Colorado Springs, Colo. - Lead Stories is proud to announce we won a $100,000 ENGAGE grant from the IFCN's Global Fact Check Fund for our project proposal to build a fact check labeling service on the Bluesky social network. The project will be open to all fact checkers who are verified signatories of the IFCN Code of Principles (register here if you are interested).
As the official announcement says:
Lead Stories aims to create a tagging service for Bluesky, utilizing the platform's open architecture to apply fact-check labels to posts. This service will draw on a comprehensive database of fact-checked content, including over 100,000 URLs and 6,000 fact checks in eight languages, and integrate contributions from the global fact-checking community.
Posts containing fact-checked links or relevant keywords will be tagged with labels directing users to the associated fact checks, leveraging the platform's structure for greater accuracy and transparency.
Bluesky is a relatively young but fast-growing social networking app with a unique approach to moderation: in addition to in-house moderation that enforces Bluesky's Community Guidelines, it uses a "Stackable Moderation" model where users can subscribe to external services that will label certain types of content in their timeline and optionally changes how it is displayed, depending on the choices made by the user. Such services are called "labelers" and an external directory currently already lists over 300 of them.
Lead Stories will use the grant funds to build a labeling service that adds labels with links to relevant fact checks whenever a post on Bluesky contains a link to content that has already been reviewed by a participating fact checker or if a fact checker wants to provide extra context to a post in the form of a link to a fact check. Bluesky users will be able to sign up for the service if they want to see the labels and the information offered by them.
Initially the project will draw on Lead Stories' own database, which uses more than 6,000 fact checks in eight languages to apply ratings to more than 100,000 URLs. Once the Bluesky labeling project is underway, participating fact checkers will also be able to contribute their own fact checks and ratings to the database in various ways.
Lead Stories sees this as an infrastructure project that will increase the reach of all participating fact checkers and that will bring important context and information to the Bluesky timeline of users who sign up for it. All this is fully in line with the principle that fact checking is the opposite of censorship: it adds information!
The data about the fact checks used in this project will always be 100% owned and controlled by the fact checkers who contribute it. The service will be free to use, both for fact checkers and Bluesky users who subscribe to it. Eventually we hope to cover any maintenace costs through a donation model.
If you are already on Bluesky, you can follow Lead Stories here to get our latest fact checks or you can use our Starter Pack to immediately follow several fact checking organizations.
Stay tuned for further announcements!
