §3 A–C |
| C-460 | fr only (local addition, item 45, written 25 Oct 2026, no English draft) · code électoral L. 52-1 bans commercial advertising for election propaganda in the six months before the first day of the month of the election — since 1 October 2026 for an April 2027 first round; the CNCCFP guide applies the ban to all paid advertising on social networks (sponsored posts to paid influencers) | P for the rule and the guide's wording; the date is derived (six months before 1 April 2027), not printed in the guide | CNCCFP, Guide à l'usage des candidats à l'élection du Président de la République et de leur mandataire, 2026-2027 edition (11 June 2026), pp. 28–29 (read on Wayback 20260628082717; cnccfp.fr in maintenance, 503); code électoral L. 52-1 (Légifrance via Wayback 20241213120613); docs/research/FR.md §3 E |
| C-461 | fr only (local addition, FR.md proposal 34 and 46, #60) · ANSES (16 Dec 2025, more than a thousand studies): social networks "en tant que facteurs contributifs de troubles anxiodépressifs", with its hedge that cross-sectional studies allow no conclusion on causality; "Enfants et écrans" commission (April 2024): moving from correlation to causation "est difficile"; Grégoire Borst: "ne créent pas le mal-être, mais ils peuvent le révéler ou l'intensifier"; 2026-911 DC (14 Aug 2026): the under-15 ban "pas adaptée, nécessaire et proportionnée" (§18) | P ANSES's own headline is firmer: never quoted alone | anses.fr AP2019-SA-0152-RA (PDF); elysee.fr report PDF; u-paris.fr; conseil-constitutionnel.fr 2026-911 DC; docs/research/FR.md §4.4 |
| C-462 | fr only (local addition, FR.md proposal 35, #59) · Interior Ministry, written answer, JO Sénat 18 June 2026 p. 3045: a marked fall in the age of people behind violent plots since 2023, minors "une part très significative"; online radicalisation prevention first in the 2025-2027 roadmap | P | senat.fr qSEQ250404216; docs/research/FR.md §4.3 |
| C-463 | fr only (local addition, FR.md proposal 36, #59) · HCE 2026 sexism report "la menace masculiniste"; the government's answer to AN question 3097 (JO 12 Aug 2025, p. 7124): an interministerial effort under the Interior Ministry against violent masculinist discourse "notamment dans l'espace numérique" | P | haut-conseil-egalite.gouv.fr report page; questions.assemblee-nationale.fr QE 3097 (PDF); docs/research/FR.md §4.3 |
| C-464 | fr only (local addition, FR.md proposal 37) · Ministry of Health national strategy against health misinformation, 12 January 2026: an Observatoire ("en cours de réalisation", so "prévoit") and "infovigilance"; Vaccination Info Service, by Santé publique France | P | sante.gouv.fr strategy PDF (Wayback 20260223121940); vaccination-info-service.fr; docs/research/FR.md §4.2 |
Xenophobia & Violence
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-086 | Stormfront 1995 ("the first major hate site on the Internet"); OSCE Paris meeting June 2004, nearly twenty years before the DSA | PC 17 Oct 2026: "twenty years" → "nearly twenty"; SPLC source added | OSCE; SPLC Extremist Files |
| C-334 | By the early 2000s researchers were studying how far people in white racist chat rooms would go in advocating violence | C was "the connection between online hate speech and real-world hate crimes was being studied"; 17 Oct 2026 | Glaser, Dixit & Green 2002, J. Social Issues 58(1), abstract |
| C-335 | Facebook's dominance in Myanmar took root around 2012; 18 million users in 2018, about a third of the population; for most people online, Facebook was the internet | C (was "launched in Myanmar in 2012" … "for most of the country's population"; 17 Oct 2026); "around 2012" and "18 million / a third" rest on Reuters (paywalled, 401 on 19 and 22 Oct 2026; quoted in docs/03); BSR corroborates the order of magnitude (checked 22 Oct 2026, #153) | Stecklow, Reuters 15 Aug 2018; BSR 2018, §3.2: "approximately 20 million Facebook users as of January 2018", "34 percent of Myanmar’s population of 53 million people use the internet", "For the majority of Myanmar’s 20 million internet-connected citizens, Facebook is the internet" |
| C-364 | Xenophobia · glossary "Dehumanisation": genocide scholars treat escalating dehumanising language as a recognised warning stage (stage IV of Stanton's ten stages); the Myanmar fact-finding mission on dehumanising language and Facebook (¶¶73–74) | P | Stanton, The Ten Stages of Genocide (Genocide Watch); A/HRC/39/64, 12 Sept 2018 |
| C-087 | SPLC: ~12,000 white-supremacist propaganda videos, hate-rock concert reels and Holocaust-denial pseudo-documentaries, mid-January 2007 | P 22 Oct 2026, #153: the page now names the three kinds of video the count covers | SPLC, Neo-Nazi Groups Share Hate Via YouTube, Intelligence Report 125, Spring 2007 |
| C-088 | Darusman "determining role" (March 2018); "hallmarks of genocide" (Lee, March 2018); FFM: senior officials to be investigated and prosecuted for genocide | SC 17 Oct 2026: the page said "the UN described"; now the Special Rapporteur | OHCHR press release 12 March 2018; A/HRC/39/64 para. 87 |
| C-398 | Xenophobia · the UN Fact-Finding Mission called Facebook's response to hate speech in Myanmar "slow and ineffective"; BSR's assessment, commissioned by Facebook, found the platform "being used by bad actors to spread hate speech, incite violence, and coordinate harm" | C 22 Oct 2026, #153: was "both … concluded that the company's response … had been slow and inadequate"; BSR uses neither word | A/HRC/39/64 ¶74 (documents.un.org PDF): "Although improved in recent months, the response of Facebook has been slow and ineffective"; BSR 2018 HRIA (about.fb.com PDF) |
| C-089 | Müller & Schwarz outage natural experiment | PC for the year (the Deeper box said 2019, the working paper; now 2021, the JEEA version the entry cites — 15 Oct 2026); C (Xenophobia's body called the causal pathway "real and documented" in general; now "documented, with rigour, in one country and period", as the Deeper box says, 23 Oct 2026, #166) | JEEA 19(4), 2021 |
Get-Rich-Quick & Scams
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-090 | FTC: $261m (2020) → $2.1bn (2025), eightfold; social media the contact method with the highest reported losses (was "the costliest way for scammers to reach people", 22 Oct 2026, #164) | P | FTC Data Spotlight April 2026 |
| C-091 | $5.7bn investment scams 2024, +~24% | P | FTC March 2025 |
| C-417 | Get-Rich-Quick · pig-butchering as "a fast-growing kind of investment fraud" | C was "the fastest-growing investment fraud", which no source on the page says, 23 Oct 2026, #166 | FTC, March 2025 (investment-scam losses up nearly a quarter on 2023) |
| C-092 | FCA 62% / 74% / 9 in 10 | P | FCA 22 Oct 2024 |
| C-093 | FCA week of action 2025: nine regulators from six jurisdictions (Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Italy, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom) | C was "nine-country"; 19 Oct 2026, #147 | FCA, 6 June 2025 |
| C-094 | SEC v Kardashian $1.26m / $250k | P | SEC 2022-183 |
| C-327 | FCA charged nine people over an unauthorised foreign-exchange scheme promoted on social media (charges, not convictions) | P source added 17 Oct 2026 | FCA press release 16 May 2024 (GovDelivery copy) |
| C-381 | Get-Rich-Quick / Consumerism · glossary "Social proof" and both Sources lists: Cialdini 1984 is Influence: How and Why People Agree to Things, William Morrow | C was "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Harper Business" — the subtitle and publisher of later editions; 22 Oct 2026, #153 | Open Library edition record OL3179378M (Morrow, New York, 1984; LCCN 83021963, OCLC 10019153); East Carolina University catalogue |
| C-399 | Get-Rich-Quick / Consumerism · glossary "Social proof": strongest under uncertainty and when the others seem similar to us | S was "admired or seem similar" / "similar to us or admired by us": admiration is not a social-proof condition Cialdini names; narrowed 22 Oct 2026, #153 | Cialdini 1984 (not opened); Influence at Work (Cialdini's firm), The 7 Principles of Persuasion: "Especially when they are uncertain, people will look to the actions and behaviors of others"; the towel message from "comparable previous guests" |
Body Image / Consumerism / Recruited to Harm / Unknown
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-328 | Body Image · the Centre for Appearance Research has co-created Dove's body-confidence programmes since 2014; meta-analysis of 63 samples: small but significant link between social-media use and body-image disturbance | C (was "independent work … with no product to sell"; 17 Oct 2026); C (the Deeper box said "Correlation is strong" over the same meta-analysis; now "consistent", "a small effect, found repeatedly", 23 Oct 2026, #166) | UWE, Dove Self-Esteem Project (DSEP); Saiphoo & Vahedi 2019, CHB 101 |
| C-343 | Body Image · maxillofacial surgeons have warned, in their specialty's journal and in the press, that bonesmashing does not reshape the face and risks broken facial bones, nerve damage, dental injury, a changed bite and asymmetric healing; Grillo (2024) called the trend an urgent concern | C (was "warned repeatedly" and "lasting asymmetry, and disfigurement" — the disfigurement warning found was a plastic surgeon's; 17 Oct 2026); C (19 Oct 2026, #147: the letter is paywalled and nobody has recorded its text, so Grillo's "scarring and vascular and neurological damage" is replaced by VICE's account of it); C (19 Oct 2026, #147, Fable review: VICE does not name Grillo and gives the wording to a paper in a different journal, so the sentence keeps only "an urgent concern", which the letter's title carries, anchored to Grillo; VICE stays for the surgeons' warnings in the press) | Grillo 2024 (letter, J Stomatol Oral Maxillofac Surg 125(2), existence on PubMed); Fike, VICE, 1 Mar 2026 (Kojanis); Lai, CBS 8 via Yahoo Health, 27 Mar 2026 (Jun) |
| C-095 | Dove 2022: 1 in 2 girls; 7 in 10 felt better after unfollowing (1,551 girls) | V (labelled); the entry now points at the release itself, not the programme's homepage (15 Oct 2026) | Dove Self-Esteem Project release, 27 April 2022 (PR Newswire) — Edelman DXI online survey, 524 + 1,027 US girls aged 10–17, Feb–Apr 2022 |
| C-096 | Solea & Sugiura 2025 (PSL scale, Sub5) | P | Crime, Media, Culture 2025 |
| C-097 | AdWords Oct 2000; per-click auction from Feb 2002 (AdWords Select); Facebook Ads Nov 2007; Matz 2017 (3.5m, +40% clicks, +50% purchases) | P (2002 auction and three sources added, 17 Oct 2026); sources on the page 17 Oct 2026 | Google releases 23 Oct 2000 and 20 Feb 2002; Edelman, Ostrovsky & Schwarz 2007, AER 97(1); Facebook 6 Nov 2007 and MediaPost 7 Nov 2007; DoubleClick 10-K (FY2000); Instagram 19 Mar 2019, Facebook 19 May 2020 |
| C-336 | Consumerism · by 2013–2015 researchers had shown Likes predict personality, politics and sexual orientation, and, for personality, more accurately than friends | C (was "targeting had become granular enough to reach individuals based on psychological profiles"; 17 Oct 2026); C (22 Oct 2026, #153: "more accurately than friends" narrowed to personality, the only trait Youyou et al. compared) | Kosinski et al. 2013, PNAS 110(15); Youyou et al. 2015, PNAS 112(4): r = 0.56 against friends' 0.49, personality only |
| C-337 | Consumerism · UNEP 2018: "10 per cent of global carbon emissions", textile dyeing "the second largest polluter of water"; the page now gives 2 to 8 per cent; challenged as poorly sourced | C was "second-largest consumer of water"; 17 Oct 2026 | UNEP 12 Nov 2018 (Wayback) and live page; Wicker, Vox 2020 |
| C-338 | Consumerism · one survey of 501 young adults (Sharif & Khanekharab 2017): heavy social-media use associated with compulsive buying and materialism | C was "Research repeatedly finds" and "reduced satisfaction with owned possessions"; 17 Oct 2026 | Sharif & Khanekharab 2017, CBSN 20(8), abstract |
| C-339 | Consumerism · upward comparison usually leaves people feeling worse ("the most likely result is self-deflating contrast") | C was "one of the most replicated findings in social psychology"; 17 Oct 2026 | Gerber, Wheeler & Suls 2018, Psychol. Bull. 144(2), abstract |
| C-375 | Consumerism · the iPhone went on sale in the US on 29 June 2007, "the Internet in your pocket" in Apple's words | P added 19 Oct 2026, #147, for the Timeline's 2007 entry | Apple press release, 28 June 2007 |
| C-376 | Consumerism · Facebook bought Instagram in 2012, "a fun, popular photo-sharing app for mobile devices" | P added 19 Oct 2026, #147, for the Timeline's 2012 entry; the month of completion is left out: Facebook's 10-Q says August 2012, while Facebook and Instagram announced the close on 6 September 2012 | Facebook newsroom, 9 April 2012; Facebook Form 10-Q, quarter ended 30 Sept 2012, Note 2 |
| C-098 | Europol: minors in >70% of criminal markets (the 2024 recruitment notification, not EU-SOCTA 2025, which gives the "violence-as-a-service" model); young recruits whose "no criminal records make them low-risk operatives" (the 2024 notification); organised-crime violence "intensifying in several Member States" under a violence-as-a-service model (EU-SOCTA 2025); GRIMM taskforce April 2025; FBI "764"; a Europol-coordinated effort involving 28 countries | PC (17 Oct 2026: was "dozens of countries"; the GRIMM release is dated 8 Dec 2025, not 2026); C (19 Oct 2026, #147: the 70% re-pointed from EU-SOCTA 2025, which does not contain it, to the 2024 notification); 22 Oct 2026, #153: "violence-as-a-service" linked to EU-SOCTA 2025 on the page (the notification describes the model but not the term), and the notification PDF linked from its entry; C (22 Oct 2026, #153: the glossary said EU-SOCTA 2025 "identified it as a fast-growing model across Europe"; the report says the violence is "intensifying in several Member States") | Europol, The recruitment of young perpetrators for criminal networks (intelligence notification 2024-033, Nov 2024, PDF: "minors are now involved in over 70 % of criminal markets"; "violent attacks committed by minors are orchestrated remotely by a criminal service provider"; OCCRP, 14 Nov 2024: "more than 70 percent of existing criminal markets"); EU-SOCTA 2025 (p. 31: "Violence-as-a-service: who does what and how does it work?"); Europol GRIMM release 8 Dec 2025; EU TE-SAT 2026 fn 10; FBI |
| C-099 | Unknown · CETaS (Nov 2024): no conclusive evidence AI-generated content altered the 2024 US result; it influenced discourse, amplified harmful narratives and entrenched polarisation; ABCD; Valkenburg | POC CETaS re-read 22 Oct 2026, #153 — see C-041 | CETaS publication page abstract (Wayback, 14 Nov 2024); abcdstudy.org; Valkenburg et al. |
| C-340 | Unknown · the harms in Ethiopia are documented | P source added 17 Oct 2026 | Amnesty International, AFR 25/7292/2023, 31 Oct 2023 |
| C-352 | Body Image · Researchers at the University of Portsmouth traced how incel ideology has been rebranded as looksmaxxing and self-improvement, language that avoids moderation | P 19 Oct 2026, #147; ledger gap | University of Portsmouth news item, 17 Nov 2025: incel accounts are rebranding to bypass bans; "the trend appears scientific or unoffensive" |
| C-353 | Unknown · Reuters Institute Digital News Report (annual, 40+ countries) | P (19 Oct 2026, #147; ledger gap); loosely — the 2025 report lists about 48 markets on six continents | Reuters Institute, Digital News Report 2025 |
| C-354 | Consumerism · social media platforms scaled the surveillance-advertising machinery to three billion people (Meta, 3.60 billion Family daily active people, June 2026); Festinger 1954 on social comparison | PC 19 Oct 2026, #147; ledger gap on this page — C-004, C-256 and C-233 cover the figure and Festinger elsewhere | Meta Platforms, Meta Reports Second Quarter 2026 Results, 29 July 2026 (SEC exhibit 99.1): "DAP was 3.60 billion on average for June 2026"; Festinger 1954, Human Relations 7(2), 117–140 |
Laws & Regulation
Courts
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-100 | MDL 3047 created 6 Oct 2022 from dozens of suits (28 actions + 56 related notified); school districts' suits transferred in later; 3,383 filed / 3,208 pending 1 Sept 2026 (was 2,527 at 1 May 2026); 41 states Oct 2023 (33 together in N.D. Cal., 8 in their own state courts) | CP (was "in the same court", 15 Oct 2026); C (was "hundreds of suits by families and school districts" in Oct 2022 and "the largest coordinated legal action against social media platforms in history", unsourced; the entry linked the Dec 2023 order — 17 Oct 2026); P otherwise | JPML transfer orders 6 Oct 2022 (Doc. 119) and 6 Dec 2023 (Doc. 315); JPML pending dockets 1 Sept 2026; California AG, 24 Oct 2023 |
| C-101 | Meta–states settlement 26 Aug 2026: min $12.1bn, up to $17.1bn over ten years, 51 AGs (47 states, DC, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands), consent judgment entered same day, no admission of liability; under-18 defaults (2 h/day, midnight–6 am block, no like counts, no cosmetic filters, auditor); families' MDL cases unaffected | PC (added 23 Sept 2026 — missed by the 21 Sept re-check, which tracked named cases, not the docket); C (was "the states that had sued, joined by the rest, the District of Columbia and the territories", 17 Oct 2026) | Consent judgment (oag.ca.gov); NJ AG release; Hunton |
| C-102 | 14 Nov 2023 ruling; Anderson v TikTok (3rd Cir., No. 22-3061, filed 27 Aug 2024; the entry's link read 222061p.pdf, a 404, until 19 Oct 2026 and is now opinarch/223061p.pdf) | PC (URL, 19 Oct 2026); C (Courts and Section 230 said courts found infinite scroll, autoplay and notification timing outside Section 230; the order held those claims barred — see C-408, 23 Oct 2026, #166) | orders; ca3.uscourts.gov opinion |
| C-103 | NM $375m (24 Mar 2026) + $567m abatement (6 Aug 2026) = $942m; LA $6m ($3m + $3m punitive), Meta 70% / YouTube 30%, malice, oppression or fraud (not a quotation); the plaintiff "testified" she became addicted to social media; post-trial motions denied 9 June 2026; appeals filed July 2026 (LA), announced (NM) | CS (was "both companies … will appeal both verdicts" — Google was not a party in New Mexico); C (was "malice, fraud or oppression" in quotation marks, "became addicted" in the site's voice, "Instagram" 70%, 17 Oct 2026); S for the verdict report and the appeal steps | NM DOJ Aug 2026; AP 25 Mar 2026 (via WTOP); CNBC 10 June 2026; Fortune 15 July 2026; Santa Fe New Mexican |
| C-104 | MSA 1998; US v Philip Morris 2006; the tobacco analogy's limit: the social-media causal link marked contested (17 Oct 2026: was "the causal pathway … is real but more complex") | PC for the MSA; 2006 ruling linked (DOJ-hosted copy of the Amended Final Opinion, 8 Sept 2006, 449 F. Supp. 2d 1; the 2009 D.C. Circuit affirmance, 566 F.3d 1095, second; 19 Oct 2026; "a scheme to defraud smokers and potential smokers"); C for the causal sentence; C (the four tobacco points were stated as the site's facts and the lead said the argument had been "won"; now the plaintiffs' allegations, two quoted from the California AG's release, and juries' verdicts that are not yet final, 23 Oct 2026, #166) | NAAG, The Master Settlement Agreement |
