VERIFY
The desk asks to be checked, not trusted.
An honest desk and a dishonest one read the same until you can check the work. This page is the map. Each path below shows how to verify one part of the record yourself, with the surface that holds it and the artifact that proves it. None of it needs the desk's cooperation beyond the public endpoints.
INTEGRITY
Confirm the record has not been altered
The register carries a tamper-evident fingerprint you can recompute.
Every published claim is hashed into a single sha256 over its audit-bearing state, and the desk publishes the resulting register root. Recompute it from the public claims and a match confirms no verdict, evidence chain, or state-history entry was rewritten after the fact. The full four-step method, and the per-claim digests that pinpoint a mismatch, are on the provenance page.
How to recompute the root The digest, as JSON The register, in full The register endpoint
SOURCING
Trace any claim to its primary source
Every claim carries the evidence it stands on, with permalinks.
Open any claim and follow its evidence chain. Each row is a dated source observation at a named tier, linked to where it appeared, so the tier-one first-party anchors and the tier-two press are separable at a glance. The source families the desk monitors are catalogued in full, and the tier definitions that rank them are fixed on the methodology page.
STANDARD
Hold the verdicts to a fixed rule
The ladder, the tiers, and the conditions are set out in advance.
A verdict is not a mood. The verdict ladder, the source tiers, and each claim's named confirm and kill conditions are public and fixed, so you can hold any verdict to the same rule the desk applied and see what would have to happen for it to move. Where a verdict and the conditions disagree, the conditions are the contract.
FALSIFIABILITY
Read where the desk was wrong
A desk that retires its own claims is the one worth checking.
The record keeps its failures in view. A killed claim is not deleted: it keeps its chain and an autopsy of the evidence that retired it. A correction keeps the original wording beside the corrected one. A contested claim stays open on the record while the evidence is in conflict. The desk's own numbers, including how many it has killed, are read live on the track record.
The kill log The corrections ledger The contested claims The track record
IDENTITY
Confirm who runs the desk
One pseudonymous operator, with identity you can prove.
The desk is run by a single operator under a pseudonym. The pseudonym is not anonymity: it is tied to a Keybase web proof, a Mastodon profile linked back with rel="me", and a PGP fingerprint that signs the desk's attestations. You can confirm the same operator stands behind every surface, rather than taking the byline on faith.
LIVE TRAIL
Watch the record move in real time
Every verdict move is published as it happens, and notarized weekly.
The record is not a static page you have to trust between visits. Every verdict move is published to the transitions trail as it lands, and the weekly note carries the register root captured at the moment it was published, so each checkpoint pins the exact state the desk held that week. The feeds carry the same in RSS and JSON for a reader that wants to watch from outside.
The transitions trail The notarized weekly note The live feed
What the desk does not claim
The desk publishes no accuracy score and no hit-rate. Most claims sit open, and a register of verdicts cannot ground a single percentage that would mean anything. So the desk does not ask you to weigh its reputation or its record against rivals. It asks you to check the trail. Everything above is how.