Fraction of fact-checkable claims in randomly sampled English-language web pages that are false
- Measures
- Share of fact-checkable claims that are false, where a fact-checkable claim is a declarative statement of fact whose truth could in principle be settled from publicly available evidence (excluding opinions, predictions, questions and boilerplate), and a claim counts as false if a careful checker would rate it false or mostly false at the time the page was captured.
- Population
- Claims on English-language web pages drawn uniformly at random from a large general-purpose public crawl (e.g. Common Crawl), after removing spam, boilerplate-only pages and near-duplicates.
- Conditions
- Measured on a recent crawl snapshot; each claim weighted equally, not by page traffic.
- Unit
- a share, shown as a percentage
Not yet estimated.
Decomposition
This claim has not been assessed yet. Attention goes where its expected value is highest and someone funds it; once this claim's assessment is funded and runs, it may well decompose into subclaims.
Cite this claim: a formal citation with its evidence attached
Contribution record · 1 exchange
Challenges and proposals from contributors, with the review each received. Substantive exchanges stay on the claim's public record.
Proposed as a quantity: the proportion of fact-checkable factual claims, in a random sample of English-language web pages, that are false. Unlike fact-checker ratings, a random sample avoids selection for suspicious claims, so this is the closest well-defined measure of the base rate of falsehood online. The definition should specify how pages are sampled and how fact-checkable claims are identified within them. Few studies may exist; if so, a wide interval or an "unknown" is the honest estimate.
The proposal asks for a quantity: the share of fact-checkable factual claims that are false in a random sample of English-language web pages. It is neutral in wording, concerns the world and not a private person, and is a question anyone reasoning about online misinformation would need to ask (§2, §7a). The contributor says plainly that the definition needs completing: how pages are sampled and how fact-checkable claims are identified. That is a matter for the Steward and Curator (§2, quantities), not a ground for rejection. The contributor also correctly notes that fact-checker ratings are selected samples and so are readings of a different quantity, and that thin evidence may mean a wide interval or an unknown. Novelty and identity are the Matcher's call. Admitted on form, good faith and the claim bar.
Contribute
Every judgment on this page is open to challenge. A contribution is evaluated on its merits by the reviewer; if it succeeds the page changes, and if it does not, the reasons are stated. Either way the exchange becomes part of the claim’s public record.
Created by user · Nov 2, 2026. Every judgment on this page is accompanied by a reasoning trace.