FAQs

Cazadores de Fake News is an open community of Venezuelan activists and volunteers that identifies, discusses, analyzes and divulges verifications on potential hoaxes, misleading information, forwarded messages spread on platforms like WhatsApp or disinformation operations generated in Venezuela, by Venezuelans or affecting Venezuelans.

Our activities are carried out under a dynamic crowdsourcing, through the contribution of consultations and verifications that the members of our community carry out through instant messaging, social networks and e-mail.

Cazadores de Fake News has virtual discussion spaces such as #ForoCazadores or the Cazadores Editorial Board and virtual spaces for dissemination, such as the website cazadoresdefakenews.info or the social networks (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) @cazamosfakenews.

cazadoresdefakenews.info is the official website of Cazadores de Fake News community.

It was launched on August 26, 2019, and was created with the resources of the founders of the community.

The website was conceptualized by the three founding members of Cazadores de Fake News and was designed and developed by Héctor Mazzarri.

The #ForoCazadores is a Telegram Supergroup, created on June 24, 2019.

In this space, many members of our community identify, analyze and deny cases of misinformation spread in Venezuela. At the time of writing this list of questions and answers, #ForoCazadores is made up of more than 950 members.

The #ForoCazadores is a space for preliminary discussion, exchange of ideas, clues and evidence among many of the community members. Although it is not the final part of the #FakeHunters verification process, it is of central importance to it.

Many of the cases published by Cazadores de Fake News are denied in their entirety within the #ForoCazadores by its members.

Sometimes, members present a new case in #ForoCazadores, but not in all cases it becomes controversial. However, it is with consultations made by members of the community in our social networks and instant messaging, to estimate its relevance, the impact it may be generating and the need to publish a statement officially.

On other occasions, it is necessary to take the evidence presented in the #ForoCazadores and submit it to the Cazadores Editorial Board (CEC), where discussions, votes and conclusions are made.

Due to the large amount of cases studied, many are only discussed in #ForoCazadores, without being published either in cazadoresdefakenews.info or in our social networks @cazamosfakenews.

The #HuntersForum is a space for free discussion about all the misinformation that our community detects. However, in order for a case to transcend our publishing channels, the CEC must consider whether it has met several of the following criteria:

• It must be viral on at least 3 social networks or instant messaging, according to reports from members of our community
• It must have high relevance for Venezuela or for Venezuelans
• The case may illustrate in a useful way for our community, some specific verification procedure

If a case does not meet at least one of the above criteria, it does not pass the initial discussion stage in the #Forum Hunters and its publication is discarded.

If any case has any of the minimum criteria and can be explained in a short refutation, it is published only in the social networks @cazamosfakenews.

If any case has any of the minimum criteria, but is complex, very relevant or deserves to show a lot of details or evidence, is published on the website cazadoresdefakenews.info and social networks @cazamosfakenews.

The #BoletínCazadores is a channel in Telegram in which we publish all the verifications of Cazadores de Fake News, in an orderly way.

It works as an “official summary” of everything discussed in #ForoCazadores, but without the consultations, conversations and discussions that take place in that space among its members.

@cazamosfakenews is the name of all the social networks of the Cazadores de Fake News community. So far it is made up of:

• Twitter: twitter.com/cazamosfakenews
• Instagram: instagram.com/cazamosfakenews
• Facebook: facebook.com/cazamosfakenews
• Telegram (#BoletínCazadores): t.me/cazamosfakenews

The Cazadores Editorial Board (CEC), is the organ of Cazadores de fake news that represents the #ForoCazadores and that takes the editorial decisions of the community, according to what is established in the section Procedimientos de cazadoresdefakenews.info.

It is made up of seven members: the three founders of Cazadores de fake news and four additional members selected in a vote held in #ForoCazadores on November 8, 2019.

All members of the CEC are administrators of #ForoCazadores.

Yes, the flow of our published research is carried out, in broad terms, as follows:

• Identification of the case (in social networks, instant messaging or #Forocazadores)
• Discussion in #ForoCazadores about the case. Evidence collection and background. Performing keyword search, reverse image or video search. Use of #OSINT tools.
• Discussion of the case in the CEC. Evidence validation. Verification of compliance and minimum publication criteria. Collection of additional evidence if necessary. Classification by vote of the CEC members.
• Dissemination of conclusions in social networks and if necessary in cazadoresdefakenews.info.

Many journalists are part of Cazadores de fake news, but not all of them are journalists.

This is one of the strengths of our community. Having the support of members with diverse occupations and from different regions of the country, allows us to verify many of the consultations we receive, with the support of community members interested in fulfilling their mission, which is to combat misinformation in Venezuela.

Educators, transporters, lawyers, engineers, social communicators, human rights activists, journalists, researchers, members of the security forces, audiovisual producers, doctors, accountants and people with many other occupations, are part of Cazadores de Fake News and many of them have been contacted on some occasion, providing regular assistance in many cases we investigate.

We do not demand any requirements regarding political militancy in order to belong to the community. In fact, the members of #ForoCazadores support very diverse political tendencies.

Our only conditions for belonging to the community are to present evidence and arguments when a discussion is generated and that these are carried out in a practical way, in an atmosphere of cordiality, respect and tolerance.

All data analysis published by Cazadores de Fake News are performed by the same community members. We have the software resources and training to learn, teach ourselves among the members of our community and seek external help if necessary.

We support and encourage the use of free software for the analysis of trends, profiles and communities of users in social networks, which may be related to disinformation networks.

With this purpose, we have organized ourselves for some months and have exchanged techniques, tutorials and software, training ourselves internally to study and understand the scope and operation of each of the minimum tools, all open source, to perform data analysis related to the dissemination of disinformation in Venezuela.

Because botnets and trolls in social networks are part of the disinformation phenomenon.

Sometimes these networks are vectors of disseminating disinformation and amplifying it in coordinated, not spontaneous, operations. In others, these operations are the very source of the disinformation and through them unwary users on social networks are deceived into thinking that the information has been disseminated in good faith or is a legitimate complaint, when in fact it is an operation with the aim of deceiving or persuading in a malicious way.

We are not afraid of the truth and our goal will always be to defend it.

Therefore, if we detect any error in our content, refutation or text generated by Cazadores de Fake News, we will correct it as soon as possible, declaring the correction by erratum and if necessary, with a formal apology.

Also, we greatly appreciate when users, media or content generators on the Internet, correct any error in the content they generate.

This is VERY important for Cazadores de Fake News because it allows us to distinguish who has made a mistake involuntarily (and who, defending the truth, is not afraid to make amends), from those who lie deliberately, with the aim of accumulating more clicks or defending an agenda different from the truth.

There are many ways you can help us:

• Identifying in social networks and instant messaging possible cases of misinformation and alerting us
• Join and participate in the #Hunters Forum
• Participating in the resolution of each case, looking for evidence that proves its veracity or, indeed, that it is a misinformation
• Training yourself with the tutorials, videos or summaries that the community shares, so that you can help us perform verifications, reverse searches, data analysis, etc. and share our work
• Sharing community refutations and confirmations on social networks
• Copying evidence that some information is false, misleading or inaccurate in the comments of those who have voluntarily or involuntarily posted it on social networks
• Inviting more people to join our community

You can contact us:

• At #ForoCazadores
• Mentioning us in social networks with @cazamosfakenews
• Send us an email to somos@cazadoresdefakenews.info