In Search for a Name, when you put in any name, we will search that person or organization’s public statements, and compare what they’ve said about publicly controversial subjects against the fact-checkers you picked on the Rate Fact Checkers page. [Note: engine will route inquiry first to Rate Fact Checkers page if user hasn’t completed that step.]

 

 

 

 

How This Works:

First, please note two things we do not do — for one, we don’t rate anyone’s opinions! Our only concern is for people’s handling of facts.

And second, this site does not itself evaluate any asserted facts. Instead, we collect and regularly update all available findings by recognized fact checkers, in any country that has at least one. This is to save you the time it would take to find a long list of fact-checkers run by newspapers, foundations, search engines and other sources, and then go through their findings and compare them separately against statements by someone you’re interested in, made publicly across a broad range of social media, blogs and other public sources.

Also please note that the fact-checkers themselves are searched for issues, not names. So the person you’re interested in doesn’t have to be the one who was speaking or writing when a certain fact was checked, as long as they publicly passed on the same statement at some point. The search will find statements that amount to the same thing even if they don’t use exactly the same words.

Note, many people use pseudonyms in writing for social media (and some other outlets). But a pseudonym is a searchable name like any other, so the reputation of anyone using one can be checked in the same way. [TBD: It may or may not be desirable, or even possible, to go one step farther and configure the engine to seek out the real name behind a pseudonym. For later discussion.]

The results page will show which fact-checkers returned at least one result. And when different fact-checkers disagree, our system will use your weighting to see how much you should trust that person’s veracity: it will assign 0% weight to any fact-checker you assigned 0 stars to; 20% for one star; 40% to two stars; 60% for three; 80% for four, and 100% weight for fact-checkers you rated with five stars. It will then calculate the person’s weighted average over all such instances found. [TBD:A Details page, linked from the Results box, will show which fact checker said what about the supposed fact that was searched, and what the person you’re searching for said, and where. Depending on specific design, this may include multiple nested pages or links.]