Fact-Checking at a Crossroads: Challenges, Alternatives, and Policy Interventions

Independent fact-checking organisations play a crucial role in combating misinformation. Nevertheless, Meta and X have scaled back their collaboration with fact-checking organisations, leading to financial strain to the fact-checking industry and increasing misinformation risks. We discuss alternative approaches, such as crowdsourced and AI-driven fact-checking, highlighting their significant limitations. They lack the investigative skills, critical thinking and independence that professional fact-checkers provide. We examine the extent to which public intervention may be necessary to sustain fact-checking initiatives and address misinformation challenges.