Reddit: Making Waves in Fact-Checking

Fact checking is part and parcel of our political events — the responsible act you commit to during the hangover of the event itself. (Consider The New York Times’ detailed fact checks on the complete First Presidential Debate.)

Fact checking in real-time? A tall order that demands as many multi-tasking skills of its audience as it does of its decryptors. But to take it on, no one is better-equipped than Reddit, the forum-cum-social news site whose audience possesses three crucial qualities:

• It’s massive
• It’s college-educated
• It’s enthusiastic and super-anal about details (to wit: this complete explanation of Obamacare for five-year-olds)

As of yesterday it’s taken on fact checking itself. Reddit’s Live Fact Checker for the October 3 Presidential Debate actually made it possible to crowdsource fact checks from the most informed resources possible in real-time:

The subreddit, like its more professional counterparts, would be devoted to the often difficult work that is assessing politicians’ claims in, essentially, real time. Because “if you’re watching the debate,” another redditor put it, “you might as well get the facts, not just the spin.”

Results were mixed, which The Atlantic concedes is unsurprising, given that organisation and the momentum of the project were left entirely up to the audience. There was, of course, bickering. But for the most part it represents an incredible experiment in demystification à la carte.

Read it here, and make it your super power to ensure the verbal destruction of anyone who ever discusses the debate to your face ever again.

“Does Twitter menace the presidential election?” Such was the leading question of free French daily Direct Matin today. Some strange legal loophole (France is riddled with them) means national press can’t reveal the results until 8pm, whereas they are available mid-afternoon. As this ridiculous law doesn’t apply outside France, papers in countries like Switzerland plan to publish the results of the first round of voting April 22 at 4.30pm; and some in France have threatened to do so too… Thereby risking a fine of up to €75,000!

The thinking is that if there’s a difference between results announced at 4pm and 8pm, candidates can contest the vote and ultimately get the whole thing redone.

So why the Twitter bashing? Well, it seems obvious that plenty of people will tweet early results as soon as possible via Swiss and other sites, in a mad rush for RTs and follows. This would’ve been pointless at the last election: no one was on Twitter in France in 2007.

So now let’s blame it for whatever we can. Funnier still: Jean-Luc Morandini, star presenter on Direct 8, is threatening to reveal the results early this year. In 2007, he made the same threat, only to bottle out in the end. Cerise sur le gâteau: both Direct Matin and Direct 8 are owned by Vincent Bolloré, the media mogul on whose yacht Sarkozy had his infamous first post-election free holiday.

Could this article as such be a thinly-veiled “don’t tweet” order? Hmmm…