| C-423 | the states allege "a business model focused on maximizing young users' time on its platforms" and that Meta continued "to conceal and downplay its platforms' adverse effects" | P added 23 Oct 2026, #166 | California Attorney General, 24 Oct 2023, press release on the federal complaint |
| C-365 | glossary "Product-liability / design defect": the "failure to warn" claim argues the company knew of the harms, from public studies or its own research, and did not warn users | P | N.D. Cal., In re Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation, No. 4:22-md-03047-YGR, Dkt. 430 (14 Nov 2023) |
Courts, Section 230
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-408 | the 14 Nov 2023 MDL order: claims over parental controls, age verification, barriers to deleting an account, filters, CSAM reporting and failure to warn not barred; claims over the feed's lack of "a beginning and end", the "use of algorithms to promote addictive engagement" and the timing and clustering of notifications barred (Section 230; notifications of the platforms' own content under the First Amendment); the Third Circuit let Anderson v. TikTok proceed (2024) | C both pages said courts found infinite scroll, autoplay and push notifications outside Section 230, Courts' lead adding notifications "calibrated to moments of maximum psychological vulnerability", unsourced; 23 Oct 2026, #166 | N.D. Cal., No. 4:22-md-03047-YGR, Dkt. 430, pp. 14–16, 22 and 51 ("MTD2 is GRANTED on Section 230 grounds … to the extent they are based on the defects alleged at paragraphs 845 (e), (h), (i), (t), (u), (l), and (j)"), now cited in the src-dla-2024 entry on both pages |
DSA
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-105 | applicable 17 Feb 2024; 45m ("equivalent to 10 % of the Union population", recital 76 — the glossary's "a tenth"); 6%; X €120m Dec 2025, challenged before the General Court (T-114/26 etc., 16 Feb 2026) | P challenge added 21 Sept 2026; recital 76 and Art. 33(1) added to the VLOP glossary entry 22 Oct 2026, #153 | Commission; Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 recital 76, Art. 33(1); CURIA / OJ 4 May 2026 |
| C-106 | NATO StratCom Poland/Lithuania study: harmful posts 959 (2023) against 1,392 (2024), "an overall 45% increase" (Polish +55%, Lithuanian −11%); "we could not claim an overall enhancement after DSA enforcement" | SC (was "no clear decline", 19 Oct 2026); C (the main text drew a verdict — "the gap between stated compliance and actual behavioural change remains significant" — from two countries and one platform; now "a signal rather than a verdict", as the Deeper box says, 23 Oct 2026, #166) | StratCom COE report (Riga, May 2025) |
| C-107 | "The political threat" → "The politics around it": the verdict sentences removed ("the current frontline of the governance story", "the most significant platform accountability legislation in existence is under coordinated political pressure", "rules that took years to pass can be weakened faster than they were built"); Vance "attacked" → "criticised … as over-regulatory"; the Deeper's "under political attack from the US" → "under political pressure from the US administration" | O register, 23 Sept 2026, decision 5 | every fact, date and source unchanged — sources on page |
| C-346 | further-reading entry src-centre-future (Centre for Future Generations): cfg.eu/enforcement-initiative is the Centre's enforcement-initiative page covering the GDPR, DSA, DMA and AI Act and linking a tracker; the entry's description "DSA Enforcement Tracker" is narrower than the page | S description only; not yet widened | cfg.eu/enforcement-initiative (Fable citation check, 19 Oct 2026) |
| C-377 | Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 signed on 19 October 2022 (OJ L 277, 27 Oct 2022), in force on the twentieth day after publication, applicable from 17 February 2024 | P added 19 Oct 2026, #147, for the Timeline's 2022 entry; "signed", not "adopted": the Council's decision was on 4 October 2022 | Regulation (EU) 2022/2065, title, signature ("Done at Strasbourg, 19 October 2022") and Art. 93 |
GDPR
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-108 | fines list (Google €50m, Amazon €746m, Meta €1.2bn, TikTok €345m, LinkedIn €310m, TikTok €530m); fines imposed >€7bn in total (15 Oct 2026: "imposed", not "cumulative", in the lead, the description, the fines paragraph and the Deeper summary — the total counts the annulled Amazon fine and fines under appeal) | PC for Amazon (15 Oct 2026: the €746m decision was annulled by Luxembourg's Cour administrative on 12 March 2026, arrêt n° 52757C, the breaches confirmed and the case sent back to the CNPD — the list had it standing) | DPAs; DLA Piper Jan 2026 (€7.1bn); justice.public.lu official summary, 13 March 2026 |
| C-109 | the record €1.2bn Meta fine ≈ 1% of the group's revenue the year before (≈ four days of it), against a 4% ceiling; most of the largest fines under appeal and unpaid (DPC: >€4.4bn imposed, ~€20m collected; a fine under appeal cannot be collected); deterrence contested, "little evidence" either way — main text and Deeper box | PC 15 Oct 2026: replaces the unsourced "manageable as a business cost" and the Deeper box's "a cost of doing business than a deterrent" | DPC decision IN-20-8-1 §9.124 ($116.61bn, FY2022; ECB 1.0892 on 12 May 2023 → 1.12%, 4.1 days — computed); DPC Fines page (updated 21 Sept 2026); Lintvedt (2022), IDPL 12(1) — docs/research/gdpr-fines-vs-turnover-2026-10-15(-verify).md |
| C-347 | TermDef: EDPB Guidelines 03/2022 on deceptive design patterns in social media platform interfaces, version 2.0, adopted 14 Feb 2023 (published as final 24 Feb 2023); the entry reads "(2022; version 2.0, adopted 14 February 2023)" | P version and adoption date added to the TermDef copy and the page entry, 22 Oct 2026, #153; was "(2022)" alone | edpb.europa.eu guidelines page; the v2.0 PDF, cover: "Version 2.0 / Adopted on 14 February 2023" (read 22 Oct 2026) |
Section 230
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-110 | 8 Feb 1996; 40m users (1996); 4bn by 2019; Reno v ACLU; recommended content linked to radicalisation and depression, causation contested | PC (sources added 17 Oct 2026); C (was "content that contributes to radicalisation, depression, or harm", 17 Oct 2026) | Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844 (Cornell LII): "About 40 million people used the Internet at the time of trial"; ITU Facts and figures 2019: 4.1 billion |
| C-348 | "Civil-liberties groups, the Electronic Frontier Foundation among them, fought the rest of the Communications Decency Act in court": the EFF among the plaintiffs in Reno v ACLU, 521 U.S. 844 (1997); "the EFF has defended them since" | S | ACLU case page (plaintiffs "Human Rights Watch, Planned Parenthood, EFF and EPIC"); eff.org/issues/cda230 (Fable citation check, 19 Oct 2026) |
Age restrictions
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-111 | Facebook opened to anyone with a valid email address, 26 Sept 2006, the "13 or older" floor carried by its Terms of Use of 23 Oct 2006; Common Sense 2021 38%; MediaSmarts 2021 86% (9–11); Utah 2023 (first state law: age verification for anyone opening an account, parental consent under 18; repealed 2024, partly replaced by the Minor Protection in Social Media Act, enjoined 10 Sept 2024, Utah's appeal argued Nov 2025); France 2023 (never in force); France 2026 ban struck down (2026-911 DC, 14 Aug 2026); Australia Nov 2024, the first national law of its kind, in force 10 Dec 2025 | PC (the 13 carried by the 23 Oct 2006 Terms of Use, 19 Oct 2026); C (was "France passes parental consent requirements for users under 15", 15 Oct 2026); C (was "age verification for under-18s" and "the most comprehensive national age restriction law in the world", 17 Oct 2026); C (was "Facebook 13+ 2006" and the entry "opening to anyone aged 13 or over": the 26 Sept 2006 release says "anyone with a valid email address" and carries no age, 19 Oct 2026); P (Australia's duty read in s. 63D as made — "must take reasonable steps to prevent age-restricted users having accounts"; the page said "requires platforms to keep under-16s from holding accounts" until 22 Oct 2026, #153) | sources; Utah S.B. 152 (enrolled); NPR 24 Mar 2023; D. Utah, NetChoice v. Reyes, 10 Sept 2024; Courthouse News 20 Nov 2025; OECD 14 Apr 2026; PM of Australia 30 July 2025; Sénat rapport n° 468 (2025-2026); Conseil constitutionnel 2026-911 DC; Facebook Terms of Use, 23 Oct 2006 (Internet Archive copy) |
| C-112 | OECD: 1 → 12 → 25 countries in 16 months; 3 laws in force (Australia, Brazil, Indonesia) | C was "over 25 implemented or implementing" | OECD blog April 2026 |
Online Safety Act
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-113 | Royal Assent 26 Oct 2023; s. 4 "links with the United Kingdom"; s. 12(4) and (6) age verification or estimation, "highly effective at correctly determining whether or not a particular user is a child"; s. 11(6)(b) algorithms and dissemination; s. 12(8)(b) "design of functionalities, algorithms and other features"; Sch. 13 para. 4 maximum of £18m or 10% of qualifying worldwide revenue | P new page, 23 Sept 2026 | legislation.gov.uk, the Act as in force; section and schedule texts read directly |
| C-114 | Ofcom dates: illegal-harms codes 16 Dec 2024, risk assessments 16 Mar 2025, duties 17 Mar 2025; children's codes 24 Apr 2025 (40+ measures), assessments 24 Jul 2025, duties 25 Jul 2025; recommender measure ("configure their algorithms to filter out harmful content from children's feeds"); "£18m or 10% … whichever is greater" and the court order to block a site | P | Ofcom statements and press pages (ofcom.org.uk) |
| C-115 | enforcement: 4chan £20,000 + £100/day (13 Oct 2025) and three further penalties totalling £520,000 (19 Mar 2026); Itai Tech Ltd £50,000 + £5,000 (20 Nov 2025); online suicide forum £950,000 (13 May 2026), provider not named, ten working days to comply; Youngtek £600,000 and First Time Videos £80,000; five enforcement programmes and 21 investigations into 69 sites and apps (13 Oct 2025) | PC was "first illegal-content penalty" for the £950,000 fine, 19 Oct 2026: Ofcom's page says only that the forum "was the first service to be investigated"; 4chan's £50,000 of 19 Mar 2026 was for the illegal-content risk-assessment duty | Ofcom confirmation decisions and the June 2026 online safety industry bulletin |
| C-116 | VPN use after 25 Jul 2025: UK daily active users "temporarily doubling to around 1.5 million", "fallen back to around 1 million by the end of September"; Internet Matters, "around one in ten under-18s used VPNs" | P Ofcom's own figures, not a VPN vendor's | Dame Melanie Dawes (Ofcom), letter to the Lords Communications and Digital Committee and the Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, 8 Oct 2025 |
| C-117 | petition 722903 "Repeal the Online Safety Act": 550,136 signatures; government response 28 Jul 2025; debated 15 Dec 2025 | P | petition.parliament.uk (petition record, read 23 Sept 2026) |
| C-118 | Wikimedia Foundation & Anor v SSSIT [2025] EWHC 2086 (Admin), 11 Aug 2025, all four grounds dismissed, fresh proceedings left open; Ofcom notified the Foundation on 10 Jul 2026 that Wikipedia is not currently a Category 1 service and stays on a "watch list" of platforms that could become Category 1 (the page said "while remaining under review" until 22 Oct 2026, #153) | PS for the judgment; S for the July 2026 notification (the Foundation's own account) | Find Case Law (nationalarchives); Wikimedia Foundation, 10 Jul 2026 |
| C-119 | EFF, Open Rights Group, Big Brother Watch and Index on Censorship briefing (Dec 2025); House Judiciary interim staff report, 3 Feb 2026, "Perhaps the most notable foreign attempt to imitate the Digital Services Act" (p. 137) | PC the page dropped "perhaps", corrected 19 Oct 2026 | eff.org; judiciary.house.gov report PDF |
| C-349 | Itai Tech Ltd fined £50,000, plus £5,000 for an unanswered information request (20 Nov 2025), over the "nudification" site Undress.cc; the page's gloss "a service that generates fake nude images of real people" is not on Ofcom's page, which says only "nudification site" (fines in C-115) | P for the fines and the name; the gloss is the page's own | Ofcom, 20 Nov 2025 (Fable citation check, 19 Oct 2026) |
AI Act
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-120 | Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 of 13 June 2024, OJ L, 2024/1689, 12 Jul 2024, in force 1 Aug 2024; Art. 5(1)(a), (b) and (f) as quoted; Art. 50(1), (2) and (4) including the human-review / editorial-responsibility exception; Art. 99(3) €35m or 7% and Art. 99(4) €15m or 3%; Art. 113 application dates | P new page, 23 Sept 2026 | the Official Journal text, EU Publications Office (CELEX 32024R1689) |
| C-121 | recital 29: "common and legitimate commercial practices, for example in the field of advertising, that comply with the applicable law should not, in themselves, be regarded as constituting harmful manipulative AI-enabled practices"; recitals 118 and 136 and Art. 2(5) on the DSA relationship | P | same text |
| C-122 | Digital Omnibus on AI, Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 of 8 July 2026, OJ 24 Jul 2026, in force 27 Jul 2026: high-risk obligations to 2 Dec 2027 (Annex III) and 2 Aug 2028 (Annex I); Art. 50 not postponed; new Art. 111(4) grace period to 2 Dec 2026 for Art. 50(2); new Art. 5(1)(ba) and (bb) prohibitions from 2 Dec 2026 | P | the Official Journal text, EU Publications Office (CELEX 32026R1744) |
| C-123 | the four risk levels; "From 2 August 2026, the AI Office and authorities of the Member States are responsible for implementing, supervising and enforcing the AI Act" (the Commission's AI Act page, regulatory-framework-ai; its Enforcement page, which the page sentence links through src-european-commission-b, gives the same date as "The enforcement powers of the AI Office and the national competent authorities of the Member States apply from 2 August 2026"); Commission guidelines on prohibited practices published 4 Feb 2025, non-binding | P both wordings re-read 22 Oct 2026, #153 | European Commission, Shaping Europe's digital future — AI Act, AI Office, Enforcement of the AI Act, Art. 50 transparency FAQ |
| C-124 | the footer AI notice as this site's own reading of the Art. 50 transparency principle rather than a duty owed by a website | O | — |
| C-350 | TermDef "Synthetic media (deepfakes)": Chesney & Citron, Deepfakes and the New Disinformation War, Foreign Affairs; the entry says 2019, the article went online on 11 Dec 2018 (January/February 2019 print issue) | S the article is paywalled; title, authors and date read from the page metadata | foreignaffairs.com (Fable citation check, 19 Oct 2026) |
ro edition
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-125 | national-law layer, Moldova (src/data/national-laws.mjs, approved 1 Oct 2026) · MD-data-protection-law: Legea nr. 195/2024 transposes the GDPR, published MO nr. 367-369 art. 574 on 23 Aug 2024, in force 23 Aug 2026; Law 133/2011 before it | P | datepersonale.md (CNPDCP) — "Începând cu data de 23 august 2026…", "transpune Regulamentul (UE) 2016/679"; docs/research/MD.md §2 |
| C-126 | MD-data-protection-authority: CNPDCP, autonomous, founded under Legea 17-XVI of 15 Feb 2007, enforces Law 195/2024 | P | datepersonale.md; docs/research/MD.md §2 |
| C-127 | MD-stratcom-centre: no DSA equivalent in force; Law 242/2023 (31 Jul 2023) created the StratCom Centre; ~1,000 take-down requests in the 2025 campaign, mostly not acted upon | P the negative as of 25 Sept 2026; bill 309-MDED-2025 on digital services pending — not found adopted on 1 Oct 2026, Parliament's own site not readable by tools; re-check by 1 Jan 2027 | stratcom.md/cadru-juridic/; ODIHR final report 18 Feb 2026; docs/research/MD.md §2–3 |
| C-128 | MD-manole: Manole and Others v. Moldova, no. 13936/02, ECtHR 17 Sept 2009, Article 10 violated (censorship at Teleradio-Moldova) | P | ECHR press country profile — Republic of Moldova; HUDOC press release; docs/research/MD.md §3 |
| C-129 | MD-school-phone-ban: Education Code amendment announced 20 Nov 2024, phones barred in lessons except for educational purposes or emergencies; ministry survey of 13,086 respondents (written "more than 13,000", card md-survey-figure, 10 October 2026) | P | mec.gov.md; docs/research/MD.md §2 |
fr edition
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-436 | national-law layer, France (src/data/national-laws.mjs, added 25 October 2026 with approved: null, on the Registry Review; France Additions Review items 24–28) · FR-data-protection-authority: the CNIL is the GDPR supervisory authority under loi n° 78-17; the age of digital consent is 15 (art. 45) | P | Légifrance, loi n° 78-17 (Wayback); docs/research/FR.md §2.1 |
| C-437 | FR-cnil-google-2019, FR-cnil-google-facebook-cookies-2021, FR-cnil-tiktok-2022, FR-cnil-google-2025, FR-cnil-shein-2025: €50m (Google, 2019; upheld by the Conseil d'État 19 June 2020), €150m and €60m (Google, Facebook, 2021), €5m (TikTok, 2022), €325m (Google, 2025), €150m (Shein, 2025) | P appeal status of the two 2025 fines not checked; re-check April 2027 | CNIL decision pages (Wayback captures named in each entry's note); docs/research/FR.md §2.1 |
| C-438 | FR-digital-services-coordinator, FR-sren-account-suspension, FR-loi-manipulation-information: Arcom is the DSC (SREN art. 51); account suspension up to six months; the 2018 référé — 48 hours, three months before a national election, upheld only where the falsehood and the risk to the vote are manifest (2018-773 DC) | P the L163-1 thresholds unverified, kept out | Légifrance (SREN; loi n° 2018-1202); Conseil constitutionnel 2018-773 DC and 2018-774 DC; docs/research/FR.md §2.3, §3 C |
| C-439 | FR-porn-age-verification, FR-digital-majority-2023 (adopted, never in force), FR-under-15-ban-struck-down (2026-911 DC, 14 Aug 2026), FR-ce-porn-age-verification-2025 (an interim ruling) | P | Arcom référentiel; Légifrance loi n° 2023-566; Sénat rapport n° 468; Conseil constitutionnel 2026-911 DC; Conseil d'État n° 505472; docs/research/FR.md §2.4, §2.8 |
| C-440 | FR-echr-sanchez (GC, 15 May 2023, 13–4), FR-avia-struck-down (2020-801 DC), FR-ce-tiktok-nouvelle-caledonie (1 April 2025; the référé of 23 May 2024), FR-lcen (LCEN art. 6, deferring to the DSA since SREN art. 48) | P | HUDOC 001-224928 and 002-14074; Conseil constitutionnel 2020-801 DC; Conseil d'État ArianeWeb; Légifrance LCEN (Wayback); docs/research/FR.md §2.6, §3 F |
What is Truth?
