Election Disinformation

Ms. Susan Wojcicki, It's been almost two years since the COVID-19 pandemic started. The world has seen time and time again how destructive disinformation and misinformation can be for social harmony, democracy, and public health; too many lives and livelihoods have been ruined, and far too many people have lost loved ones to disinformation. As an international network of fact-checking…

Did a Kenosha, Wisconsin, police officer find a suspicious pile of bricks in a back alley and were these bricks placed by leftists in preparation for rioting? No, that's not true: An audio recording of police officers speaking with their dispatcher is authentic, but there is no evidence that there was anything out of the ordinary about the bricks. Declaring…

At Lead Stories we are always open to trying out new technologies and methods when it comes to fact checking. The only way to truly know if something works or not is to try it out. Which is why we are happy to announce we have chosen to participate in a new initiative that seeks to explore if trading representations…

Is "Big Tech" letting child porn distributors freely operate while restricting people who post content that companies like Amazon and Facebook consider to be dangerous falsehoods? No, that's not how it works: No one owns the internet, which is a network of connected computers on which the World Wide Web operates via a common programming code that allows users to…

Did someone hack into the electronic voting system being used in Georgia for the January 5, 2020, U.S. Senate runoff races? No, Georgia election officials say that's not true: The digital poll book was not even in use on December 30, 2020, the day J. Hutton Pulitzer told lawmakers he had hacked his way into it. On two occasions since…

Is Joe Biden's sister married to Stephen Owens, whose company owns Dominion Voting Systems? No, that's not true: Valerie Biden Owens is not married to Stephen Owens, according to a Dominion spokeswoman and numerous news accounts about the Biden family. Biden's only sister is married to John (Jack) Owens, who owns a Delaware-based telemedicine company, according to The Washington Post…

Were 50,000 Chinese soldiers bombed and killed in Maine -- with the incident "listed as an earthquake"? No, that's not true: there was a minor earthquake in Maine on December 9, 2020, but there was no bomb involved and there weren't 50,000 Chinese soldiers killed. Military and local officials debunked the claim, with a Department of Defense official telling Lead…

Did Donald Trump's campaign gain control of voting machines in a small Georgia county and run tests that showed votes were flipped from Trump to Biden? No, that's not true: Articles and social media posts making the claim say the voting machines in Ware County, Georgia, were taken by the "Trump Team" for study and that they proved a flip…

Did The Department Of Homeland Security craft an election fraud sting by printing watermarked ballots? No, that's not true: The design, printing and auditing of ballots are processes managed by state and local election officials. One of many versions of this rumor appeared when it was uploaded to Facebook in a post (archived here) published on November 5, 2020, with…

Did the Department of Homeland Security issue a private "press release" through "AP OneWire" that was then leaked through the website treeofliberty.me? No, that's not true: The AP (Associated Press worldwide news organization) does not have a product called OneWire. The DHS could not have issued a press release through an Associated Press service that does not exist. The claim…