Accuracy is now a part of the resistance.

I wasn’t surprised yesterday when Meta announced they were doing away with fact-checkers. Z*ck, like many other technie billionaires, are one of Tr*mp’s many puppets.

The right has long viewed fact-checkers as an infringement on free speech. Their rationale: we can say whatever the heck we want! Fact-checkers are trying to censor us by constantly countering our claims! Fact-checking is a violation of the first amendment!

You have to be able to see their logic in order to poke holes in it.

What the right has done is conflated political fact-checkers— the ones who are actively fighting what was just said in a political arena—with all fact-checkers. Fact-checkers like me, like all of Factual’s checkers, who work quietly behind the scenes, who aren’t on broadcast TV, who make sure embarrassing and false information doesn’t proliferate in the public sphere, become a part of that catch-all.

Those political fact-checkers though? They’re also exercising free speech. Fact-checkers aren’t censoring others. They’re adding better sourced information and context—facts, if you will— to the discourse, and calling people out on their bullshit or cherry-picked arguments. Fact-checkers are using the first amendment in the same way the way people spreading misinformation is. To say that fact-checking is a violation of the first amendment is an argument that the right has constructed to serve their agenda. (But of course!)

All yesterday, I got texts from friends and colleagues who said that they immediately thought of me after Meta’s announcement. But I didn’t want to write about my reaction then—not yet.

But today, I woke up feeling strange.

I will explain why, but it’s important to know this context: I left Twitter after El*n scorched it to the ground, but my mind was made up about using less of Twitter after a poignant type of journey in the desert (if you know, you know) a few years back. I realized during that trip that I didn’t want to scream into the void anymore, that I didn’t want to be the main character in anyone’s media gossip download of the day anymore. (All of this realized, of course, after I had gone viral and built a strong following.)

Today I woke up with a strange main character energy. Like, am I the resistance, for leading a fact-checking organization as we descend into this new dystopia? Me? Little old me? Me, with the dog who ruins podcast recordings? Me, who would love no more than to disappear into the woods? Me, who probably wants the same stuff out of life as the next person?

Yeah. It’s me. I intentionally chose to build and run this company, and as such, this is my battle to fight. The fact of the matter is, there aren’t any other fact-checking agencies that operate like Factual, organizing vetted fact-checkers into a system to help nonfiction creators bulletproof their work for accuracy.

I’m here, and so is my team. And I know this is going to be Factual’s quiet battle through this administration, and the next and the next and the—

So if you’re looking to join—and you’ve made it this far in reading— this is your quarterly reminder that applications open. In fact, they’re always open and you can find requirements and the application link here. If you’ve got any questions, send ‘em over to work.factual@gmail.com

Let’s freakin’ go.