Maldita.es

Report March 2025

Submitted
 Fundación Maldita.es is a non-profit foundation based in Spain that builds public trust and fosters a healthy information ecosystem for all by fighting disinformation and promoting transparency through journalism, education, technology, research and policy action. Our multidisciplinary approach is rooted in evidence-based journalistic and investigative techniques supported by cutting edge and award-winning technological development that drives our educational, research and policy action in collaboration with a unique, extensive and international community of citizens, partners, and stakeholders. This pioneering and holistic response to disinformation is founded on an innovative, wide-ranging, and globally-recognised set of expertise that establishes us as a leading international reference in the fight against disinformation.
Our mission is to provide all actors affected—from legislators and digital platforms to journalists, citizens & educators— with tools, capacities, and evidence-based information so that they can make informed decisions, and together we can foster a more resilient, accessible, and trustworthy media & information ecosystem.  
As part of Fundación Maldita.es’ goal of strengthening the European fact-checking community through better cooperation, the CEO of Maldita.es currently holds the presidency of European Fact-Checking Network’s governance body. The EFCSN has made an effort to assist small fact-checking organisations by encouraging the development of technical capacity (such as the creation of enhanced databases) and skill sets (such as advocacy capabilities) to strengthen their contribution to the fight against disinformation.
Moreover, cooperation is one of the best practices for fact-checking, especially in times the context procokes disinformation to thrive. In the context of the 2024 European Parliamentary elections, Maldita.es participated in the EFCSN’s Elections24Check project, the first of its kind database that gathered and categorised fact-checked information for European countries and citizens ahead of the 2024 European elections. Maldita.es played a pivotal role in conceptualising and developing this project for the EFCSN. It led the effort to harmonise data across the community, engaging with partners to establish a common language and creating user-friendly tools for fact-checkers to efficiently collect and input data. Maldita.es was one of the main contributors to the database among over 40 European fact-checking organisations participating, providing 1 out of 10 pieces of content (debunks, prebunks, fact-checks, etc.) registered in the database as of the last day of the elections. With Maldita.es playing a key coordinating role, this project was successfully negotiated and implemented, alongside other EFCSN election-related initiatives such as the Meta AI project and the Climate initiative from the ECF.
Following its participation in the EFCSN’s Elections24Check project, Fundación Maldita.es elaborated an ex-post investigation to analyse the response of five very large online platforms to debunked disinformation registered in the Elections24Check database during the EU Election 2024, whose results were shared with Maldita.es’ stakeholders and in the press. Fundación Maldita.es also participated in a number of forums sharing their insights on fighting disinformation during the EU Elections such as the conference on “Disinformation, Media and the Future of the EU” with leading communication professionals, researchers and other experts on 27 May 2024, and the webinar “Separating voice from noise: Insights from the 2024 EP Elections” organised by Access Democracy and Democracy Reporting International on 27 June 2024. Using the data from the Elections24Check database, Maldita.es published a couple of articles on disinformation against institutions and on disinformation on migrants during the European elections.
At national level, Maldita.es provided fact-checking coverage for three regional electoral dates in Spain during 2024: Galicia, País Vasco and Cataluña.
Aside from efforts related to disinformation on elections, Fundación Maldita.es quickly reacted to the information crisis that followed the floods in Valencia and other eastern regions of Spain in November 2024. Over 110 articles were published debunking hoaxes and disinformation narratives around the natural disaster which did not only circulate in Spain but across many Member States. In addition, a reflection on the role of online platforms during this specific crisis was published and shared within the Task-Force.
On a different note, Fundación Maldita.es has also aimed to foster the cooperation and dialogue among the Code’s Signatories through the organization of the event “Disinformation in the EU 2024-2029: Challenges for a New Term” in which topics such as the conversion of the Code were discussed among representatives of the Task-Force.
Apart from all this, Maldita.es continued its collaboration with the Information Sharing and Analysis Center on Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI-ISAC), a group of like-minded organisations that engage in protecting democratic societies, institutions, and the critical information infrastructures of democracy from external manipulation and harm. 

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Elections 2024
[Note: Signatories are requested to provide information relevant to their particular response to the threats and challenges they observed on their service(s). They ensure that the information below provides an accurate and complete report of their relevant actions. As operational responses to crisis/election situations can vary from service to service, an absence of information should not be considered a priori a shortfall in the way a particular service has responded. Impact metrics are accurate to the best of signatories’ abilities to measure them].
Threats observed or anticipated

In our analysis on “Platform Response to Disinformation during the EU Election 2024” we observed that the five analysed very large online platforms (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube) did not act against half of the content debunked by independent fact-checking organisations across Europe ahead of the EP Elections (over 1,300 publications). No visible action was taken on 75% of disinformation content on YouTube and 70% on X, while Facebook responded to 88% of debunked posts, Instagram to 70%, and TikTok to 40%. The 20 most viral posts or videos that received no action by the platforms hosting them accumulate over 1,5 million views each. 

Mitigations in place

Following the results of the analysis of platforms response to debunked disinformation, Maldita.es shared the results of the study with Maldita.es’ stakeholders and in the press, including during the Plenary meeting of the Permanent Task-Force of the Code of Practice on Disinformation, with the intention of bringing public attention to the lack of action of these platforms on disinformation during the electoral period. 


This analysis was a result of Maldita’s involvement in the EFCSN’s project Elections24Check, to which we contributed with over 300 articles related to disinformation on the elections. During the electoral campaign and on the date of the EP elections itself, Maldita provided full coverage which included monitoring disinformation, verification and debunking of hoaxes, analysis of trends, and creation of pre-bunking and explanatory content for our community. Maldita also organised an event in which the speakers reflected on how disinformation narratives are influencing public perception and the European electoral process.



Empowering the Fact-Checking Community
Outline approaches pertinent to this chapter, highlighting similarities/commonalities and differences with regular enforcement.
Description of intervention:

Maldita.es is one of the founders and an active actor of the European Fact-Checking Network (EFCSN). Currently holds the chairmanship of the association's governance body. We have updated our methodologies, policies and procedures to make them even more transparent and accessible, in order to be compliant with the EFCSN Code of Standards. 


Maldita.es has also been a verified signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) Code of Principles since 2018 and has undergone the assessment procedure each year since then. The assessment is accessible here and our declarations on methodology, organisational transparency, and neutrality are also public on our website.