Calling Factually’s articles “fact checks” is a category error. A fact checker diligently investigates a claim, reasons about it, and ascertains some form of ground truth. Fact checkers are held to a higher evidentiary standard; they are what you rely on when you want to be sure of something. They are supposed to be right when other sources are wrong. The web pages on factually.co are fact-check-flavored slurry, extruded by a statistical model which does not understand what it is doing. They are fancy Mad Libs.

The end result of this absurd process is high-ranking, authoritative-sounding web pages which sometimes tell the truth, and sometimes propagate lies. Factually is a stochastic disinformation machine which exacerbates the very problems fact-checkers are supposed to solve.

Please stop doing this.