Science
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-130 | OSC 2015; Youyou 2023 (14,000 papers); Bogdan 2025 (240,355 papers); Vazire & Holcombe 2022 | PC the body said the reforms "produced measurable improvement in research practices"; Bogdan measured reported p-values — now "measurable signs that research practice has changed", 23 Oct 2026, #166 | papers |
| C-382 | glossary "Replication crisis": "parts of medicine" — in preclinical cancer research, Amgen confirmed the findings of only 6 of 53 landmark studies (11%) | P source added 22 Oct 2026, #153 | Begley & Ellis 2012, Nature 483, 531–533 |
| C-131 | "Doubt is our product" 1969; Kearns 2016 ($6,500 ≈ $50k); Supran & Oreskes 2017; Cochrane review, 75 included papers (Lundh 2017; "75 studies" until 22 Oct 2026, #153); anti-vaccine campaigners use some of the same tactics (Kata 2012) | PC was "Anti-vaccine movements use the same playbook", 17 Oct 2026 | papers; the 1969 proposal itself, UCSF id psdw0147 (Bates 690010951–959); Kata 2012, Vaccine 30(25) |
| C-132 | Wikipedia: every article has a "Talk" tab leading to its Talk page, where editors discuss changes, or letting anyone start one (Help: Talk pages: a red "Talk" link means no talk page has been started yet); a page history recording every edit; maintenance flags such as "[citation needed]"; Wikipedia's own guidance calls an encyclopedia "a starting point for research, not an ending point" (added 15 October 2026, owner's review note) | P | Wikipedia, Help: Talk pages; Help: Page history; Wikipedia: Citation needed; Wikipedia: Academic use (all read 15 Oct 2026). The translations also name the local labels, checked on 15 Oct 2026: nl "Overleg" (Help:Overlegpagina) and "[bron?]" (Sjabloon:Bron?); ro "[necesită citare]" (Format:Necesită citare) and the "Discuție" namespace; pt "Discussão" (Ajuda:Página de discussão) and "[carece de fontes?]" (Predefinição:Carece de fontes) |
Journalism
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-133 | Nixon 1974; Tarbell's 19-part series, 1902–04, helped bring about the 1911 ruling; Spotlight 2002 (Pulitzer 2003); Panama Papers 11.5m docs, $1.3bn recovered (ICIJ, April 2025) | C was $1.36bn, ICIJ's April 2021 tally; Tarbell "led to", 17 Oct 2026; "two-year investigation" removed, 19 Oct 2026 | ICIJ, Escudero & Reuter, 3 April 2025; Kilpatrick, WaPo 9 Aug 1974; Pulitzer citation 2003; Allegheny College, Ida M. Tarbell (November 1902 to October 1904); 221 U.S. 1 |
| C-134 | RSF founded 1985 in Montpellier by four journalists, headquartered in Paris; annual World Press Freedom Index, 180 countries and territories, score 0–100 from a tally of abuses plus a specialists' questionnaire, five indicators, snapshot of the previous calendar year (added 1 Oct 2026, no country scores) | P | rsf.org/en/who-are-we; rsf.org/en/methodology-used-compiling-world-press-freedom-index-2026 (both read 1 Oct 2026) |
| C-135 | CPJ a US 501(c)(3) non-profit, defending journalists since 1981; killed/imprisoned/missing documented since 1992, each case confirmed by at least two credible sources; emergency assistance (added 1 Oct 2026) | P | cpj.org/about/; cpj.org/data-methodology/ (both read 1 Oct 2026) |
Democracy
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-136 | Senate Vol. 2 (candidate preference; Black voters targeted); Mueller Report (IRA programme "to undermine the U.S. electoral system"); Churchill 1947, quoted as in Hansard | C the quotation was the compression "except for all the others", 17 Oct 2026 | Hansard HC Deb 11 Nov 1947 vol 444 col 207; Mueller Report vol. I |
Free Speech
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-137 | Moody v NetChoice 2024; Delfi v Estonia 2015; Wu 2017; Klonick 2018; Balkin 2018; Susser et al. 2019; UN Special Rapporteur 2018 (human-rights law as the standard, transparency from rule-making to enforcement, appeal); Mill 1859; Holmes, Abrams 1919 | PC (Kaye and Holmes added, 17 Oct 2026); C (the Susser, Roessler & Nissenbaum gloss was "influences a person by exploiting weaknesses and bypassing their capacity for conscious, rational choice" — the non-rational-influence account the paper sets aside, not its definition; now "hidden influence … targeting and exploiting their decision-making vulnerabilities", 22 Oct 2026, #153) | A/HRC/38/35 (6 April 2018) §§70–72; 250 U.S. 616 |
| C-400 | glossary "Reverse censorship": a term Tim Wu takes up, not his coinage — flooding tactics "(sometimes called 'reverse censorship')" | C 22 Oct 2026, #153: was "Tim Wu's term" | Wu 2017, Is the First Amendment Obsolete?, Knight First Amendment Institute |
| C-383 | glossary "State action": the First Amendment's Free Speech Clause limits government, not private parties | P source added 22 Oct 2026, #153; Halleck concerns a public-access cable operator, and the glossary states the general principle | Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck, No. 17-1702 (17 June 2019), opinion of the Court |
ro only (local addition, #58 option 1, 29 Sept 2026)
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-138 | Danileț v. Romania, ECtHR Grand Chamber, 15 Dec 2025, no. 16915/21: 10 votes to 7, Article 10 violated by the sanction of a Romanian judge over two Facebook posts on matters of public interest | P | HUDOC 001-247839; press release ECHR 297 (2025); docs/research/RO.md (confirmed, Fable-verified) |
pt only (local addition, BR.md proposal 12, approved 11 Oct 2026)
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-139 | STF, 26 June 2025 (RE 1037396 / Tema 987, RE 1057258 / Tema 533): Marco Civil da Internet (Lei 12.965/2014) art. 19 partly unconstitutional; liability after notice in most cases; for serious crimes on a closed list, liability on systemic failure; crimes against honour still need a court order; three of eleven justices dissented | P | noticias.stf.jus.br (26 June 2025, read again 11 Oct 2026); the theses as agreed (STF PDF); planalto.gov.br Lei 12.965; docs/research/BR.md §3 (confirmed, Fable-verified 22 Sept 2026) |
pt only (local addition, BR.md proposal 13, approved 11 Oct 2026; balance read by the Brazilian reviewer)
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-140 | STF suspended X nationwide 30 Aug – 8 Oct 2024 (39 days, computed), after unmet court orders and no legal representative in Brazil; First Panel upheld unanimously on 2 Sept 2024, with a daily fine for using a VPN to keep using X (Pet 12.404) | P | noticias.stf.jus.br (2 Sept and 8 Oct 2024); docs/research/BR.md §3 (confirmed, Fable-verified) |
fr only (local addition, FR.md proposal 33, #58)
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-465 | Sanchez c. France [GC], 15 May 2023, no. 45581/15, 13–4, no violation of art. 10 (a fine on an elected official for third parties' hateful comments on his public campaign Facebook wall); 2020-801 DC struck down the 24-hour removal duty, quoted at §19 | P | HUDOC 001-224958; conseil-constitutionnel.fr 2020-801 DC; docs/research/FR.md §3 F, §4.1 |
For You / Educate / Share
Educators
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-141 | Bad News written for ages 14 and up (its makers); Junior 8–11 | C was "from 14" until Sept 2026, then "15 and up"; the makers' site and info sheet say 14 — 17 Oct 2026; "used in classrooms in several countries", unsourced, dropped | getbadnews.com and its educators' info sheet; EDMO BELUX, Bad News Junior (24 Feb 2023) |
| C-142 | Inoculation Science toolkit (not a curriculum) | C | inoculation.science |
| C-143 | Adolescence free to UK secondary schools via Into Film+ (31 Mar 2025), guides from Tender | C was "across Europe"; "every UK secondary school" narrowed, 17 Oct 2026 — free for state secondaries in England, Netflix-funded in the other nations | Netflix release of 31 Mar 2025 (moved to …/netflix-makes-adolescence-available-to-all-secondary-schools-across-the-uk) |
| C-321 | resistance to phone bans comes from both sides: NZ review — 37% of Year 12–13 students follow the rules; parent resistance lowers compliance; compliance higher when students understand the purpose | C was "from parents rather than students"; "wellbeing framing produces better engagement", unsourced, dropped — 17 Oct 2026 | Education Review Office (NZ, 2025), Do not disturb — Summary |
| C-366 | the deck The Attention Machine — an introduction (/presentations/attention-machine-intro.pptx): 30 slides, about 35 minutes, with speaker notes on every slide (the same sentence on Share This) | P site fact; added 19 Oct 2026 | the deck's own source, presentations/attention-machine-intro/build.js: 30 slides, 30 DELIVERY timings summing to 2,105 s (about 35 minutes); its README: "~35-minute live talk" |
| C-145 | Roozenbeek 2022, effect across the political spectrum | PC for the attribution (the text said "van der Linden et al."; Roozenbeek is first author — 15 Oct 2026) | Sci. Adv. 8(34) |
Educators / What to Do / Parents
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-144 | phone bans: Abrahamsson (+; published 2026), Beland & Murphy 2016 (+ test scores), Goodyear 2025 (no wellbeing difference; 30 schools, 1,227 pupils) | C (was "research consistently supports"); Abrahamsson cited as the Journal of Human Resources article from 17 Oct 2026 | papers; Abrahamsson, J. Human Resources, doi 10.3368/jhr.0224-13403R2 |
Educators, Organisations
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-427 | prebunking "reaches further" than debunking (coverage: a few techniques against countless claims); debunking arrives after the falsehood and works claim by claim | C was "more effective than" / "less effective than" — no head-to-head study on either page, 23 Oct 2026, #166 | — (no number; the TermDef's reasoning) |
Lawmakers
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-146 | CvdM youth research: fieldwork March 2024 (28 Feb–28 Mar), published 2 Oct 2024, 2,010 + 497 respondents | C was "February 2026"; the youth-report link returned 404 and both CvdM reports now link their live PDFs, 19 Oct 2026 | cvdm.nl (cvdm.nl/documents/3124/ and /3858/); Ipsos I&O |
| C-147 | "the policy agenda" → "the levers, and who argues what": each lever now says what a law or regulator can do, what is being done with it now, and who argues for and against. "The DSA mandates this; enforcement is incomplete" → what the enforcement tracker shows; "this principle needs legislative codification", "the approach needs global adoption", "researchers need access to it" and "legislate the asymmetry and the design" gone. Milli et al. and the Centre for Future Generations, both already in the page's Sources, are now named in the prose | O register, 23 Sept 2026, decision 4 | docs/16 neutral-framing guardrail; no figure, date, case or source changed |
| C-428 | "most of today's minimums are self-declared" | C was "today's minimums are self-declared"; Australia's minimum age has carried a "reasonable steps" duty since 10 Dec 2025, as Age Restrictions sources, 23 Oct 2026, #166 | Age Restrictions sources (C-218) |
What to Do (Tier 3)
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-148 | "legislators who receive constituent communication on this issue are more likely to act on it" | C removed 23 Sept 2026 — an unsourced empirical claim about legislator behaviour; the paragraph now names the levers and links For Lawmakers | — |
Watch & Listen
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-149 | The Social Dilemma: 38m households in first four weeks | C (was "over 100 million viewers", a CHT figure); the Sources entry now quotes the letter ("had 38m in its first 28 days") and says the unit is member households that chose it (19 Oct 2026); C ("One of the most effective single pieces of awareness-raising … in the public domain" → "one of the most widely seen"; a Netflix title is not in the public domain and its effect is not measured, 23 Oct 2026, #166) | Netflix Q3 2020 shareholder letter |
Tools
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-150 | Data Detox Kit 40+ languages (the English names no language since 11 Oct 2026; the nl and ro editions name their own, both on the list that day) | P | Tactical Tech |
Books
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-151 | Bakshy 2015 (10.1m users; individual choice > ranking) | P | Science 348 |
Donate
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-152 | ANBI 1% threshold; deduction capped at ~37%; Google Ad Grants $10k/month (superseded by C-199–C-202; the sentence no longer dates the cap to 2023, 19 Oct 2026) | P | Belastingdienst; Google |
Get Help · the international layer (src/data/resources.mjs, added 23 September 2026). The resource registry's texts are page copy — they carry numbers, hours and costs — so they are ledgered like any other claim. Each row below was read on the organisation's own page or a government portal on 23 September 2026, in addition to the country dossier that proposed it. The dossiers themselves have had only the Opus pre-review; the research-verifier (Fable) pass is owed (docs/research/README.md, issue #82), and nothing here is published until it has run.
