5 years of Check First: looking back at our journey
Today, it’s Check First’s 5th anniversary! To celebrate this big step, it is time to highlight some of our achievements of the past years.
We are delighted and proud to celebrate our fifth anniversary this month! We would like to thank you for your support and trust since our launch in 2020. Our commitment to help make the internet a better and fairer place is as strong as ever, and we can’t wait to reveal our exciting plans for the future. Now that we have passed the five-year milestone, we think it would be a good opportunity to showcase some of our work since the beginning of Check First.
A tailored toolbox for fact-checkers and researchers
Our ultimate goal has always been to find new ways to monitor and understand how problematic content finds its way online, particularly when orchestrated by nefarious actors. From creating the French-language platform ODIL in partnership with the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, to setting up tools to monitor social media platforms’ algorithms such as CrossOver, our goal has always been to make the work of fact-checkers and researchers easier. Recently, we launched RADAR, an open-source framework with a standardised tagging system for Digital Services Act (DSA) infringements. This helps researchers and regulatory bodies build a comprehensive picture of platform violations.
Community matters
None of this work would have been possible without partnerships with NGOs, institutions and journalists. We began conducting collaborative investigations in 2023, shortly after the publication of our study ‘Facebook Hustles’. In December, as part of the CrossOver project, we released ‘The Amazing Library’, alongside AI Forensics, which exposed the harms of Amazon’s algorithms. CrossOver also enabled us and the Finnish NGO Faktabaari to examine algorithm recommendations during the 2024 European and presidential elections in Finland.
Alongside algorithm recommendations on platforms, political ads in the context of elections also caught our attention. In 2024, we collaborated with AI Forensics again to investigate the increase of pro-Russian advertisements on Meta platforms. In the same year, we investigated Meta’s role in the 2024 Romanian presidential election in partnership with Reset.tech, EU DisinfoLab and independent journalists, highlighting a large-scale advertising campaign coordinated by a network of Facebook pages in favour of the far-right candidate Calin Georgescu. This network is suspected to be part of a pro-Russian interference campaign.
Together with Reset.tech and AI Forensics, we delved into this topic in depth, uncovering Operation Overload, a growing disinformation campaign targeting European and US newsrooms. Then, in early 2025, we revealed alongside with the Atlantic Council’s DFRLab how the Pravda network, a Russian website ecosystem, expanded its influence in one year, polluting large language models (LLMs) and Wikipedia sources. With the release of the Pravda dashboard, we were able to demonstrate the extent of the network in numbers.
What’s next?
Our collaborative mindset does not stop there. We ought to release new joint investigations over the next few months. Besides, we are continuing to co-construct the ObSINT (European Open Source Intelligence Organisations Observatory) project with our partners. We will share some updates on this exciting project soon.
As Check First is still growing, we cannot wait to seek our objectives and to show you what’s coming next!
Stay connected with us on Mastodon, BlueSky, LinkedIn and don’t forget to subscribe to our monthly newsletter, Indeed! Do you have a question for us? We’d love to hear from you.
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Facebook Hustles (continued): European Commission cracks down on Meta for letting fraudulent ads through
We welcome the action from the European Commission to open formal proceedings into Meta’s Facebook and Instagram over suspected breaches of the Digital Services Act (DSA). Last June, we revealed how nefarious ads leading users into a massive scam operation could be found on the platforms, despite being against their terms of service. Almost one year later, similar ads can still easily be found on Meta’s services.
Reflecting on a remarkable year: our 2023 journey
As we bid farewell to 2023, it’s time for us to take a moment and reflect on the incredible journey CheckFirst has experienced over the past year. From groundbreaking conferences to the launch of exciting projects, 2023 has been — thanks to you all — a year of growth, collaboration and achievement. Let’s take a look back.
2 years of CheckFirst
“We should work together for good and found a company!”. The exclamation came in between three people who hadn’t met in real life yet, but had spent countless hours fighting disinformation about COVID together during the first wave of the global pandemic.
10 key takeaways from EU DisinfoLab’s 2023 conference
Last week, for the third year in a row, we had the pleasure to attend the EU Disinfolab’s 2023 conference. Leaving Brussels for the beautiful city of Krakow in Poland, the event remained a must to anyone looking to stay ahead of the game in the fight against disinformation.