Maldita.es: Two years fighting together to prevent deception

We published almost 1,000 denials (929) and made 552 requests for information through the Transparency Law (and with them we exceeded 1,000 requests for information in these two years). A year that we close by thanking you for your collaboration in the fight against disinformation, because without you our work would be meaningless

Maldita’s community in numbers

We started in January with the crowdfunding campaign #FundaMaldita, in which more than 1,600 of you participated. At that time we were just over 8,000 and we ended the year with more than 20,000 malditas and malditos registered.

Out of all of you, 450 of you decided to go one step further and join the fight against hoaxes with your superpowers, expertise and skills that we don’t have, because we can’t know everything! With your help, we have disproved and contextualized nearly thirty disinformation stories.

To financially support our work, not only those who have collaborated with #FundaMaldita have contributed, but a total of 687 Ambassadors who defend with their financial support that Maldita.es is an independent and non-profit media.

Maldita Educa: against disinformation, education

We have always been convinced that education is a great tool in the fight against disinformation. Sharing our knowledge is one of the reasons why we are a civil society organization and not a company.

With the launch of Maldita Educa, the educational platform of Maldita.es, we wanted to target educational centers and civil society, media, public administration and companies. This year, Maldita Educa has held 90 courses, conferences and workshops in Spain and 10 internationally in countries such as Brazil, Ecuador, Germany or South Africa, where we have shared our methodology, tools and philosophy to raise the critical awareness of all actors in society.

5 electoral campaigns in a year

April, May, October, November? Practically four months of this year were dedicated to fighting disinformation during the electoral campaigns, verifying the debates of the candidates, and monitoring the recounts and battles on election nights. A teamwork with which Maldito Dato and Maldito Bulo have given us the tools so that the politicians do not deceive you and you can vote without deception.

Since we knew that during the day of reflection many hoaxes circulate, for the 28A we organized a Hoaxes Emergency Team dedicated to verify live during the day of reflection the hoaxes and lies of the campaign. On 9N we decided to take the Hoaxes Emergency Team to the streets so that you could see how we work, verifying live everything that comes to us.

Working together to fight against lies

Las elecciones de este año también han sido una oportunidad de tender puentes con otros compañeros, como hicimos con Comprobado, la unión de 16 medios españoles coordinados por Maldita.es para luchar contra la desinformación y la mentira política en las elecciones del 28A. Además, verificadores de 13 países nos unimos con FactCheck EU, una iniciativa para combatir la desinformación y las noticias falsas en las elecciones al Parlamento Europeo del 26 de mayo.

This year’s elections were also an opportunity to build bridges with other colleagues, as we did with Comprobado, the coalition of 16 Spanish media coordinated by Maldita.es to fight against disinformation and political lies in the 28A elections. In addition, verifiers from 13 countries joined forces with FactCheck EU, an initiative to combat disinformation and fake news in the European Parliament elections on May 26.

These have not been the only collaborations we have made with other media: we continue every day in Julia en la Onda (Onda Cero) catching up on hoaxes and the newspaper library, we are every Saturday in No es un día cualquiera (RNE) talking about the Maldita Semana, you can read us dismantle the falsehoods of politics in El Detector in eldiario.es and we have collaborated during the different electoral dates with Telemadrid and RTVE.

Recognition of our work

In our eagerness to share, we love that other organizations take notice of and are inspired by our work: Politifact spent three weeks studying our community model, and the Pluralism and Coexistence Foundation helped us conduct a study on hoaxes targeting religious minorities and the hate speech they feed.

Our work has also been recognized by several awards that confirm our approach to the fight against disinformation: Maldita.es was selected by Telefónica and Compromiso Empresarial magazine as one of the best initiatives in the use of transparency and good governance. Maldita Ciencia was awarded by the Antama Foundation for its dissemination work, and Maldita Migración received the Social Commitment Award at the Afrosocialistas Awards. The work of our co-founder Clara Jiménez Cruz was also recognized with her appointment as Ashoka Fellow 2019, an independent nonprofit foundation specializing in social entrepreneurship that considers Maldita.es «inspiring and empowering others to transform their communities and society».

But our greatest recognition is the thousands of people who read us every day, who share our denials and thus make the truth go further than lies. Also the malditos and malditas who are part of the Maldita.es community, who give up their superpowers to fight against disinformation and become ambassadors to protect us as an independent and non-profit media. With your support, we are two years old and we want to be three, five, ten… Always together, because that way it is much harder to be fooled.