Get Help
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-153 | CVV (Brazil): call 188 free, 24 hours a day, or chat; volunteers, confidential | P | cvv.org.br — "LIGUE 188", "24 horas por dia", "Converse gratuitamente com um dos nossos voluntários"; docs/research/BR.md §1 (confirmed) |
| C-154 | Egypt's Ministry of Health and Population mental-health line 16328, 24 hours a day, doctor / psychologist / social worker; cost not claimed | P cost deliberately absent — the ministry page does not state it | mohp.gov.eg news item 5901 — "الخط الساخن 16328", "على مدار الـ 24 ساعة"; docs/research/EG.md §1 (confirmed; cost unverified) |
| C-155 | Tele-MANAS (India): 14416, free, 24 hours a day, about 20 Indian languages, Ministry of Health | P | PIB (Government of India) PRID=2219931 — "a 24/7 toll-free mental health helpline (14416) … at no cost"; PRID=2224522 — "available in 20 languages"; docs/research/IN.md §1 (confirmed) |
| C-156 | Línea de la Vida (Mexico): 800 911 2000 free, 24 hours a day, every day of the year; suicidal thoughts, substance use, gender violence, other mental-health problems; CONASAMA | P | gob.mx/conasama — "800-911-2000", "disponible las 24 horas del día, los 365 días del año", "servicio gratuito"; docs/research/MX.md §1 (confirmed) |
| C-157 | Saudi Ministry of Health 937, day and night, medical or psychological advice; not called free, not called a suicide line | P "psychological" dropped 19 Oct 2026 when the NCMH FAQ could not be read, restored 22 Oct 2026, #153, after re-reading it; both omissions deliberate: no MOH page states a cost, and the dossier found no Saudi suicide line | moh.gov.sa contact page — "Call Center 937 … for medical consultations and receiving reports (24/7)"; National Center for Mental Health Promotion FAQ, https://ncmh.org.sa/faqs (served from https://ncmh.org.sa/ncmh-api-v2/api/v1/public/faqs; read 22 Oct 2026), question 39 — "يمكنك طلب استشارة نفسية أو حجز موعد في العيادات الحكومية عبر خدمة 937", question 26 — 937 is "مركز الاستشارات النفسية التابع لوزارة الصحة"; MOH psychiatry page (updated 28 Sep 2026) — 937 "provides medical consultations via voice call", psychological consultations on another line (920033360: not listed — checked 22 Oct 2026, #153: the paragraph describes the 2013 call centre of the National Committee for Mental Health Promotion, whose successor NCMH says on ncmh.org.sa/faqs, q. 26 and 37, that it runs no hotline and sends callers to 937; not confirmed by any current official source); docs/research/SA.md §1 |
| C-158 | Find A Helpline also answers the eating list: run by ThroughLine, 175+ countries, topic filter includes "Eating & body image" | P | findahelpline.com — "a public service made with ♡ by ThroughLine", "175+ countries", topic list |
| C-159 | F.E.A.S.T.: a global non-profit run by carers; free peer support; a worldwide list of eating-disorder organisations | P | feast-ed.org — "A global nonprofit dedicated to supporting and empowering families affected by eating disorders"; "All of our support services are peer-led and staffed by … volunteers who use their own lived experience"; /global-advocacy-organizations "Worldwide List of ED Advocacy Organizations … as a public service by … F.E.A.S.T." |
| C-160 | econsumer.gov: ICPEN's shared reporting site for scams by a company in another country, created 2001, led by the FTC; no member count claimed | P member count deliberately absent — 33 countries (FTC 2015) and 70+ (ICPEN) disagree and neither is on a readable primary page | FTC consumer alert Econsumer.gov: International scam fighter (Lisa Lake, dated 6 July 2022; the URL path says 2020/05), https://consumer.ftc.gov/consumer-alerts/2020/05/econsumergov-international-scam-fighter — "Econsumer.gov is a site created in 2001 by members of the International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network (ICPEN), to gather and share consumer complaints about international scams"; "The FTC leads the econsumer.gov project" (the page answers 403/404 to curl and opens in a browser or WebFetch; re-read 22 Oct 2026, #153) |
| C-344 | Report Fraud (UK) replaced Action Fraud on 4 December 2025; covers England, Wales and Northern Ireland, Scotland reports via 101 | P | gov.uk, Report Fraud: new service from City of London Police — "From 4 December 2025, City of London Police is launching Report Fraud", replaces Action Fraud, "the phone number remains unchanged" (0300 123 2040); reportfraud.police.uk (Wayback capture 11 Oct 2026) — "If you've been affected and live in England, Wales or Northern Ireland – we're the people you need to speak to", "If you live in Scotland, please report via 101"; both hosts answer 403 to automated clients |
Get Help · Moldova (added 1 October 2026, when Moldova joined the Romanian edition). Seven entries from docs/research/MD.md §1 (research-verifier pass 25 September 2026), approved by Codrin on the Registry Review page on 1 October 2026. The parenthesis "(Romanian, Russian)" on C-162 and C-165 names the languages of the service's own website: telefonulcopilului.md and siguronline.md each have a Russian version at /ru/ (checked 22 Oct 2026, #153). It does not name the languages a call or chat is answered in, which neither organisation states (help-line check, 19 Oct 2026, docs/review/cite-verify-2026-10-19/helplines-B.md #2). Card md-languages-note = 1 (1 Oct 2026) settled it on that basis. For C-162, Child Helpline International also lists the service in "Romanian Russian". Pentruviata (C-164) states its own languages: "Poți vorbi cu noi în limba română, engleză sau rusă".
Get Help
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-161 | 112 (Moldova): single emergency number, free, non-stop, also by SMS | P | 112.md — "numărul unic pentru apelurile de urgență", "non-stop", "absolut gratuit" |
| C-162 | Telefonul Copilului 116 111 (Moldova): free, 24/24, Ministry of Labour and Social Protection (implemented by CNFACEM) | P | telefonulcopilului.md/despre-noi/ — "24/24", "Serviciile sunt prestate gratuit" |
| C-163 | YK Support Line 0 800 800 22: 24/7, crisis counselling; for teens and young people up to 24, free from any network, confidential | P ms.gov.md, 10 Sept 2024, for the number, 24/7 and crisis role; neovita.md read verbatim by WebFetch and curl on 19 Oct 2026 for "up to 24", "free from any network", "confidential" — the browser read once owed is closed; the language note is "(Romanian)" from 22 Oct 2026, #153, was "(Romanian, Russian)": neovita.md is in Romanian, and its RU and EN buttons are a machine-translation widget, not a Russian version — card md-languages-note makes the bracket name the site's languages | ms.gov.md communiqué; neovita.md/servicii/suna-la-linia-fierbinte/ |
| C-164 | Pentruviata.md: chat and e-mail at any hour, volunteers, Romanian, Russian and English; no phone line | P | pentruviata.md |
| C-165 | Siguronline (La Strada): Moldova's digital-safety centre, confidential chat and e-mail help, anonymous reporting of child sexual abuse material; no hours and no "free" claimed | P both omissions deliberate: not stated on the site | siguronline.md, /despre-noi/, /cere-ajutor/ |
| C-166 | Stopfals.md: Independent Press Association (API); IFCN verified signatory; Romanian and Russian | P | stopfals.md; github.com/IFCN/verified-signatories |
| C-167 | Mediacritica (CJI): media-literacy platform; CJI built the optional "Educație pentru media" subject, taught since 2017 | P | mediacritica.md/despre-noi/; cji.md/en/media-education/ |
Get Help · France (added 25 October 2026, for the French edition, #71). Sixteen entries from docs/research/FR.md §1 and Drafts A, verified by two independent Fable runs per half on 15 October 2026 (docs/review/research-verify-FR-2026-10-15.md), included by the owner on the France Additions Review (items 1–16). No French page is published; the pt texts render on the published Brazilian topic lists with the FR chip. Two re-checks are owed before any French publication: the FFAB number read again from the page's image, and factuel.afp.com opened in a browser (it refused automated reads).
Get Help
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-441 | 15 · 17 · 18 · 114 (France): 15 medical emergency (SAMU), 17 police, 18 fire brigade, free, 24/7; 114 by SMS for anyone who has difficulty speaking or hearing | P | service-public.gouv.fr F33954 ("Vérifié le 25 août 2026") — "gratuits", "24 heures sur 24 et 7 jours sur 7"; 17cyber.gouv.fr — "SMS au 114 en cas de difficulté à parler ou entendre" |
| C-442 | 3114: free, 24/7, anywhere in France, a healthcare professional trained in suicide prevention, run under the Ministry of Health; no chat or SMS claimed | P | 3114.fr — "accessible 24h/24 et 7j/7, gratuitement, en France entière", "piloté par le Ministère en charge de la santé"; service-public F33954 |
| C-443 | SOS Amitié: 09 72 39 40 50, 24/7, price of a local call (never "free"); chat 13:00–03:00; written reply within 48 hours; trained volunteers | P | sosamitie.org — "09 72 39 40 50 24h/24", "Chat de 13h à 3h", "au prix d'un appel local" |
| C-444 | Fil Santé Jeunes: 12–25-year-olds; 0800 235 236 every day 9:00–23:00, chat every day 9:00–22:00; free, anonymous; funded by Santé publique France; eating disorders not claimed | P chat hours as the verifier corrected them, /tchat-individuel | filsantejeunes.com — "Service anonyme et gratuit pour les 12-25 ans tous les jours de 9h à 23h", "financé par Santé publique France" |
| C-445 | 3018 (e-Enfance): bullying, cyberbullying and other online abuse of young people; phone and app, free, anonymous, every day 9:00–23:00; harmful posts and accounts removed within hours; the old 3020 not mentioned | P | e-enfance.org — "Ouvert 7j/7 de 9h jusqu'à 23h … faire supprimer en quelques heures tous contenus et comptes préjudiciables"; service-public F33954 / F31985 |
| C-446 | 119 Allô Enfance en danger: free, 24/7, from any phone, not on the phone bill; a chat for young people (its age and hours left out: the two official pages disagree) | P | allo119.gouv.fr — "24h/24 et 7j/7", "L'appel est gratuit depuis tous les téléphones", "n'apparaît sur aucun relevé de téléphone" |
| C-447 | Point de Contact: France's hotline for reporting illegal content online, anonymous and free; founding member of INHOPE | P | pointdecontact.net; better-internet-for-kids.europa.eu (Safer Internet Centre France) |
| C-448 | PHAROS (internet-signalement.gouv.fr): the state's platform for reporting illegal online content to the police and gendarmerie, open to adults and minors, not for emergencies | P | service-public F31979 ("Vérifié le 07 janvier 2026") — "ouverte aux majeurs comme aux mineurs", "ne traite pas les cas urgents" |
| C-449 | Info Escroqueries: 0 805 805 817, free, Monday–Friday 9:00–18:30, police officers and gendarmes | P | service-public P10100 and F1520 — "numéro vert 0805 805 817 (appel gratuit) – du lundi au vendredi de 9h00 à 18h30" |
| C-450 | Perceval: free reporting of online bank-card fraud to the gendarmerie, for a holder who still has the card and has blocked it | P the platform moved on 14 Oct 2026; the entry links the stable service-public page | service-public R46526 ("Vérifié le 14 octobre 2026") |
| C-451 | 17Cyber: Police nationale, Gendarmerie nationale and Cybermalveillance.gouv.fr; 24/7; chat with an officer in serious cases; launched 17 December 2024 | P | 17cyber.gouv.fr; cybermalveillance.gouv.fr ("Publié le 17/12/2024") — "Disponible 24h/24 et 7j/7" |
| C-452 | Anorexie Boulimie Info Écoute (FFAB): 09 69 325 900, normal call rate (never "free"), Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday 16:00–18:00 | P the number is in an image; the page text still hides the old 0810 037 037 — read the image again before publication | ffab.fr/trouver-de-l-aide/permanence-telephonique — image "N°Cristal 09 69 325 900 — APPEL NON SURTAXE" (read by the verifier, 15 Oct 2026) |
| C-453 | Internet Sans Crainte: national awareness programme, hundreds of free resources for 3–18-year-olds, parents and teachers; Safer Internet France, run by Tralalere | P | internetsanscrainte.fr — "Programme national de sensibilisation des jeunes au numérique"; better-internet-for-kids.europa.eu |
| C-454 | CLEMI: in charge of media and information literacy across the French school system since 1983; "free" not claimed | P deliberately without "free": not read on the page | clemi.fr — "chargé de l'éducation aux médias et à l'information (ÉMI) dans l'ensemble du système éducatif français" |
| C-455 | Les Surligneurs: IFCN verified signatory (26 Aug 2026), EFCSN verified member | P | IFCN verified-signatories data; efcsn.com signatories — "Les Surligneurs from France Verified since 27-07-2023" |
| C-456 | AFP Factuel: AFP's French-language fact-checking service; the IFCN signatory is "AFP Fact Check" (global, 15 Sep 2026); AFP an EFCSN verified member | P factuel.afp.com refused automated reads: open it in a browser before publication | IFCN verified-signatories data; efcsn.com — "AFP from France Verified since 13-07-2023" |
Get Help · facts recorded from the help-line citation check (19 October 2026, #147; recorded 22 October 2026, #153). These entries in src/data/resources.mjs had no row. For each, the verifier found a fact on a page other than the one the entry links. Each source below was re-read on 22 October 2026 unless the row says otherwise.
Get Help
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-384 | De Luisterlijn: 088 0767 000 day and night at the standard call rate; chat free 10:00–22:00; anonymous; trained volunteers | P chat hours: the home page, the chat page and the phone page say 10:00–22:00; the site-wide footer says "Chatten (08:00 - 22:00)". The site contradicts itself, and Get Help prints the hours its service pages state | deluisterlijn.nl — "088 0767 000 24/7 beschikbaar", "Chatten 10:00 – 22:00 uur", "Als getrainde luisteraars zijn we er voor jou, volledig anoniem"; /ik-zoek-hulp-telefoon/ — "betaal je alleen de gebruikelijke belkosten van je eigen provider. Chatten en mailen met de Luisterlijn is gratis", "Chatten kan op alle dagen van de week van 10.00 tot 22.00 uur"; /ik-zoek-hulp-chat/ — "Onze chathulp is dagelijks bereikbaar van 10.00 uur – 22.00 uur. Anoniem en vertrouwd. Zonder oordeel. Gratis." (all read 22 Oct 2026) |
| C-385 | Proud2Bme: free, anonymous online help for eating disorders — community, peer experts, psychologists and dietitians; chat every evening 19:00–21:00 | P across three pages of the site; "gratis en anoniem" is in the home page's own description and on /forum/, not in the home page's visible text | proud2bme.nl — "Kom gratis en anoniem in contact met de community, ervaringsdeskundigen, psychologen en diëtisten", "Chat dagelijks met ons van 19:00 tot 21:00 uur"; /chat/ — "van maandag tot en met zondag – kun je bij Proud2Bme chatten tussen 19:00 – 21:00 uur", "chats met een psycholoog of diëtist"; /forum/ — "gerichte vragen stellen aan onze ervaringsdeskundigen, psychologen en diëtisten. Dit is allemaal gratis en anoniem." (all read 22 Oct 2026) |
| C-386 | Hulplijn eetstoornissen (WEET and Stichting JIJ): 010-7370847 for a listening ear, information and advice, on set evenings; WEET is the Dutch eating-disorder patient association | P (linked page read by the help-line check, 19 Oct 2026. On 22 Oct 2026 eetstoornissen.nl and the linked page answered 503, "Service Temporarily Unavailable", at 08:36 and 08:41 CEST, and were not re-read; re-read at the next re-check before relying on this row, and hand-check before removing the entry). The evenings are on Stichting JIJ's page, not the linked one, and change per volunteer, so Get Help prints "on set evenings" rather than hours | eetstoornissen.nl/lotgenoten/hulplijn/ — "Bel naar de hulplijn voor eetstoornissen voor een luisterend oor, informatie en advies: 010-7370847", "een samenwerking van WEET en Stichting JIJ"; eetstoornissen.nl — "Nederlandse patiëntenvereniging voor eetstoornissen" (both 19 Oct 2026); stichting-jij.nl/praktische-informatie/ (22 Oct 2026) — "Telefonisch spreekuur Maandag 19.00 - 20.00 uur" (Mondays for relatives), "Dinsdag 19.00 - 20.00 uur", "Woensdag 19.00 - 20.00 uur", "010-7370847" |
| C-387 | SaferNet Brasil: online-safety NGO and INHOPE member hotline; free chat or e-mail help for children, teens and parents; anonymous reporting of child sexual abuse material and other online crimes | P INHOPE membership and the CSAM reporting re-read on pages that open, 22 Oct 2026, #153. The entry links the home page; the facts sit on the pages named here | new.safernet.org.br/helpline — "Somos um canal online gratuito", chat and e-mail, "serviço para crianças e adolescentes ou em benefício delas"; /denuncie — "um serviço de recebimento de denúncias anônimas de crimes e violações contra os Direitos Humanos na Internet"; /content/institucional — "associação civil de direito privado … sem fins lucrativos"; INHOPE member map, https://inhope.org/ (the older /EN/our-network redirects there) — "Brasil (Safernet)", "Joined network in 2014"; SaferNet, Nota Técnica 02/2025, https://arquivos.safernet.org.br/notas/Nota+Tecnica+02_2025+%5BSaferNet+Brasil%5D.pdf — "o Canal Nacional de Denúncias de Crimes Cibernéticos registrou 49.336 denúncias anônimas de abuso e exploração sexual infantil" |
| C-388 | Child Helpline 116111 (Saudi Arabia): free, confidential, for every child and not only children facing violence, run by the National Family Safety Program, which refers emergencies directly; no hours printed | P for free, confidential, every child and NFSP (the linked MOE page); P for "refers emergencies directly" on the operator's own statement on its official X account, not on the linked page. Hours deliberately absent: the operator's last statement (7:00–23:00) is from 2021 | moe.gov.sa/ar/mediacenter/MOEnews/Pages/k-1443-2.aspx — "الخط المجاني لمساندة الطفل (116111)", "بكل سرية وخصوصية", "وليس الأطفال الذين يتعرضون للعنف فقط", "برنامج الأمان الأسري الوطني"; @NFSP1, 22 May 2024, https://x.com/NFSP1/status/1793265301812826610 — "يتعامل خط مساندة الطفل 116111 مع الحالات الطارئة بشكل فوري من خلال آلية الإحالة المباشرة للجهات المسئولة عن التدخل الفوري"; hours: @NFSP1, 10 Jan 2021, https://x.com/NFSP1/status/1348240265367183360 (both read through X syndication, 19 and 22 Oct 2026) |
| C-389 | SaferNet — Delegacias de cibercrimes (Brazil): tell your bank at once and, for Pix, ask for the MED refund procedure; some states have a specialised cybercrime police unit, otherwise the nearest police station | P the police half on the linked SaferNet page; the bank and MED half on the Banco Central's own documents, not on the linked page | new.safernet.org.br/content/delegacias-cibercrimes — "Existem delegacias especializadas em alguns estados do Brasil. Caso não haja uma em sua cidade ou região, procure a delegacia mais próxima de sua residência"; Banco Central, MED 2.0 (Circuito Pix, 14 Oct 2025), https://www.bcb.gov.br/content/estabilidadefinanceira/pix/MED/MED_2-0_Circuito_Pix-Dia_1.pdf — "Conjunto de regras e de procedimentos operacionais destinado a viabilizar a devolução de um Pix em casos de fraude e de falha operacional", "Um usuário do Pix é vítima de um golpe e aciona seu PSP"; Banco Central, Guia MED v4.3, https://www.bcb.gov.br/content/estabilidadefinanceira/pix/Guia_MED.pdf — "O pedido de devolução pelo usuário pagador pode ser feito para qualquer caso de fraude envolvendo uma transação Pix, incluindo golpes e crimes" (both read 22 Oct 2026) |
| C-390 | Child Helpline 1098 (India): free, 24 hours a day, for a child or an adult calling for one; emergency calls can be forwarded to 112; Ministry of Women and Child Development, Mission Vatsalya, with the States | P the batch verifier of 8 Oct 2026 found the WCD header's "Toll free" gone; it is on the page again on 22 Oct 2026 | wcd.gov.in/child/child-helpline — "Under Mission Vatsalya Scheme, Child Helpline is being run in coordination with State and District functionaries", "a 24x7 dedicated WCD Control Room (WCD-CR) for Child Helpline in each State/UT and integrated with ERSS-112", header "Child Helpline Toll free No. - 1098"; PIB, https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1933794 (20 Jun 2023) — "accessed by any child in crisis or an adult on their behalf by dialing a four digit toll free number (1098)", "All Emergency calls can be forwarded from 1098 to 112" (both read 22 Oct 2026) |
| C-391 | NCMEC CyberTipline: report child sexual exploitation; US-based; takes international reports | P "international" is in the linked site's FAQ and on NCMEC's data page, not on the report form itself | report.cybertip.org/faqs — "Do I have to live in the United States to make a report? … No, anyone can make a report of child sexual exploitation or abuse"; NCMEC, https://www.missingkids.org/cybertiplinedata — "the CyberTipline serves as a global clearinghouse and reports are referred to law enforcement throughout the U.S. and around the world" (both read 22 Oct 2026) |
Sourcing pass, 23 September 2026 — the six pages that had no Sources block
Decision 11(b): Tools, Books, Young Adults, Things, Donate and Contribute each got a page-level Sources block and .ref links. These rows record what was checked while sourcing the claims already on those pages; nothing was added to the pages. Product facts and prices are vendor sources, labelled as such on the page and marked V here; the re-check table below carries the ones with a shelf life.
