The Viral Spiral of 2018

Summary

All this month, we’re celebrating 15 years of holding politicians accountable. We’ve been writing about false and misleading viral claims for nearly as long.

Early on, we mostly fact-checked viral messages in the form of chain emails that skeptical readers forwarded to our inbox. Now, we almost exclusively write about flawed memes and stories that are published and then shared, again and again, on social media.

This year, we found ourselves correcting inaccurate posts on important topics like gun violence, sexual assault, religion, immigration and more.

In December 2016, we were among a handful of fact-checking organizations that to debunk misinformation shared on that social media network. This year, we hired a second full-time staffer to work on the project.