It’s hard to find the truth when authoritarians like Putin ‘factcheck’ their own propaganda | Maxim Alyukov

This malign adoption of one of the key journalistic tools used to fight lies shows that knowing the truth about political events does not automatically make one more convincing.

The Ukrainian StopFake, Russia’s Provereno Media and many other organisations rely on the factchecking format to debunk Russian propaganda.

Today, government-controlled factchecking websites help dictators to discredit criticism and justify repressive legislations across south-east Asia and China.

However, if an authoritarian government can effectively use the same methodology to distort reality, this demonstrates that the truth about political events does not give one a unique persuasive advantage.

In authoritarian countries like Russia and increasingly polarised western democracies, the identification of inaccurate information alone is not enough to combat disinformation and misinformation.

An enormous amount of disinformation has already been produced by Russia following the invasion of Ukraine – and more will be spread around US, UK and European elections as an unprecedented number of voters head to the polls in 2024.