Tools
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-168 | Bad News teaches six documented techniques in about 15 minutes; 15,000-player evaluation | PC for the length (was "10-minute", 17 Oct 2026; also Educators, Parents, Teens) | Roozenbeek & van der Linden 2019, Palgrave Communications 5(65) ("approximately 15 minutes") |
| C-169 | the inoculation effect lasts for months when refreshed | PC for "durable" (stable at least three months with regular testing, faded within two months without; reworded 19 Oct 2026) | Maertens, Roozenbeek, Basol & van der Linden 2021, J. Exp. Psych.: Applied 27(1) |
| C-170 | Cover Your Tracks tests fingerprint uniqueness and blocker efficacy | P | EFF, Cover Your Tracks — about |
| C-171 | uBlock Origin: full version on Firefox (and Brave, which hosts it); no Manifest v3 version exists; Chrome and Edge offer only Lite; Safari has not had the full extension for years and offers Lite | C the Safari clause said "its own extension restrictions" — the developer's wiki says only that support ended years ago | uBO wiki, About Google Chrome's "This extension may soon…" and About Safari and Canary support; uBOL-home install list; Google, Manifest V2 support timeline |
| C-172 | Firefox: tracking protection on by default; standard blocks social trackers, cross-site tracking cookies, cryptominers | P vendor documentation | Mozilla, Enhanced Tracking Protection in Firefox for desktop |
| C-173 | Firefox is made by the Mozilla Corporation, a taxable subsidiary of the non-profit Mozilla Foundation | C was "Non-commercial, non-profit organisation" | mozilla.org, Organizations — "the wholly owned taxable subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation" (the entry quoted "a wholly owned" until 22 Oct 2026, #153; labelled a vendor page the same day) |
| C-174 | Data Detox Kit in 40+ languages | P link added | Tactical Tech, Data Detox Kit languages page |
| C-175 | DuckDuckGo: no behavioural tracking; ads chosen by the results page | V vendor | DuckDuckGo privacy policy |
| C-176 | Ecosia is steward-owned: cannot be sold, no profits extracted | P | Ecosia, Trees not profits, 25 October 2018 |
| C-177 | Ecosia: no personal profile; IP address anonymised after a maximum of seven days; IP address and search terms go to the search partner — Google by default for eligible users, or Microsoft Bing if chosen | C was "searches are anonymised within seven days… your query and IP address do pass to Microsoft or Google"; then, 23 Sept 2026, "deleted within seven days; sent to Microsoft only obfuscated and never with the query", from the 2022 GitHub mirror of the policy — wrong against the live one, 19 Oct 2026; CORRECTIONS.md | Ecosia privacy policy, ecosia.org/privacy (last modified 21 May 2026) |
| C-178 | Ecosia "B Corp" and "monthly public financial reports" | C dropped 23 Sept 2026 — neither could be verified from a source that answers a fetch; restore with a link if confirmed | — |
| C-179 | Kagi from $5/month | V vendor | kagi.com/pricing — Starter $5 |
| C-180 | Cochrane is independent of commercial funding | P | Cochrane, About us |
| C-181 | Wikipedia records every edit publicly | P | Wikipedia, Help: Page history |
Books
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-182 | every listed book's publisher, year and ISBN | P the ISBNs of Solove (paperback, 2013), Sunstein (paperback, 2002) and Carr (2020 edition) are later editions than the years shown, and the Sources entries now say so (19 Oct 2026) | publisher pages (Hachette, Yale UP, Norton) and ISBN records (Open Library); the rest plain text per the linking rule |
| C-183 | the evidence Haidt's book rests on is contested; Orben & Przybylski 2019 found the association small ("at most 0.4% of the variation") | PC for "the debate with Amy Orben is ongoing" (neither Odgers 2024 nor Orben & Przybylski 2019, which predates the book, shows Orben engaging it; reworded 19 Oct 2026) | Orben & Przybylski 2019, Nat. Hum. Behav. 3; Odgers 2024, Nature 628 — as cited on Mental Health |
| C-184 | Zuboff is a professor emerita at Harvard Business School | P | PublicAffairs author biography ("Charles Edward Wilson Professor Emeritus, Harvard Business School") |
| C-185 | Max Fisher is a New York Times reporter | C was "international correspondent" | Little, Brown author biography ("an international reporter for the New York Times"; the row said "investigative reporter" until 19 Oct 2026, which is not on the page) |
| C-186 | Republic.com (2001) came five years before Facebook opened to the public | P source added | Facebook press release, 26 September 2006 |
| C-187 | Foolproof is by "the Cambridge researcher behind the modern prebunking studies" | C was "who developed it" — inoculation theory is McGuire's, 1961 | — |
| C-188 | Twenge's cohort is those born 1995–2012 | P | iGen, the book's own definition — the publisher's excerpt of the Introduction, https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/iGen/Jean-M-Twenge/9781501151989: "That makes the birth year span of iGen 1995–2012" (the page answers 403 to automated clients; read through a reader proxy, 22 Oct 2026, #153). Also on Parents, same entry |
| C-189 | Mary Aiken, The Cyber Effect (2016), Spiegel & Grau, ISBN 9780812997859; she is a forensic cyberpsychologist | P added 15 October 2026 | Penguin Random House book page (author biography: "the world's foremost forensic cyberpsychologist" — the descriptor kept, the superlative left out); ISBN record via Publishers Weekly |
| C-190 | The Cyber Effect draws little on two decades of cyberpsychology research, argues from cases and the author's own observations, and leans heavily towards technology's harms; reviewed in 2017 by Gráinne Kirwan, a psychology lecturer specialising in cyberpsychology | P added 15 October 2026; marks the book as contested in the same sentence; reworded and widened 15 October 2026 from the owner's review note | Kirwan, G. (12 January 2017), The Psychologist (BPS): "very limited inclusion of the findings of over two decades of scholarly studies in cyberpsychology"; "suggestions based on personal observations and case studies gleaned through media portals"; "tends strongly towards the description of negative aspects of technology and online life"; "psychology has also identified a legion of benefits to users"; byline: Lecturer in Psychology and Co-Chair of the MSc in Cyberpsychology, IADT |
fr only (local addition, items 39 and 44, 25 Oct 2026)
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-466 | French editions and EAN13 of seven titles (Fisher, Haidt, Lembke, Zuboff — Z/a poche, Oreskes & Conway — Le Pommier 2021, Carr, Twenge), with their translators; plain leslibraires.fr links, no commission; no French edition found for Aiken, Solove, Sunstein's Republic.com, Pariser, van der Linden | P | catalogue.bnf.fr records (and arenes.fr for Haidt), each leslibraires.fr /livre/<EAN13> URL resolved to the same book, 25 Oct 2026 |
Young Adults
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-191 | more algorithmic knowledge went with more concern and less corrective action | P source added; the page's pivot now rests on it | Chung 2025, HKS Misinformation Review, 348 US adults aged 18–25 |
| C-192 | "among the most aware of any age group" | C dropped 23 Sept 2026 — no survey was found that supports the age comparison; the sentence now states what Chung measured | — |
| C-193 | inoculation works across the political spectrum (field experiments) and, refreshed, holds up for months (three longitudinal experiments) | PC for the attribution (durability was credited to the field experiments; "lasts" unqualified — 17 Oct 2026) | Roozenbeek et al. 2022, Sci. Adv. 8(34); Maertens et al. 2021, J. Exp. Psych.: Applied 27(1) |
Things
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-194 | the Guardian is owned by the Scott Trust and runs a standing corrections column | P | theguardian.com, The Scott Trust: values and history; the corrections and clarifications series |
| C-195 | De Correspondent is advertisement-free and member-funded | P | decorrespondent.nl, Over ons |
| C-196 | Bookshop.org exists to support independent bookshops | S the company's own account; the site blocks automated fetches | bookshop.org |
| C-197 | Proton from €4/month, free tier | V vendor; the price is rendered client-side, so it rests on the 23 Sept 2026 re-check, not on a fetched page | proton.me/pricing |
| C-198 | Inoculation Science games and prebunking videos are free | P | inoculation.science |
Donate
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-199 | ANBI: 1% threshold (minimum €60); periodic gift of at least five years deductible in full without a threshold; deduction worth at most 37.56% in the top bracket (2026); the cap is not dated to 2023 on the page — Belastingdienst gives 37.56% for 2026 (2025: 37.48%) and nothing on the step-down (19 Oct 2026) | P three Belastingdienst pages linked 23 Sept 2026 | Belastingdienst, gewone giften, periodieke giften, tariefsaanpassing aftrekposten |
| C-200 | the ANBI decision comes "within 8 weeks" | C was "an 8–12 week application" | Belastingdienst, U hebt de aanvraag verstuurd. En dan? |
| C-201 | Google Ad Grants: up to $10,000/month | P wording aligned to "up to" | google.com/grants |
| C-202 | KvK registration fee €85 | C was €82 | KVK, Inschrijfvergoeding — €85.15, adjusted annually |
| C-203 | a stichting is established by notarial deed; the first-year budget (notary ~€1,200, tax advice ~€600, AI credits ~€1,200, bank account and administration ~€2,400, phone and internet ~€1,200, domain and server €50–100; total ~€6,800) is the project's own estimate, and the page says so | PO for the deed / O for the budget (15 Oct 2026; was a ~€650 notary quote and an ~€800 registration total) | KVK, De stichting; the project's own estimates |
| C-204 | TechSoup discounts; Cloudflare Project Galileo | PC Donate said registration "unlocks" Google Ad Grants and TechSoup discounts; it makes the foundation eligible to apply, and each programme validates non-profit status (Google: Goodstack; TechSoup: its own validation), 23 Oct 2026, #166 | techsoup.org; cloudflare.com/galileo |
| C-205 | running costs: Cloudflare free plan; self-hosted Plausible (free, open source); domain €15/year; €50–100/year in total | P for the two provider pages; the domain and server figures are the project's own invoices, and the page now says so | Cloudflare Workers pricing; Plausible self-hosting |
| C-433 | "Reader donations are what will keep it running"; "This is the only income the site will take" — no donation received yet | C said "Reader donations keep it running" and "This is currently the only income", where the Q3 transparency report says nothing has been raised, 24 Oct 2026, #172, card en-read-donate-income = a | Q3 2026 transparency report (2 Oct 2026: "We have not raised any money yet"); the administrator, 23 Oct 2026 |
| C-206 | Ko-fi's free plan takes no service fee on one-off tips, its Standard plan (the default for new accounts) takes 5%; the payment processor's fee applies on either | VC (vendor); C (was "Ko-fi takes no platform fee on one-off donations", 19 Oct 2026) | ko-fi.com/pricing (Wayback capture 13 Oct 2026; the live page answers 403 to automated reads) — "Ko-fi free: 0% service fee on tips"; "Standard (default for new creators): 5% service fee on all payment types (tips, memberships, commissions and shop sales)"; "*0% service fees charged on one-time tips while not opted in to Ko-fi Standard" |
Contribute
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-207 | the size of the English edition (the page no longer states a page count; 69 index.astro pages under src/pages/en on 19 Oct 2026, was "about 66" on 23 Sept) | P re-counted 19 Oct 2026 | the site's sitemap; the index.astro pages under src/pages/en |
| C-208 | WCAG 2.1 AA, the standard the site is written to | P | W3C WAI, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines |
| C-209 | ~45,000 words per language; the claim ledger and review gate as described | O site facts | the English text; the repository (the GitLab links on that page are not readable by a logged-out visitor — see the report of 23 Sept 2026) |
Part 2 — the remaining pages (demos, Search, State Actors, laws, What is Truth, Educate, Share, audiences, objections, About)
State Actors
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-211 | ODNI quotation; Meliorator advisory; AIVD figures (the MI5 and BfV figures on Radicalisation since 24 Oct 2026) | PS | as in part 1 — corrected 22 Sep 2026: the quotation ("additional influence operations…") is from the 4 November 2024 update, the day before the election (it opens "Since our statement on Friday"); Elections cites the 1 November statement. Both now link the FBI's copies. The AIVD findings are as C-035 states them (19 Oct 2026, #147) |
Tracking & Targeting demo
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-212 | consent framework invalid, auction continues; bidders can keep a copy; the CJEU confirmed the decision's premises (TC String personal data; IAB Europe a joint controller, subject to the referring court) | C (was "likely violates the GDPR"; "retains"; the CJEU "upheld key parts of that decision" until 17 Oct 2026); C (Tracking said IAB Europe is a joint controller "subject to that court's checks" and that the consent "has been found invalid"; the Market Court ruled on 14 May 2025 — see the row below — and the courts found the mechanism non-compliant, not every consent void, 23 Oct 2026, #166) | APD 21/2022; CJEU press release 44/24 |
| C-424 | the Brussels Market Court (14 May 2025) confirmed IAB Europe as joint controller of the consent string, upheld the fine, and ruled its role does not extend to processing inside the auction | P added 23 Oct 2026, #166 | Belgian Data Protection Authority, The Market Court rules in the IAB Europe case, 14 May 2025 ("IAB Europe acts as joint data controller for the processing of user preferences within the TCF"; "confirms the fine of 250,000 euros"; rejects controllership "for the processing operations that take place entirely within the OpenRTB protocol") |
| C-314 | RTB auction in roughly 100 ms; Bad News teaches prebunking in about fifteen minutes | C was "ten minutes", 17 Oct 2026 | Wang, Zhang & Yuan 2017; Roozenbeek & van der Linden 2019, Palgrave Communications 5(65) ("approximately 15 minutes") |
| C-307 | Google Analytics' cookie is set per site, but every page with it has the browser send Google the page URL and IP address, used depending on settings to personalise ads | C was "its identifier is shared across them", 17 Oct 2026; the demo's "Just learned" line, tracker.what.analytics, said "tied to a cross-site ID" until 19 Oct 2026 | Google Analytics Help, [GA4] Cookie usage on websites; Google, How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services (read 17 Oct 2026) |
| C-392 | an ad-exchange tag can add a visitor to a remarketing list (in Google Ads now "your data"), used to show ads to past visitors as they browse Google or partner sites (prose "sorted into remarketing audiences"; tracker.what.adexchange) | P source added 22 Oct 2026, #153 | Google Ads Help, About your data segments (read 22 Oct 2026) |
| C-393 | X receives information about a visitor's device, logged in or not, from sites that integrate X services and from X advertisers' sites (prose "its equivalents"; tracker.what.social) | P source added 22 Oct 2026, #153; help.x.com answers 403 to fetchers, read on the Wayback copy of 16 Oct 2026 | X Help Center, How cookies are used on X |
| C-394 | loss framing works on loss aversion, "losses loom larger than gains" (prose "loss-framing"; p.economic_threat.techniqueDef, tier.note.premium) | PC source added 22 Oct 2026, #153; the entry is copied from Gamification, C-312 | Kahneman & Tversky 1979, Econometrica 47(2) |
| C-395 | real experimentation systems split-test by hashing a user identifier into a variant (prose "split-tested"; m.bucket) | P source added 22 Oct 2026, #153 | Kohavi, Longbotham, Sommerfield & Henne 2009, Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery 18, §5.1.2 "Hash and partition" |
| C-401 | Apple hardware read as a sign of spending power: in 2012 Orbitz began showing Mac users different, and sometimes costlier, travel options (sig.os.note; prose "your inferred income tier") | S was "widely used as an income proxy in ad targeting", unsourced; narrowed 22 Oct 2026, #153 | Mattioli, The Wall Street Journal, 25 June 2012 (read on the Wayback copy of 26 Dec 2012); Reuters via NBC News, 25 June 2012 |
| C-402 | California requires covered businesses to honour Global Privacy Control as a request to stop the sale or sharing of personal information; Colorado recognises it as a universal opt-out mechanism; the W3C ended Do Not Track as a Working Group Note on 17 Jan 2019 for lack of deployment (page prose; sig.privacy.note) | P sources added 22 Oct 2026, #153 | California AG, CCPA page (updated 28 Aug 2026); Colorado Department of Law, Colorado Privacy Act; W3C, Tracking Preference Expression (DNT), Working Group Note, 17 Jan 2019 |
