General FAQs

What are your goals with hoax.ly?

We want to build tools that provide technological assistance with teaching people to be data literate consumers.

How do you want to achieve your goals?

Central for this tool and all hoax.ly tools is an index about fact checks from various sources. There are a lot of high-quality fact checking sites out there. We aggregate metadata from these sites and make it available via an open API, so that people can use it to build awesome tools and apps.

We also are going to build some tools consuming this data on our own: A browser extension, some chatbots for various platforms and a fact checking search site.

What licences are you using for your tools?

All our tools will use a free license (e.g. GPL), so you are free to use, edit and/or contribute.

Can I help?

Yes! We are always looking for people creating new importer or help to improve our tools. Just contact us (info@hoax.ly) or have a look on open issues: https://github.com/hoaxly​

Are you going to create fact checks yourself?

No, we just aggregate content from good quality sources.

How do you pick your fact check sources?

We created a guideline that a fact checking organisation needs to be committed to, to be listed in our database. This guideline is inspired by the IFCN Code of Principles. A German version is here available.

I found content in your database that is not correct or misleading.

Please open an issue on github or inform us about your concerns by mail via info@hoax.ly.

Why do you think fact checker will be open to providing you their content?

We just save metadata and link to the original source whenever possible. Our tools are aimed be another great channel for fact checkers to get more visitors and readers.

What languages will you support?

We will have a focus on European and English/German content. But our system will be flexible enough to provide content in any language. Currently the chatbot is only available in English.

I am a fact checker and want my checks to be listed in your system. How should I proceed?

If you are not verified signature to the IFCN Code of Principles you need to fill out this form. Please add an issue on github with your completed document. You can create an assessment for any organisation of course. Please help us to get as many as possible fact checks into the index.

I know this great fact checking site. Can you add it to your database?

You can create an assessment for any organisation of course. Please help us to get more high-quality fact checks into the index! You can create an issue on github and help to assess the fact checking site if the organisation is not already verified signature to the IFCN Code of Principles.

Do you really think you can make a difference with hoax.ly?

If our tools will help people becoming more media literate and being critically about information presented for example on social media to some extent, great. If not we have tried. Nothing more and nothing less.

Are you going to accuse people of sharing fake news? Do you really think they will change because of that?

One thing is important: We don’t want to build tools for „them“. We build tools for us! We all have already shared problematic content (Yes, you too!). It is embarrassing. We don’t want it to happen. So if there would be a browser extension (one tool we have in mind) that warns us when an article has already been debunked before sharing, it can be very helpful (just as an example). The challenge in designing such tools is to make responsible sharing more comfortable, but refrain from promoting laziness at the same time and to encourage people to build their own opinion by checking references and sources for example.

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