Financial Information & Funding Sources | Lead Stories

(As required by the IFCN Code of Principles and the EFCSN Code of Standards)

2025

Here is an overview of our funding sources for 2025. Our total income for the year was $5 million.

• ByteDance LLC - Compensation for work done as part of ByteDance's Third-Party Fact Checking Partnership (investigate misinformation claims, provide fact checks & rate content)
• Meta Platforms Inc. - Compensation for work done as part of the Meta's Third-Party Fact Checking Partnership (providing fact checks & rate content). Note: this ended in April 2025.
• Trendolizer™ subscriptions (see note)
• Google LLC - Compensation for running advertising on our websites & fees for non fact-checking related consultancy regarding trend monitoring involving Lead Stories' Trendolizer technology.
• Global Fact Check Fund - ENGAGE Grant for the unclouder.com project.
• EFCSN - Participation in Prebunking at Scale project.
• Yahoo Inc. - Ad revenue from syndicating our content on their network.

The bulk of our revenue originated from our work done for ByteDance's and Meta's Third-Party Fact Checking Partnership.

2024

Here is an overview of our funding sources for 2024. Our total income for the year was $4.5 million.

• Meta Platforms Inc. - Compensation for work done as part of the Meta's Third-Party Fact Checking Partnership (providing fact checks & rate content)
• ByteDance LLC - Compensation for work done as part of ByteDance's Third-Party Fact Checking Partnership (investigate misinformation claims, provide fact checks, create videos & rate content)
• Trendolizer™ subscriptions (see note)
• Google LLC - Compensation for running advertising on our websites & fees for non fact-checking related consultancy regarding trend monitoring involving Lead Stories' Trendolizer technology.

The bulk of our revenue originated from our work done for ByteDance's and Meta's Third-Party Fact Checking Partnership.

2023

Here is an overview of our funding sources for 2023. Our total income for the year was $4.6 million.

• Meta Platforms Inc. - Compensation for work done as part of the Meta's Third-Party Fact Checking Partnership (providing fact checks & rate content)
• ByteDance LLC - Compensation for work done as part of ByteDance's Third-Party Fact Checking Partnership (investigate misinformation claims, provide fact checks, create videos & rate content)
• Trendolizer™ subscriptions (see note)
• Google LLC - Compensation for running advertising on our websites & fees for non fact-checking related consultancy regarding trend monitoring involving Lead Stories' Trendolizer technology.
• MGID Inc. - Compensation for running advertising on our websites
• AdSupply Inc. - Compensation for running advertising on our websites

The bulk of our revenue originated from our work done for ByteDance's and Meta's Third-Party Fact Checking Partnership.

2022

Here is an overview of our funding sources for 2022, which were mostly the same as the year before. Our total income for the year was $5.1 million.

• Meta Platforms Inc. - Compensation for work done as part of the Meta's Third-Party Fact Checking Partnership (providing fact checks & rate content)
• ByteDance LLC - Compensation for work done as part of ByteDance's Third-Party Fact Checking Partnership (investigate misinformation claims & rate content)
• Trendolizer™ subscriptions (see note)
• Repustar Inc.
• Google LLC - Compensation for running advertising on our websites & fees for non fact-checking related consultancy regarding trend monitoring involving Lead Stories' Trendolizer technology.
• MGID Inc. - Compensation for running advertising on our websites
• AdSupply Inc. - Compensation for running advertising on our websites

The bulk of our revenue originated from our work done as part of Meta's Third-Party Fact Checking Partnership and our work for ByteDance related to TikTok. We also had a small amount of revenue by supplying summaries of our fact checks for Repustar's FactSparrow project.

2021

Here is an overview of our funding sources for 2021. Our total income for the year was $4.5 million.

• Facebook LLC /Meta Platforms Inc. (Facebook was renamed to Meta in October of this year) - Compensation for work done as part of the Meta's Third-Party Fact Checking Partnership (providing fact checks & rate content)
• ByteDance LLC - Compensation for work done as part of ByteDance's Third-Party Fact Checking Partnership (investigate misinformation claims & rate content)
• Trendolizer™ subscriptions (see note)
• Repustar Inc. - Compensation for the supply of summaries of our fact checks for Repustar's FactSparrow project.
• Google LLC - Compensation for running advertising on our websites & fees for non fact-checking related consultancy regarding trend monitoring involving Lead Stories' Trendolizer technology.
• MGID Inc. - Compensation for running advertising on our websites
• AdSupply Inc. - Compensation for running advertising on our websites

The bulk of our revenue originated from our work done as part of Facebook/Meta's Third-Party Fact Checking Partnership and our work for ByteDance related to TikTok. We also had a small amount of revenue by supplying summaries of our fact checks for Repustar's FactSparrow project.

2020

Here is an overview of our funding sources for 2020, which are mostly the same as last year except for the addition of ByteDance LLC (for fact checking related work for TikTok) and a small IFCN grant:

• Facebook LLC - Compensation for work done as part of the Facebook's Third-Party Fact Checking Partnership (providing fact checks & rate content)
• Google LLC - Compensation for running advertising on our websites & fees for non fact-checking related consultancy regarding trend monitoring involving Lead Stories' Trendolizer technology.
• ByteDance LLC - Compensation for work done as part of ByteDance's Third-Party Fact Checking Partnership (investigate misinformation claims & rate content)
• Trendolizer™ subscriptions (see note)
• MGID Inc. - Compensation for running advertising on our websites
• AdSupply Inc. -Compensation for running advertising on our websites
• A small IFCN grant for work done for the #CoronavirusFacts Alliance

The bulk of our revenue originated from our work done as part of Facebook's Third-Party Fact Checking Partnership.

2019

In the calendar year 2019 our expenses for running leadstories.com were as follows:

• Writing and technical staff: $299,849
• Hosting: $960

This was paid for with revenue from selling access to Trendolizer™ (see note) and advertising revenue from our sites mostly via Google LLC's Adsense ($17,314.28), but also MGID ($6,112.06) and AdSupply ($1,268.19). For privacy reasons we cannot reveal the list of Trendolizer users (see note) but none of them individually accounted for more than 5% of our revenue. We also received $359,000 from Facebook under the terms of the third party fact checking partnership.

2018

In the calendar year 2018 our expenses for running leadstories.com were as follows:

• Writing and technical staff: $91,920
• Hosting: $960

This was paid for with revenue from selling access to Trendolizer™ (see note) and advertising revenue from our sites. For privacy reasons we cannot reveal the list of Trendolizer users but none of them individually accounted for more than 5% of our revenue. We also received $102.000 from Facebook under the terms of the third party fact checking partnership. All revenue exceeding costs was used towards debt repayments.