Tracking & Targeting demo and /en/demos/
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-345 | nothing leaves the browser except the tracker test, which sends three real requests (your IP address, the site's address and any cookie already held for that company) to Google Analytics, Google Ads / DoubleClick and X Ads, only when the reader presses its button | C was "Nothing is sent anywhere", 19 Oct 2026; "the page's address" until 22 Oct 2026, #161 — the site's referrer policy sends only its origin | the test's own copy (probe.text in src/i18n/demo-strings.mjs) and its hosts (TRACKER_LAYERS in src/components/uth/shared.js) |
Tracking & Targeting demo, its tracker test (probe.text) and the privacy page
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-404 | each probe's Referer is the site's origin only; if the browser accepts third-party cookies, X sets muc_ads for two years and DoubleClick a test cookie for fifteen minutes; Google Analytics sets none | P added 22 Oct 2026, #161 | the test's own request and response headers, recorded in Chromium on 22 Oct 2026 (src-probe-headers-2026 on the demo page; docs/13) |
Search
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-213 | autocomplete manipulated (Cadwalladr 2016) | PC (source added); C (Search said autocomplete "has repeatedly been found" to suggest extremist completions, on this one 2016 article; now dated as one investigation, and Cadwalladr's own claim — right-wing sites gaming the ranking — stated as hers, 23 Oct 2026, #166) | Observer 4 Dec 2016 |
| C-425 | paid ads sit at the top of the searches advertisers care about, usually in commercial searches | C was "the top of most searches" and "any commercial search", 23 Oct 2026, #166 | — (no number; Google shows no ads on many queries) |
| C-214 | 5 trillion; $264.6bn; 27.6%; 23%; Pan 2007; Allam 2014; Semrush; Tow | PV | as in part 1 |
AI
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-215 | Romania caveat carried over; the later investigation was by Snoop.ro, drawing on the tax authority | C was "a tax-authority investigation", 19 Oct 2026, #147 | Euronews 23 Dec 2024 / Snoop.ro |
Data Combination
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-216 | Panoptispy; Target; Bundeskartellamt; CJEU C-252/21; WhatsApp €225m; C-97/23 P | PC "No company set out to build that profile" sat beside a data-broker card whose business is building it; the broker is now named; the sofas example is a hypothetical from ordinary signals, not messaging metadata, 23 Oct 2026, #166 | as in part 1 |
Gamification / demo
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-217 | Skinner; Schüll; Eyal; Kivetz 2006; Susser 2019 (manipulation as hidden influence that bypasses deliberation) | PC (19 Oct 2026, #147: was "whether you are free to leave", which Susser et al. do not say); C (Gamification: "unpredictable enough that you cannot stop" → "stopping is hard"; Eyal's later book stated as his argument; the demo's "the most reliable way known to psychology" → "of the basic reward schedules psychology has compared", 23 Oct 2026, #166) | texts |
Age Restrictions
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-218 | Australia first, Brazil and Indonesia followed, none evaluable yet | C was "only one in force" | OECD April 2026 |
| C-409 | "the design features the harms are attributed to" | C was "the design features that cause harm" — the causal arrow stated as settled, 23 Oct 2026, #166 | Courts: "Whether social media design causes psychological harm, and how far, is contested" |
Courts
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-219 | verdicts; MDL; Anderson v TikTok (link corrected 19 Oct 2026, see C-102); MSA/2006 | PC URL, 19 Oct 2026 | as in part 1 |
DSA
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-220 | "little more than notice-and-takedown" | C was "responsible for nothing" | e-Commerce Directive 2000/31 |
| C-221 | Feb 2024; 45m; 6% (Meta 2025 revenue $201bn → about $12bn); X €120m; NATO StratCom; Vance (Paris, 11 Feb 2025); White House memo 21 Feb 2025 | PSC was "Paris … and Munich Security Conference" for the DSA/GDPR criticism, and an unsourced "potentially exceeding €9 billion", 17 Oct 2026 | sources on page; Vance's Paris and Munich remarks (American Presidency Project); Meta 8-K exhibit 99.1, 28 Jan 2026 |
GDPR
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-222 | 1995 Directive; 25 May 2018; 72 h; 4%; fines list; €7bn; the DPC criticised by other regulators | PC (sources added 17 Oct 2026); C (the lead said "Surveillance capitalism is still the dominant business model", Zuboff's coinage unattributed; now "Behavioural advertising", 23 Oct 2026, #166) | Regulation (EU) 2016/679; GDPR Arts 33 and 83; Conseil d'État n° 430810 (19 June 2020); DPC fines page; Enforcement Tracker (€7.57bn, 17 Oct 2026); EDPB Binding Decision 1/2021; BfDI letter to LIBE, 16 Mar 2021 |
Laws, Timeline
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-426 | the GDPR as the first privacy law with penalties on the scale of the companies it addressed | C was "the first privacy law with penalties that bite" / "first EU-wide law with penalties that bite" — the 1995 Directive carried penalties through national law, 23 Oct 2026, #166 | Regulation (EU) 2016/679, Art. 83 (4% of turnover) |
Section 230
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-223 | 8 Feb 1996; 40m/4bn; Reno v ACLU; Force v Facebook line | PC see C-408, 23 Oct 2026, #166 | — |
Timeline
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-224 | no claims of its own: every entry links to the page that carries its source (since 19 Oct 2026 also true of the 1998 Google, 2004 Facebook, 2007, 2012 and 2022 DSA entries, whose pages now carry the dated sentence and its source; #147); Segel & Heer 2010 (narrative visualization); WCAG | OPC was "a standard parallel-track (“swim-lane”) encoding" credited to Segel & Heer 2010, and the entry "the basis for narrative and parallel-track timelines" — the paper does not discuss lanes or parallel tracks; 22 Oct 2026, #153 | the destination pages |
| C-225 | Méndez & Such 2026 | C was "a preprint, not yet peer-reviewed" and "Méndez et al."; it is a CHI '26 paper, ACM doi 10.1145/3772318.3790704, and has two authors, 19 Oct 2026; the sentence says it studied privacy policies | arXiv 2603.04367 ("To appear in CHI 2026"); ACM DOI 10.1145/3772318.3790704 |
| C-319 | AdWords launched 2000 (keyword ads); Google's per-click auction from 2002 | C was "Google AdWords turns attention into a real-time auction" in 2000, 17 Oct 2026 | Google releases 23 Oct 2000 and 20 Feb 2002; Edelman et al. 2007 — cited on Consumerism |
| C-320 | UN investigators link Facebook to violence against the Rohingya, 2018 | C was 2017, 17 Oct 2026 | A/HRC/39/64, 12 Sept 2018 — cited on Xenophobia |
| C-378 | 2007: the iPhone goes on sale, "the Internet in your pocket" in Apple's words; Facebook opens advertising | C was "the iPhone puts the feed in every pocket" — no source says it, and in 2007 the iPhone sold in the US only; 19 Oct 2026; the two events in date order, 29 June before 6 November, 22 Oct 2026, #164 | Facebook, 6 Nov 2007; Apple, 28 June 2007 — cited on Consumerism |
| C-379 | 2012: Facebook buys Instagram | C was "The image-first era (Instagram); targeting grows granular" — Instagram launched on 6 Oct 2010, and no source carried the targeting clause; 19 Oct 2026 | Facebook, 9 April 2012; Facebook 10-Q Q3 2012 — cited on Consumerism |
| C-410 | 2012: a decline in adolescent mental health is later dated to around this year, mainly on US surveys; how widespread it was, and its cause, contested | C was "Researchers begin documenting a decline in adolescent mental health" — nothing was documented in 2012; the dating is retrospective (Haidt 2024) and contested, 23 Oct 2026, #166 | Mental Health page (Haidt 2024; Odgers 2024) |
| C-317 | 2013: girls' Facebook photo activity linked to body-image concern; causation contested | C was "Body-image harm is tracked as image-first feeds spread", 17 Oct 2026 | Tiggemann & Slater 2013; Meier & Gray 2014 — cited on Body Image |
| C-318 | 2020: reported losses to scams that start on social media begin an eight-fold climb (2020–2025) | P the event now points at Get-Rich-Quick, which carries the figure, 17 Oct 2026 | FTC Data Spotlight, 27 April 2026 |
| C-226 | 2020 Christchurch entry: the Royal Commission documents the attacker's online activity (report presented 26 Nov 2020, tabled 8 Dec 2020; the Symptom track dates each harm to when it was first documented, as C-320) | C (was "the algorithmic radicalisation pipeline is documented" — a claim the Radicalisation page calls contested); C (was dated 2019, the year of the attack, a year before the report; moved to 2020, 22 Oct 2026, #153) | Royal Commission of Inquiry (2020), christchurchattack.royalcommission.nz |
| C-227 | 2018 Cambridge Analytica entry (new) | PC (the entry said "87 million" without "up to", 23 Oct 2026, #166); C (said the profiles "are used for political micro-targeting"; now the data "went to the company for its US political work", 24 Oct 2026, #172, card en-read-cambridge-analytica = a) | Facebook disclosure 4 April 2018; FTC order 2019; ICO letter 2 Oct 2020 — as cited on Advertising |
| C-418 | 1996: Section 230 shields online services from liability for what users post — the intermediary, not the person harmed | C the entry said it "protects platforms, not users", and the closing paragraph that it gave platforms protection "rather than giving users any"; § 230(c)(1) protects any "provider or user", 23 Oct 2026, #166 | 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1) (Cornell LII) |
| C-228 | 2021 Facebook Files entry (new) | P | WSJ, The Facebook Files (2021) — as cited on How It Works |
| C-229 | four Machine entries (1995 web/search, 2009 gamification, 2016 engagement ranking, 2018 AI recommendation) | C dropped 23 Sept 2026: none of the destination pages carries that date with a source, and two conflicted with the page's own dating | the destination pages |
Democracy
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-230 | Senate Vol. 2; Mueller Report; Churchill 1947 (Hansard's words); CvdM | P | — |
Journalism
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-231 | Blair, Relotius, Hari; Kovach & Rosenstiel; Watergate; Tarbell; Spotlight; Panama Papers | P | — |
Science
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-232 | OSC 2015; Youyou 2023; Bogdan 2025; Vazire & Holcombe; "Doubt is our product"; Kearns; Supran & Oreskes; Lundh (Cochrane) | P | — |
Body Image
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-233 | Festinger; Dove (V); Solea & Sugiura; Grillo 2024; Tiggemann & Slater 2013 (1,087 girls aged 13–15) and Meier & Gray 2014 (photo activity, not overall use), both correlational | PV 2013–14 studies added, 17 Oct 2026 | Int. J. Eat. Disord. 46(6); Cyberpsychol. Behav. Soc. Netw. 17(4) |
| C-234 | men about a third of lifetime eating-disorder cases | C was an unsourced "commonly cited clinical estimate"; source added 23 Sept 2026 | Hudson, Hiripi, Pope & Kessler (2007), Biological Psychiatry 61(3) — NCS-R lifetime prevalence by sex |
Consumerism
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-235 | DoubleClick 1996; AdWords 2000; per-click auction from February 2002; Facebook Ads 2007; Matz 2017; Sharif 2017; UNEP figures contested | PC (2002 and sources added, 17 Oct 2026); C (Matz 2017 was "established by field experiment"; now field evidence with its design limit, see the row below, 23 Oct 2026, #166) | Kristol 2001; Google 2000, 2002; Edelman et al. 2007 |
| C-419 | psychographic targeting's effect on purchases has field evidence behind it — experiments that reached over 3.5 million people — whose design did not assign at random who saw which ad; a published letter argues this leaves the causal share open; the authors replied | C was "established by field experiment, not just correlation", 23 Oct 2026, #166 | Matz et al. 2017, PNAS 114(48), abstract ("three field experiments that reached over 3.5 million individuals"); Eckles, Gordon & Johnson 2018, PNAS 115(23) E5254–E5255 ("does not randomly assign users to conditions, which threatens the internal validity"); Matz et al., Reply to Eckles et al., PNAS 115(23), doi 10.1073/pnas.1806854115 |
Recruited to Harm
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-236 | Europol 2024/2025; SOCTA >70%; GRIMM 193 arrests; FBI PSA 764 | P | Europol; IC3 |
Unknown
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-237 | CETaS; ABCD; Valkenburg 2021; EU DisinfoLab (replaces SIO) | C | — |
Unknown, AI
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-420 | AI companions: the commercial incentive is close to social media's — engagement and return use — even where the money comes from subscriptions | C both pages said the incentive structure "is identical to social media", 23 Oct 2026, #166 | — (no number, date or study; reasoning) |
Xenophobia
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-238 | Stormfront 1995; OSCE 2004; SPLC 12,000; Myanmar (FFM; Facebook 5 Nov 2018); Müller & Schwarz | P Stormfront source added, 17 Oct 2026 | SPLC, 20 Years of Hate, 10 June 2015 |
Teens
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-239 | "can get more extreme with each recommendation" | C | consistency with Radicalisation |
| C-240 | the Bad News game (getbadnews.com) teaches six techniques in about 15 minutes | C was "ten minutes", 17 Oct 2026 | getbadnews.com; Roozenbeek & van der Linden 2019 ("approximately 15 minutes") |
| C-429 | moral-emotional messages travel further than messages without that charge (was "get shared more widely than things that simply make you happy") | C Brady et al. 2017 measured moral-emotional words in political messages, not outrage against happiness; 23 Oct 2026, #166 | Brady et al. 2017, PNAS 114(28) ("increased their diffusion by a factor of 20% for each additional word") |
| C-322 | playing the manipulator "seems to work better" than reading: one study, a similar game against infographics, difference not tested | C was "is more effective", stated as a finding, 17 Oct 2026 | Basol et al. 2021, Big Data & Society 8(1); Roozenbeek & van der Linden 2019 (McGuire's hypothesis) |
Young Adults
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-241 | "among the most aware of any age group" | C was "more aware than any other demographic" | framing |
Educators / Parents / Lawmakers
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-242 | (part 1) | — | — |
Books
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-243 | Sunstein 2001 (five years before Facebook opened, Sept 2006); Twenge 2017; Bakshy 2015 | P | — |
| C-326 | Merchants of Doubt traces manufactured doubt from tobacco to climate change (not vaccines) | C was "to vaccines", 17 Oct 2026 | the book's contents (Publishers Weekly review) |
Tools
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-244 | uBlock Origin: full only in Firefox/Brave; Lite elsewhere (duplicates C-171; "Chrome, and Chromium browsers such as Edge" since 19 Oct 2026) | C | uBO wiki, About Google Chrome's "This extension may soon…"; uBOL-home install list; Google, Manifest V2 support timeline (as C-171) |
| C-245 | Ecosia 7-day anonymisation; Kagi $5; Data Detox 40+ languages | PC P; Ecosia as C-177 (the live policy says "anonymize", not "delete", 19 Oct 2026) | vendor pages; Ecosia privacy policy (last modified 21 May 2026) |
Watch & Listen
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-246 | 38m households; Adolescence UK schools; Great Hack (Carroll went to court); Curtis (2016, 2021); Roose: 12,000+ videos from 2015, from a self-help video in late 2014 into far-right politics over the following years, a single case | CP Roose was "followed over eighteen months", 17 Oct 2026; Carroll, Curtis and the Social Dilemma criticism sourced the same day | Netflix; Into Film; Green v Group Ltd [2019] EWHC 954 (Ch) and ICO (9 Jan 2019); BBC programme pages; Roose, NYT 8 June 2019; Pankova, The New Republic, 8 Oct 2020 |
Parents, Watch & Listen, What to Do, Share This
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-430 | Adolescence and Bad News recommended, not ranked (was "one of the most effective conversations available", "more effective than any explanation", "often more effective than sharing an article") | C no study measures either against another intervention, 23 Oct 2026, #166 | — |
Parents
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-323 | monitoring apps: children report harm to the relationship; more monitoring went with more online risk (direction unclear) | C was "damage trust without producing the outcomes parents hope for", 17 Oct 2026 | Ghosh et al. 2018 (CHI, 736 reviews); Ghosh et al. 2018 (CHI, 215 parent–teen pairs) |
