Identify the source
Find the original document, post, transcript, report, dataset, or closest traceable source. A crop of text is not the end of the search.
Public claim audit · misinformation literacy
Trace the source. Separate the claim.
Facts or Fallacies tests discrete public claims against the best available record and shows what survives, what fails, and what still cannot be known.
No crowdsourcing
No popularity votes
No reader paywall
The first question
Not “does this sound true?” — where did it come from?
Virality is reach. Repetition is repetition. Neither one is provenance.
The audit path
Three moves before a finding.
A claim becomes publishable only after the source can be located, the citation chain can be inspected, and the factual components can be classified without hiding uncertainty.
Trace the chain
Ask what the source relied on. Ten creators repeating one article can still be one source. Ten articles repeating one anonymous claim can still be one source.
Decompose the claim
Separate what is supported from what is false, unsupported, unresolved, or opinion. One true detail does not validate the rest of a compound accusation.
Classification
The label never gets the last word.
Every finding explains the underlying components. “No evidence found” is not the same as “false.” “Unresolved” is not permission to imply a preferred answer.
The material proposition is affirmatively supported by the cited record.
The claim combines supported and failed components that must be shown separately.
Reliable source material affirmatively contradicts the material proposition.
The reviewed record does not support the claim, but does not justify an affirmative false finding.
The available evidence does not permit a responsible stronger conclusion.
The screenshot rule
“A screenshot can prove that a screenshot exists. It does not automatically prove the factual assertion shown inside it.”
When text is captured from a news article, court document, study, email, or social post, the audit tries to reach the underlying source, preserve the surrounding context, and show the provenance gap if the chain breaks.
Sister system
Record, Not Rumor holds the record. Facts or Fallacies studies the claim.
When a subject-specific evidentiary audit already exists on Record, Not Rumor, this site cites that canonical source record rather than rebuilding a competing version. Here, the focus is how the claim was sourced, distorted, repeated, corrected, or left unsupported.
Read-only by design
Submissions will come later. Verification comes first.
The initial public system has no evidence-upload endpoint. Future submissions will enter as untrusted leads and will never publish themselves or alter a finding automatically.