For the people contracted by Facebook to clamp down on fake news and misinformation, doubt hangs over them every day. Is it working?
“Are we changing minds?” wondered one fact-checker, based in Latin America, speaking to the BBC.
“Is it having an impact? Is our work being read? I don’t think it is hard to keep track of this. But it’s not a priority for Facebook.
“We want to understand better what we are doing, but we aren’t able to.”
More than two years on from its inception, and on International Fact-Checking Day, multiple sources within agencies working on Facebook’s global fact-checking initiative have told the BBC they feel underutilised, uninformed and often ineffective.
One editor described how their group would stop working when it neared its payment cap – a maximum number of fact-checks in a single month for which Facebook is willing to pay.
Others told how they felt Facebook was not listening to their feedback on how to improve the tool it provides to sift through content flagged as “fake news”.
“I think we view the partnership as important,” one editor said.
“But there’s only so much that can be done without input from both sides.”
As the US prepares to hurl itself into another gruelling presidential campaign, experts feel Facebook remains ill-equipped to fend off fake news.
Despite this, Facebook said it was pleased with progress made so far – pointing to external research that suggested the amount of fake news shared on its platform was decreasing.
Facebook requires its fact-checkers to sign non-disclosure agreements that prevent them talking publicly about some aspects of their work.
In order to not identify the source of information, the BBC has chosen to make its sources anonymous and avoid using certain specific numbers that may be unique to individual contracts.
Facebook launched its fact-checking programme in December 2016, just over a month after the election of Donald Trump as US president.
It was a victory some felt was helped by misinformation spread on social media, chiefly Facebook.
At the time, founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said such a notion was “crazy” – though he later told a congressional committee that he regretted using the term.
