Your weekly fact-checks
#Elections2025
This week's election: Belarusian Presidential Election
The Kyiv Independent
Election Date: 26/01/2025
The Belarusian presidential elections are set for 26 January 2025, following years of unrest and claims of election fraud, particularly after the disputed 2020 election. Incumbent president Alexander Lukashenko announced his candidacy for a seventh term, with several opposition candidates being disqualified or rejected, while others are still gathering support. In the lead-up to the elections, Belarusian authorities have cracked down on dissent, detaining over a hundred people as of November 2024.
#WorldEconomicForum
Reuters
False: Klaus Schwab did not say LA wildfires were manmade.
World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab did not "admit" that the wildfires in California were manmade, contrary to social media posts saying the disaster was purposely created to raze Los Angeles and rebuild it as a so-called Smart City or 15-minute city. A spokesperson for the World Economic Forum stated that the claim about a statement by Schwab had "no basis in fact."
#Politics
PolitiFact
False: President-elect Donald Trump posted on X that he is “purchasing TikTok.”
President-elect Donald Trump did not post on X about buying TikTok. The post is fake.On Jan. 17, the Supreme Court upheld the federal law requiring TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell the social media app or face a ban of the app in the U.S. starting Jan. 19, one day before Trump’s inauguration.Legal and government ethics experts told PolitiFact that if Trump had decided to personally buy TikTok, it likely would not have violated federal law.
Snopes
False: Following the 2025 inauguration of President Donald Trump, Facebook parent company Meta forced users to follow Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
Users were surprised to notice Trump and Vance in their feeds already were following the official presidential and vice-presidential Facebook accounts, which were transferred from the outgoing administration to the incoming administration. Meta has not released any technical details of their account transition process, but there is no evidence that the company handled the 2025 Biden-Trump transition any differently than it did the 2021 Trump-Biden one.
PolitiFact
False: Videos show that President Donald Trump admitted to rigging the 2024 election during his preinauguration day rally.
Parsing President Donald Trump’s words shows that he didn’t admit to rigging the 2024 election.He spoke about how he will be president for the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Olympics because he lost the 2020 election, which he falsely claims was stolen.
Snopes
True: As U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, the government website reproductiverights.gov went offline.
The website reproductiverights.gov is no longer online. Based on archived pages, the website was online just days before Trump's inauguration. However, we do not know why the site is down.
#Conflicts
Reuters
Mostly False: US Capitol attack rioters had weapons, including firearms.
Misleading. Multiple defendants have been criminally charged for being in possession of weapons, including firearms, during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
#Climate
PolitiFact
False: All three California wild fires seem to start at the same time.
The Palisades, Eaton and Hurst wildfires in greater Los Angeles started on the same date, but not the same time. The satellite footage in this Instagram post is from September 2024.
PolitiFact
Half True: Some of these (California) reservoirs have been dry for 15, 20 years.
The Santa Ynez Reservoir near the Palisades has been shut down for repairs since February 2024. Had the reservoir been full, it would likely have provided more water pressure hydrants in the area. But statewide, experts said there are no major reservoirs that have been dry 15 years or more.Most reservoirs are near or above historic average storage.
#Economy
Full Fact
False: President Trump has just signed an executive order removing all capital gains tax on US-based cryptocurrencies.
Social media posts have claimed President Trump has signed an executive order to remove capital gains tax on US-based cryptocurrencies, after his inauguration on 20 January. However, Trump has not made any such executive order during his first day in office.
#Nordics
Tjekdet
Falsk: Seniorer diskrimineres på arbejdsmarkedet.
Ældre bliver ikke diskrimineret på det danske arbejdsmarked. Det er den klare udmelding fra Dansk Arbejdsgiverforening som reaktion på, at beskæftigelsesminister Ane Halsboe-Jørgensen har kritiseret arbejdsgivere for aldersdiskrimination. Men Dansk Arbejdsgiverforenings tal kan ikke bruges som bevis for, at der ikke forekommer diskrimination på arbejdsmarkedet, fortæller forskere til TjekDet. Omvendt er det svært at bevise, at det forekommer.
#WTF?! What The Fact of the week
Snopes
True: The iconic Hollywood sign once read "Hollywoodland."
The Hollywood sign, originally erected in 1923, originally read "Hollywoodland" as part of a billboard for a real estate development. In 1949, the "land" was removed, and the sign fell into disrepair over the years, with letters frequently falling over. After being designated a historical-cultural monument in the 1970s, the sign was rebuilt in 1978, revealing its current form.
Sign up to test the new release of the Factiverse AI Editor
Factiverse is planning to release a new version of our AI editor in the coming months and we are looking for feedback from dedicated users.
Sign up here to access the beta and help enhance real-time fact-checking!
Check out the Factiverse Blog
Want to know more about the world of misinformation and fact-checking? If so, make sure to out the Factiverse Blog! We explore these topics to give our readers a better understanding of these topics while also giving guidelines on how organisations can protect themselves. Click here to look at our list of posts.