FREEDOM ON THE NET 2024 The Struggle for Trust Online Indonesian fact-checkers worked to debunk false posts about the February 2024 elections. (Photo credit: Bay Ismoyo/AFP/Getty Images) conducting direct outreach and programming in their communities. Ahead of India’s elections, more than 50 fact-checking groups and news publishers launched the Shakti Collective, the largest coalition of its kind in the country’s history. The consortium worked to identify false information and deepfakes, translate fact-checks into India’s many languages, and build broader capacity for fact-checking and detection of AI-generated content. The diversity of members in the Shakti Collective allowed it to reach varied communities of voters and identify emerging trends, such as an increase in false claims in regional languages that electronic voting machines were rigged. There remains a fundamental structural imbalance between fact-checkers and the purveyors of disinformation campaigns: it takes far more time and effort to prove that a claim is false than it does to create and spread it. 18 @freedomonthenet Governments in some countries supported the implementation of these sorts of programs. The independently run European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), established in 2018 by the EU, conducted research and collaborated with fact-checking and media literacy organizations during the European Parliament election period. EDMO uncovered a Russia-linked influence network that was running fake websites in several EU languages, and also found that generative AI was used in only about 4 percent of the false and misleading narratives they detected in June. Mexico’s National Electoral Institute (INE) launched Certeza INE 2024, a multidisciplinary project to counter electoral disinformation, ahead of the country’s June elections. As part of the program, voters could ask questions about how to vote and report articles, imagery, and audio clips to “Ines,” a virtual assistant on WhatsApp. Content flagged by voters would then be fact-checked through a partnership that included Meedan, Agence France-Press, Animal Político, and Telemundo. Fact-checkers are often among the first to identify trends in false narratives, the actors responsible, and the technology they use. Their insights can inform effective policy, programmatic, and technological interventions that will advance internet freedom. However, while academic research has found fact-checking to be effective in certain contexts, it may not always lead to broader behavioral #FreedomOnTheNet