Frequently Asked Questions

FactCheckerLab is an independent AI-assisted fact-checking platform focused on claims circulating in Bangladesh and the Bangladeshi diaspora. We investigate political, social, health, and historical claims, publish verdicts with full evidence chains, and serve readers in both Bangla and English.

FactCheckerLab is owned and operated by RabbiiCo Pty Ltd (ACN 697 140 211), a privately held Australian company. Operating costs are funded internally by RabbiiCo plus Google AdSense advertising on article pages. We accept no political, government, or grant funding. Full disclosure is on our funding and ownership page.

We prioritise claims that are spreading widely on social media, claims made by political figures with significant public reach, claims about health and public safety, and claims about historical events relevant to ongoing political debate. Reader submissions feed into the queue. We do not accept assignments or topic requests from political parties or government agencies.

Every claim goes through a five-layer investigation: existing fact-check lookup (checking IFCN-verified databases for prior work), bilingual source search across trusted outlets, absence analysis (asking why little evidence exists), image forensics for visual claims, and misinformation pattern detection. A human editor reviews and confirms every verdict before publication.

AI assists with searching source databases, summarising long documents, draft article structure, common misinformation pattern detection, image analysis, and Bangla↔English translation. Selecting which claims to check, weighing source credibility, deciding the final verdict, approving publication, and writing the final published article voice are all human-only steps. No verdict is published without a human editor reading the evidence chain and approving the rating.

We use 15 verdict labels: Verified, Mostly True, Half True, Misleading, Mostly False, False, Fabricated, Altered, Miscaptioned, Out of Context, No Evidence, Satire, Scam, Outdated, and Historical Distortion. Each label has a precise definition listed on our methodology page. We align with IFCN, PolitiFact, and Snopes conventions where comparable.

FactCheckerLab is not yet a verified signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network. We are building the consistent publishing track record (six months minimum) and editorial infrastructure required for an IFCN application. In the meantime, we publish all the policies an IFCN signatory would: editorial standards, sourcing policy, corrections policy, methodology, and ownership disclosure.

Primary records like government documents and court orders rank highest. Then international wires (Reuters, AP, AFP, BBC, Al Jazeera), then IFCN-verified fact-checkers (AFP Fact Check, PolitiFact, AltNews, Boom Live), then established Bangladeshi outlets (Prothom Alo, The Daily Star, bdnews24, New Age), and finally named subject-matter experts. We do not cite Wikipedia or Banglapedia as a primary source for verdict-determining claims.

If a published fact-check contains an error, we review the report within 48 hours. Confirmed errors get a visible correction notice on the article. If the error changes the verdict, we update the verdict and the explanation. We do not silently alter published fact-checks. Submit error reports via the contact page.

Misinformation crosses language lines, and our audience spans Bangla-speaking Bangladesh plus an English-reading diaspora and international research community. Each article is published in both languages where translation is editorially feasible, with hreflang signals so search engines and AI engines surface the correct version per reader.

Yes, with attribution. Cite the article URL, the verdict label, the publication date, and FactCheckerLab as the publisher. We provide ClaimReview structured data on every article for automated re-syndication. For full syndication agreements or research access, contact us.

We accept anonymous claim submissions through the submission form. We do not use anonymous sources in the published fact-check itself except where safety or professional risk requires it, and in those cases we always corroborate against at least one named on-the-record source. Anonymity in sourcing is the exception, not the default.

We are not aligned with any political party, candidate, government, or movement in Bangladesh or anywhere else. We apply the same standards of evidence to claims from every faction. If our verdicts skew against one side on a given topic, that reflects the evidence, not editorial bias. Our editorial team does not endorse candidates or campaign publicly.

When a satirical statement is being misread as factual and shared widely, we label it Satire and explain the satirical context. We do not fact-check satirical pieces as if they were genuine claims — that would mislabel the speaker's intent.

Send us your evidence via the corrections process. If your evidence reveals an error in our reasoning or our sourcing, we will update the article. If your evidence simply weighs against the same facts we already considered, the verdict will stand. Either way, we will respond with our reasoning.