The Truth-Keeping Moment: The Rise and Fall of Platform-Supported Fact-Checking

For the last decade, social media platforms including Meta, Google, YouTube and TikTok have helped to build a truthkeeping apparatus on the foundations of institutional expertise, scientific consensus, and platform moderation policies. Through a system of third-party professional verification programs that contracted accredited fact checkers, platforms have provided access to publicly- and privately-accessible tools to trace and analyse problematic content. This self-regulated system of truthkeeping configured a moment in the history of platform content moderation to curb mis- and disinformation and reinstate information order alongside fact checkers. This chapter analyses the building blocks of an apparatus that is now in a period of dismantlement. It documents the platform truthkeeping moment through three lenses: fact-checking models; alignments and disalignments with regulatory frameworks against misinformation; and the technical support provided to address problematic content. The chapter argues this truthkeeping apparatus advanced the conditions for fact checkers to support a culture of vernacular verification.