| C-412 | what is uncertain is how much of the link is social media causing harm and how much struggling teenagers using it more, and how large any effect is | C was "whether social media is the primary cause … or a significant contributing factor" — two causal answers to a contested causal question, 23 Oct 2026, #166 | the Mental Health page (Orben & Przybylski 2019; Odgers 2024) |
Parents, Teens, What to Do
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-411 | notifications are sent to bring the user back | C was "timed to the moment of maximum vulnerability" / "designed to pull you back … at moments of maximum psychological vulnerability" and "engineered to make 'one more' effortless at exactly the hour your willpower is lowest" — design-intent claims no page sourced, 23 Oct 2026, #166 | — (description of purpose, no number or study) |
Lawmakers
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-324 | Home Office: 43 of the 232 terrorism arrests in Great Britain in the year to March 2025 were of children aged 17 or under (MI5's "one in five"); MI5: terrorism "breeds in squalid corners of the internet" | C was "one in five … under 17; online radicalisation identified as a central factor", entry dated the arrests 2024 — 17 Oct 2026 | Home Office, TACT statistics to March 2025 (12 June 2025); MI5 threat update, 16 Oct 2025 |
| C-325 | the CJEU (C-604/22), on questions referred by a Belgian court, confirmed key parts of the Belgian decision's reasoning; the consent string is personal data | C was "upheld key parts of that decision", 17 Oct 2026 | CJEU press release No 44/24, 7 March 2024 |
| C-403 | heavier social media use correlates with worse mental health in adolescents, the association with depressive symptoms stronger for girls (Kelly et al. 2018); whether passive scrolling is the harmful part is contested — experiments with adults found it lowered mood (Verduyn et al. 2015), a review of 40 survey studies found most did not support the link (Valkenburg, van Driel & Beyens 2022) | CP (was "Passive social media use correlates with worse mental health outcomes in adolescents", with Kelly 2018 as its support, until 22 Oct 2026, #153); P for each study as cited; the passive-use link is marked contested in the sentence; C ("the direction of evidence is not" [debated] read as the direction of causation; now "the correlation is not in dispute", 23 Oct 2026, #166) | Kelly et al. 2018, EClinicalMedicine 6 ("assesses whether social media use is associated with adolescents' depressive symptoms"; "The magnitude of association … was larger for girls than for boys"); Verduyn et al. 2015, JEP: General 144(2) ("led to declines in affective well-being over time"); Valkenburg, van Driel & Beyens 2022, New Media & Society 24(2) ("Most studies did not support the hypothesized associations of ASMU and PSMU with well-/ill-being") |
| C-413 | "Most of the harms … are not contested at the level of whether they exist"; the exception, adolescent mental health, named; Germano et al. as one observational study, moved from Confirmed to Contested in the Deeper box; "whether, and how far, social media causes the youth mental-health decline" contested | C was "The harms documented on this site are not contested at the level of whether they exist" and the 2018 change "contributed to increased political polarisation" stated as fact and filed under Confirmed, 23 Oct 2026, #166 | Germano, Gómez & Sobbrio 2026, J. Public Economics 255 (abstract: "empirical evidence from survey data in Italy and the United States"); the Mental Health page's debate section |
| C-434 | the 2020 US election experiments run with Meta found no measurable change in polarisation from three months of a chronological feed (main text and the Deeper box's Contested tier) | P added 24 Oct 2026, #172, card en-read-election-experiments = a | Guess et al. 2023, Science 381, 398–404 (abstract) |
| C-367 | AIVD Jaarverslag 2025 (23 April 2026): as it was published, Director-General Smit was quoted by NOS describing a threat picture without precedent in the service's eighty years; the report finds young people now a third of its jihadist caseload, with jihadist ideas widely available on social-media platforms | PS for the report's two sentences; S for "without precedent" (NOS, quoting Smit; the sentence is not in the report PDF, so the page credits it to NOS from 19 Oct 2026) | AIVD Jaarverslag 2025, aivd.nl ("Jongeren vormen inmiddels een derde van de jihadistische onderzoekspopulatie. Op socialemediaplatformen is het jihadistisch gedachtegoed breed beschikbaar"); NOS, 23 April 2026, nos.nl/l/2611683. The page said "state actors weaponising commercial platforms" until 19 Oct 2026; the report has no such sentence (it mentions Russian state media amplifying demonstrations) |
Lawmakers, State Actors
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-414 | "Several European intelligence agencies now say publicly … that much of today's radicalisation happens online. That is narrower than this site's argument about engagement ranking" | C (was "Multiple allied intelligence agencies are now saying publicly what researchers have been documenting for years" — the agencies do not speak about ranking; State Actors also dropped "institutions that speak conservatively and carefully", 23 Oct 2026, #166; whether the section moves is card en-read-state-actors-agencies); the State Actors section now opens with the frame "The infrastructure that state operations exploit is the one several European intelligence agencies now name in their own caseloads" and keeps only the state-linked item (the AIVD's minor); the domestic caseloads moved from State Actors to Radicalisation ("What the security services see") with its sources, 24 Oct 2026, #172, card en-read-state-actors-agencies = a | AIVD Jaarverslag 2025; MI5, Oct 2025 ("breeds in squalid corners of the internet"); BfV Verfassungsschutzbericht 2024 (chat groups as "catalysts") |
What to Do
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-247 | van der Linden 2022; phone bans (part 1); OECD "adopting or considering" | C | OECD |
Organisations
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-248 | DROG Dutch; SDML; EUvsDisinfo; CvdM; EFF; ISD; Information Futures Lab (First Draft closed 2022) — the Ecosystem page was merged into this one on 23 Sept 2026, so its claims are listed here | PC EUvsDisinfo was described as keeping "the searchable record of documented cases"; its database is of pro-Kremlin disinformation, run by the East StratCom Task Force of the EU's diplomatic service — now said, 23 Oct 2026, #166 | — |
| C-249 | Bad News teaches six documented manipulation techniques; inoculation transfers and lasts (carried over from the Ecosystem page) | P | Bad News: Roozenbeek & van der Linden 2019, Palgrave Communications 5(65); getbadnews.com. Transfer: Roozenbeek, van der Linden et al. 2022, Science Advances 8(34) — a video study, not a Bad News one (its entry said "the Bad News research" until 17 Oct 2026; CORRECTIONS.md). Lasts: Maertens et al. 2021, J. Exp. Psych.: Applied 27(1) — stable for at least three months with regular testing, a significant decay over two months without (the Objections answer says so since 19 Oct 2026; the Educators, Tools and Young adults pages said "durable" or "fades over weeks" until 19 Oct 2026) |
| C-250 | CvdM concluded in May 2026 that algorithmic feeds are "demonstrably risky for our democracy", and published a roadmap (carried over from the Ecosystem page; same claim as Democracy, DSA, Elections, Lawmakers) | P | CvdM, Naar democratisch gezonde feeds (May 2026); the quotation is in the report PDF (ch. 5, p. 8), which the entry now links |
| C-251 | Center for Humane Technology co-founded by Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, former technology-industry insiders, with Randima Fernando (was "founded by", 19 Oct 2026) (carried over from the Ecosystem page) | P | humanetech.com/impact-and-story: "In 2018, Tristan joined forces with fellow technologists Aza Raskin and Randima Fernando to found the Center for Humane Technology" |
| C-315 | correcting false claims has entrenched them in some experiments (the "backfire effect", Nyhan and Reifler), which is contested: Wood and Porter, 52 issues, more than 10,100 people, found no correction that triggered it | C was "sometimes entrenches it", unsourced and unmarked, until 17 Oct 2026 | Nyhan & Reifler 2010, Political Behavior 32(2), abstract; Wood & Porter 2019, Political Behavior 41(1), abstract (Springer, Wayback capture of 19 Feb 2026), 17 Oct 2026 |
How We Communicate
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-368 | cognitive load theory (Sweller 1988, Cognitive Science 12(2)); advance organisers (Ausubel 1960, J. Educ. Psychol. 51(5)); the expertise-reversal effect (Kalyuga, Ayres, Chandler & Sweller 2003, Educ. Psychol. 38(1)); Paas, Renkl & Sweller 2003 (Educ. Psychol. 38(1)); scaffolding (Bruner 1978; Vygotsky 1978) | P metadata confirmed via Crossref; the publisher pages block automated fetches, 19 Oct 2026 | the papers, by DOI |
Things
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-252 | Guardian, De Correspondent; Proton €4; Kagi $5; Inoculation Science free | CP | vendor pages |
Share This
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-316 | the Bad News game takes about 15 minutes | C was "10 minutes" and "a ten-minute game" until 17 Oct 2026 | Roozenbeek & van der Linden 2019, Palgrave Communications 5(65): "takes approximately 15 minutes to complete" (nature.com, 17 Oct 2026) |
| C-369 | "Cambridge research shows the inoculation effect holds for months when refreshed" (the sentence said "is durable" until 19 Oct 2026; the Bad News length is C-316) | C hedged: stable for at least three months with regular testing, faded within two months without | Maertens, Roozenbeek, Basol & van der Linden 2021, J. Exp. Psych.: Applied 27(1) — "the inoculation effect remains stable for at least 3 months"; "without regular testing … significant decay over a 2-month time period"; Roozenbeek & van der Linden 2019 for the 15 minutes; both now in the page's Sources (19 Oct 2026) |
Contribute
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-253 | ~45,000 words per language (the page no longer states a page count; "~66 pages" in this row was the 23 Sept count, 69 on 19 Oct 2026 — see C-207) | C was 8,000–12,000 | word count of the English text |
Donate
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-254 | ANBI rules; Ad Grants; superseded by C-199–C-202 (the old "KvK €82; notary ~€650" figures are history; KvK is €85, C-202) | P | Belastingdienst; Google; KvK |
Yes, but…
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-255 | Davison 1983; Raskin (designed infinite scroll — the BBC's word, used on the page since 15 Oct 2026 in place of "invented"; regret); Harris Senate testimony June 2019; Kahan 2017; Home Office: 43 of the 232 terrorism arrests in Great Britain in the year to March 2025 were of children aged 17 or under (MI5's "one in five"); Bad News about 15 minutes; Sun et al. 2008 meta-analysis (106 studies); OECD | PC (17 Oct 2026: the arrests were dated 2024, with online radicalisation "a central factor"; Bad News "ten minutes"; third-person effect "one of the most replicated findings"); C (the answer offered the arrests as evidence that children are "not immune to the engagement algorithm"; now the ISD audit carries the recommendation claim and the arrests stand as the far end, see the row below, 23 Oct 2026, #166) | Raskin: BBC News, Andersson, 3 July 2018 — "now felt guilty about it" (the entry pointed at the Center for Humane Technology's homepage until 15 Oct 2026) |
| C-421 | an audit study found anti-feminist content recommended to accounts set up as boys and young men that had not looked for it | PC added 23 Oct 2026, #166; the source the Manosphere page cites, C-066 | ISD 2022, Algorithms as a Weapon Against Women |
| C-256 | "The media is just as bad" · Meta counted 3.60 billion Family daily active people on average for June 2026 (added 23 Sept 2026) | P | Meta Platforms, Meta Reports Second Quarter 2026 Results, 29 July 2026, as filed with the SEC — "DAP was 3.60 billion on average for June 2026" |
| C-257 | "The media is just as bad" · the liability shield: Section 230 (US, 1996) and the e-Commerce Directive (EU, 2000), so no intermediary carries an editor's responsibility (added 23 Sept 2026) | P | 47 U.S.C. § 230 (Cornell LII); Directive 2000/31/EC, Articles 12–15 — as already cited on Section 230 and DSA |
| C-258 | "The media is just as bad" · the DSA requires very large platforms to keep a public advertisement repository and to give vetted researchers data access (added 23 Sept 2026) | P | Regulation (EU) 2022/2065, Article 39 (repository, kept one year after last presentation) and Article 40 (vetted researchers) |
| C-259 | "Haidt has been debunked" · Odgers 2024 Nature review; Orben & Przybylski 2019 correlational critique; the sleep meta-analysis (20 studies, 125,198 children) (added 23 Sept 2026) | C Odgers was credited with "most of the causal experiments the book cites were run on adults", which the review does not say, 17 Oct 2026 | as on Mental Health — Nature 628, 29–30; Nat. Hum. Behav. 3; Carter et al. 2016, JAMA Pediatrics 170(12) |
| C-260 | "Haidt has been debunked" · Ferguson et al. meta-analysis: 37 effect sizes from 33 studies published 2015–2019, "screen media plays little role in mental health concerns" (added 23 Sept 2026) | P | Ferguson, Kaye, Branley-Bell et al. (2022), Like this meta-analysis: Screen media and mental health, Professional Psychology: Research and Practice 53(2), 205–214 — abstract read in full |
| C-261 | "Haidt has been debunked" · randomised four-week Facebook deactivation improved the subjective well-being index by 0.09 SD, "about 25–40 percent as much as standard psychological interventions" (added 23 Sept 2026) | P | Allcott, Braghieri, Eichmeyer & Gentzkow (2020), The Welfare Effects of Social Media, AER 110(3), 629–676 — paper text, §"Are these subjective well-being effects large or small?" (n = 2,743) |
| C-262 | "Haidt has been debunked" · Facebook's staggered college roll-out raised an index of poor mental health by 0.085 SD; quasi-experimental, not randomised (added 23 Sept 2026) | P | Braghieri, Levy & Makarin (2022), Social Media and Mental Health, AER 112(11), 3660–3693 — paper text, main finding |
| C-263 | "Age checks just mean everyone has to hand over their ID" · Ofcom's methods capable of being "highly effective" (open banking, photo-ID matching, facial age estimation, mobile-network operator checks, credit-card checks, digital identity services, email-based age estimation); self-declared age excluded; judged on technical accuracy, robustness, reliability and fairness (added 23 Sept 2026) | P | Ofcom, Age checks to protect children online (guidance published 16 January 2025; in place for pornography services by July 2025) |
| C-264 | "Age checks just mean everyone has to hand over their ID" · the EU age-verification blueprint, July 2025: same specifications as the European Digital Identity Wallets; "online services will only receive a proof that the user is over 18, without any other personal details"; each proof used once; piloted in Denmark, France, Greece, Italy and Spain (added 23 Sept 2026) | P | European Commission, Commission makes available an age-verification blueprint, 14 July 2025 — quotation verbatim from the release |
| C-265 | "This was written by an AI" · the AI Act requires deployers to disclose AI-generated text published to inform the public, and exempts text under human review with editorial responsibility (added 23 Sept 2026) | P | Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, Article 50(4), applicable from 2 August 2026 — Commission AI Act service desk |
| C-266 | "This was written by an AI" · how the site is made: the footer notice on every page, the claim ledger, the corrections log, every change listed with its date in the change log, a person deciding what is published, native-speaker review before a translation goes live (added 23 Sept 2026; until 19 Oct 2026 it said "the full text and its history are public" — the repository is private, card repo-private-links = b, CORRECTIONS.md 2026-10-19) | PC (site facts); C (said a translation goes live only after native review; the Portuguese edition is published under volunteer review — the exception is now stated, see C-415, 23 Oct 2026, #166) | src/layouts/Base.astro (the footer notice), /en/about/how-we-communicate/#how-this-site-is-made, this ledger, CORRECTIONS.md, src/lib/changelog.mjs (the change log on /en/about/corrections/), src/i18n/review.mjs |
Objections 01
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-370 | Solove 2011, Nothing to Hide (Yale University Press; the publisher's page is for the 2013 paperback) | P | yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300172331/nothing-to-hide/ |
FAQ
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-267 | "Was this written by an AI?" — the short form of the row above (added 23 Sept 2026) | PC (site facts); C (the same exception, see C-415, 23 Oct 2026, #166) | as above |
How We Communicate, Contribute, FAQ, Yes but…
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-415 | a translation goes live only after native review, except an edition published under volunteer review, which says so on every page | C the exception was missing on four pages; How We Use AI and Translation Status already stated it, 23 Oct 2026, #166 | site fact: src/data/editions.mjs (underReview), src/i18n/review.mjs |
About / Privacy / FAQ
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-268 | foundation in registration; content published on the site under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0; the corrections log and the change log published on the Corrections page (each change to Privacy listed there with its date); analytics tools and the Plausible fault; seven-year retention. Until 19 Oct 2026 these pages called the repository public and linked into it; it is private (card repo-private-links = b, CORRECTIONS.md 2026-10-19) | P (site facts); P for the seven-year retention (Burgerlijk Wetboek 2:10 lid 3 and AWR art. 52 lid 4 in Privacy's new Sources, 22 Oct 2026, #153) | repository; src/lib/changelog.mjs; BW Boek 2 art. 10 lid 3 ("gedurende zeven jaren te bewaren", binds every rechtspersoon); AWR art. 52 lid 4 ("gedurende zeven jaar te bewaren"; lid 2(a) makes every lichaam administratieplichtig, art. 2 lid 1(b) counts every rechtspersoon as one) — wetten.overheid.nl, read 22 Oct 2026 |
About
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-371 | Translations, "Next languages" · the prioritisation method and its eight Sources entries: OECD/JRC 2008 composite-indicators handbook; UN World Population Prospects 2024; ITU via World Bank internet users; UNESCO UIS adult literacy; DataReportal Digital 2026 (an industry estimate, labelled on the page); RSF 2026 index; V-Dem v16; national records (2011–2026) | P | the eight sources (opened or checked by metadata in the #147 pass, 19 Oct 2026) |
Translations status page (/en/about/translations/)
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-269 | which languages exist, how far each has got, what is published | P site facts; added to the ledger 23 Sept 2026 — the page was created after this pass and was not covered | src/data/i18n-status.json (npm run sync), src/data/review-log.jsonl, src/data/editions.mjs |
How We Use AI (/en/about/how-we-use-ai/)
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-304 | Article 50(4) of the AI Act: deployers disclose AI-generated text published to inform the public on matters of public interest, unless it has had human review or editorial control and someone holds editorial responsibility; applies from 2 August 2026 (added 16 Oct 2026) | P | Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, Article 50(4) and Article 113 — as on AI Act; Commission FAQ on Article 50 |
How We Use AI
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-305 | what the tools do (drafting, translating, researching, checking), what people do, the safeguards (review gate, native reviewers, a second model, the automated checks) and what the tools never do (publish a translation, decide, change the site by themselves, coin terms, serve as a source); the rules the tools work under summarised on the page, and every change listed with its date in the change log on the Corrections page (added 16 Oct 2026, #124; until 19 Oct 2026 it linked to AGENTS.md, REVIEW.md and docs/28 in a "public repository" — the repository is private, card repo-private-links = b) | P site facts | AGENTS.md (rules 1, 2, 4; Translations), CLAUDE.md (which model does what), REVIEW.md, docs/33-reviewer-links.md, docs/28-checks.md (CHECK 23, 35, 42), src/i18n/review.mjs, src/i18n/human-review.mjs, src/layouts/Base.astro (noindex and review banner on drafts) |
Claim ledger page (/en/about/claims/)
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-270 | the claims, their status letters and the re-check dates a reader sees | P site facts; added 23 Sept 2026 with the page — the page is generated from the ledger, so it cannot say anything the ledger does not | docs/25-claim-ledger.md (this file) via src/data/claims.json (npm run sync → scripts/gen-claims.mjs); lint CHECK 38 |
Home
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-271 | framing only | O | — |
Blog
Before Brazil's run-off: what is documented about influence online
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-272 | Run-off 25 October 2026; first round 4 October | P | OAS preliminary report, 6 Oct 2026, p. 6 ("scheduled for October 25, 2026"; re-read 17 Oct 2026, pdftotext) — the TSE note of 4 Oct does not give the date; both posts link the OAS report for it since 17 Oct 2026 |
| C-273 | TSE rules: deepfakes ("gerado ou manipulado digitalmente") banned to harm or favour a candidacy; AI content labelled "de modo explícito, destacado e acessível" with the technology named; new for 2026, no publishing, republishing or paid boosting of new AI content using a candidate's or public figure's image, voice or words from 72 hours before to 24 hours after the end of voting, even labelled; AI systems may not "ranquear, recomendar, sugerir ou priorizar" candidates | P | Res. TSE 23.610/2019 compiled text, art. 9º-C § 1º (from Res. 23.732/2024), art. 9º-B caput and § 3º-A, art. 28 § 1º-C (both "Incluído pela Resolução nº 23.755/2026"); Res. TSE 23.755 of 2 March 2026 — not 23.748, which is the electoral-systems resolution |
| C-274 | OAS observers: some political groups reported disinformation and hateful posts despite the court's controls; others argued the controls "limited freedom of expression and constituted a form of censorship" | P | OAS, Preliminary Report of the OAS Electoral Observation Mission in Brazil, 6 Oct 2026, p. 2 (English text, oas.org) |
| C-275 | ABIN, Desafios de Inteligência – Edição 2026 (published December 2025): the possibility of foreign interference a "fator de risco que não pode ser subestimado"; it "pode ocorrer por meio de" disinformation campaigns, cyberattacks on electoral infrastructure, hidden funding of political groups; no country named; algorithms "desenhada para maximizar o engajamento" | P | ABIN PDF on gov.br, printed pp. 68–70 (pdftotext; no country named in the chapter) |
| C-276 | TSE president, 4 Oct: "Até o momento, não temos nenhum indicativo concreto de interferência internacional" | S | Agência Câmara, 4 Oct 2026 (Agência Brasil prints "um indicativo") |
| C-277 | TSE note, 4 Oct: "Não foram constatados fatos que indicassem interferência estrangeira no processo eleitoral brasileiro"; quoted by the OAS | P | TSE note (Wayback copy of the official URL); OAS report p. 6 |
| C-278 | "No Brazilian authority has documented a foreign influence operation through social media against this election", as of 9 Oct | O the post's reading of the two statements above and of ABIN's risk-only wording; leaked and anonymous claims deliberately left out | as above; verified.md items 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 |
| C-279 | At least 11 foreign accounts posted pro-candidate content on X with X's "paid partnership" label, 18–21 Sept; payer "permanece desconhecido" | P | Aos Fatos (Tai Nalon), 25 Sept 2026 |
| C-280 | Another candidate asked the TSE on 23 Sept to remove the posts; no ruling found as of 9 Oct | S | CNN Brasil (Caio Junqueira), 23 Sept 2026; no decision found in a search on 9 Oct |
| C-281 | Lupa VigIA, 16 Aug–28 Sept: 1,941 suspect posts collected, 972 analysed, 920 confirmed AI, 554 deepfakes (~60%), 371 labelled (~40%); the two run-off candidates the most depicted, promoted and attacked | P | Lupa, VigIA Relatório Parcial #2, 1 Oct 2026 (PDF on uploads.agencialupa.org) — settles the denominators that the relays gave differently (verified.md item 9) |
| C-282 | Lupa: 64 AI posts in the banned window 1–5 Oct, 37 deepfakes; both leading candidates in promoting and attacking posts | P | Lupa (Beatriz Farrugia), 7 Oct 2026 |
| C-283 | Agência Brasil's account of the TSE president, 4 Oct (indirect speech, not a quotation): the feared deepfakes did not materialise, "sem ocorrências de repercussão significativa" | S | Agência Brasil (Felipe Pontes), 4 Oct 2026 |
| C-284 | NetLab UFRJ, ad ban (48 h before to 24 h after voting): 568 irregular ads on Meta's platforms; six imitating the TSE, offering voting by phone or from home, some leading to sites asking for the CPF; Meta: "A amostragem deste relatório não reflete a escala do nosso trabalho de integridade" | S | Figures as reported by Agência Brasil (Rafael Cardoso), 6 Oct 2026, which quotes them and Meta (the NetLab bulletin PDFs are not reachable from the post). The ban itself: Res. TSE 23.610/2019 compiled text, art. 29 § 11 (from Res. 23.732/2024), read 17 Oct 2026 |
| C-285 | Siade: anonymous, for false content on voting machines, the process, imitations of the electoral courts; Pardal for irregular campaigning, sign-in with e-Título or Gov.br | P | TSE, Encontrou desinformação sobre as eleições? Saiba como denunciar ao TSE, 18 Sept 2026; Pardal – Eleições 2026 (both Wayback) |
| C-286 | Comprova is a project of newsrooms led by Abraji, with a published method | P | projetocomprova.com.br and its methodology page |
Everywhere and nowhere: what is documented about visibility before Brazil's run-off
| No. | Claim | Status | Checked against |
|---|---|---|---|
| C-287 | A report by NOS, the Dutch public broadcaster (14 Oct), named no study, researcher or data set; its evidence was one campaign's account, one Instagram search, the TSE order and Meta's first reply | P | NOS (Nina Jurna), 14 Oct 2026, full text; visibility-verified.md item 1 |
| C-288 | HypeAuditor, 24 Aug–23 Sept: about 150,000 vs 50,000 likes per Instagram post — industry figure, no full method | S | Exame (Soraia Alves), 2 Oct 2026; item 27 |
| C-289 | DSC Lab, Instagram 14 Sept–2 Oct, engagement = likes plus comments: 329,367 vs 137,675 per post; followers 15.4m vs 11.9m; engagement 28.9m vs 16.8m; views 349.8m vs 155.8m; 210 vs 51 posts — industry figure, "metodologias proprietárias" | P | DSC Lab press release (PDF via Poder360), 3 Oct 2026, read with pdftotext; item 28 |
| C-290 | TecMundo, 8 Oct: several phones, each on a different account; neither official account among the first results; full username brings each to the top; Meta: "não recomendamos contas oficiais de candidatos registradas no TSE nas superfícies dos nossos aplicativos, incluindo a pesquisa" | S | TecMundo original (Igor Almenara Carneiro) at estadao.com.br/tecmundo/big-techs/instagram-esconde-perfil-de-lula-e-flavio-bolsonaro-tecmundo-verificou/; item 24 |
| C-291 | TSE rule since 2024: providers using a recommender system "deverão excluir dos resultados" declared candidate channels and profiles and their content, except paid boosting | P | Res. TSE 23.610/2019 compiled text, art. 28 § 1º-A ("Incluído pela Resolução nº 23.732/2024"), Wayback 10 Oct 2026; item 23 |
| C-292 | Metrópoles test, Aug: 3, then 13, of the first 30 feed posts from declared candidate accounts not followed; Meta then stopped recommending them | S | Metrópoles (Demétrio Vecchioli), 17 Aug 2026, with Meta's reply of 18 Aug; item 25 |
| C-293 | NetLab UFRJ, 14–16 Sept: 24 recommendations from declared official accounts among 1,873 collected on TikTok (web, no login) | P | NetLab technical note, 1 Oct 2026 (PDF); item 30. "Too few to say whether either side gained" is the post's reading (O) |
| C-294 | Meta AI on WhatsApp produced an image for one candidate's first name and ballot number and refused the other's; Meta extended its block to first names and ballot numbers | S | Terra, 14 Oct; Olhar Digital (Ana Luiza Figueiredo), 14 Oct; Meta's statement in Agência Brasil, 14 Oct; items 20–22. The post offers no cause: "The tests show the asymmetry; they do not show its cause" (15 Oct review, D1) |
| C-295 | The campaign went to the TSE on 10 Oct; the favouritism claim contested, Meta denies it: "As alegações são simplesmente falsas e não encontram respaldo nos fatos" | S | Agência Brasil (André Richter), 11 Oct; Agência Brasil's statement as published by DGABC 4352145, 11 Oct (byline "Da Agência Brasil", not Agência Estado — corrected 19 Oct 2026); item 13 |
| C-296 | Meta's 12 Oct filing, as reported: ad account disabled 23 Sept, two restrictions "erroneamente classificadas como graves", back "em pouco mais de uma hora"; Reels counters blocked 15:50–20:49 on 7 Oct, "mais de cem países", no impact on distribution; the account's distribution that day "substancialmente acima de sua própria linha de base recente"; "não há qualquer evidência tecnicamente verificável de seletividade ou manipulação"; of the 255 profiles (Democracia em Xeque's survey), 35 reviewed, 7 disabled, no coordinated inauthentic behaviour in that set | S | Metrópoles (Patriolino and Alcântara; Toledo), 13 Oct 2026; the party's summary on pt.org.br, 13 Oct (party source; its ad-account and profile figures confirmed by the court's decision of 15 Oct, as reported by O Tempo — the two Metrópoles pieces carry the Reels incident and the denial, not the 23 Sept ad-account details or the 35/7/Democracia em Xeque figures; reworded 19 Oct 2026); filing under seal; items 9, 14–18 — the 255 belong to Democracia em Xeque, 15 Aug–15 Sept, not Lupa VigIA as one relay says |
| C-297 | TSE order, 10 Oct: 48 hours; logs; every measure since 16 Aug profile by profile; 23 Sept and 7 Oct; "de forma idêntica para as duas candidaturas"; "Os fatos narrados ocorrem em ambiente que somente a representada controla"; the minister "não reconheceu neste momento a existência de discriminação algorítmica" (Congresso em Foco's sentence; the post quotes only "neste momento"); Meta asked for 48 more hours; no ruling found as of 15 Oct (then the injunction: C-372); the post says "He had not, at this stage, recognised any algorithmic discrimination, Congresso em Foco reported" (the quotation marks removed 19 Oct 2026: the despacho has no such sentence) | S | DGABC (Agência Estado) 4352067, 10 Oct; Agência Brasil, 11 Oct; Congresso em Foco, 10 Oct; Metrópoles (Toledo), 13 Oct; the despacho itself, case 0602746-69.2026.6.00.0000, signed 10 Oct 2026 (static.congressoemfoco.com.br/2026/10/10/attachment/2026/10/10/4badc1_despacho_2746_69.pdf); items 10–12, 18–19 |
| C-298 | TSE, 9 Oct: site offering cryptocurrency for posts supporting one candidate suspended; "indícios de que o projeto ultrapassava a manifestação espontânea de apoio político" | S | Metrópoles (Aguiar and Ligabue), 9 Oct 2026; item 33 |
| C-299 | TSE president, 13 Oct: Google given 24 hours over AI answers attributing to the other candidate "declarações falsas e inexistentes" | S | Viva (Marcel Naves), 13 Oct 2026; item 34 |
| C-300 | MPF/PFDC, 14 Oct: procedure on Meta and X after Artigo 19, Conectas, Sleeping Giants Brasil and CTRL+Z; "mais de mil relatos"; five days; court orders or algorithms | P | mpf.mp.br note, 14 Oct 2026 (Procedimento Administrativo nº 1.00.000.010190/2026-65); item 36. CTRL+Z's "22 %" and "most support" deliberately left out |
| C-301 | No independent study with a published method shows platform-side suppression or amplification in 2026; Débora Salles (NetLab UFRJ): "É muito difícil afirmar que há uma interferência na campanha […]"; "caixa-preta" | SO (quote) / O (the reading) | DW Brasil (Vinícius Lemos), 14 Oct 2026, read with curl (not 15 Oct as the dossier said); item 32; dossier §4 searches |
| C-302 | Rathje, Van Bavel and van der Linden, PNAS 2021: out-group posts "shared or retweeted about twice as often" (US); Huszár et al., PNAS 2022: "six out of seven countries … mainstream political right enjoys higher algorithmic amplification" (Twitter staff; not Brazil) | P | abstracts via Semantic Scholar (pnas.org 403); DOIs checked against Crossref, 15 Oct 2026; items 39–40 |
| C-303 | Meta (Joel Kaplan), 7 Jan 2025: "recommend more political content based on these personalized signals" | P | about.fb.com, read 15 Oct 2026; item 43 |
| C-372 | TSE injunction, 15 Oct: the minister ordered Meta to give equal treatment to both run-off candidates under a daily fine (R$ 500,000 a day), ruling out "por ora" manipulation in favour of or against any candidacy; the plenary confirmed it unanimously on 16 Oct (the post's dated update of 19 Oct 2026) | S | O Tempo, 15 Oct 2026 and 16 Oct 2026; the post's two new Sources entries |
What the ledger does not settle
A letter says how a claim was checked, not that the argument around it is right. An O is framing, and framing is judged for fairness, not accuracy. A V is a figure its own subject reported, kept only where it is the only figure there is, and labelled as such on the page it appears on. And a ledger records what was checked, not what was missed: if you find a claim that is not here, or a source that does not say what the page says it says, tell us — that is the most useful thing a reader can send.
Did this page help? Tell us what was wrong →