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** Community Fact-Checking Gone Wrong
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Anonymous crowdsourcing might not be the best way to fact-check something. Case in point: Twitter’s “community notes” feature, which initially said a tweet by President Joe Biden was incorrect – but later removed that note.

With community notes, Twitter users can “collaboratively add context to potentially misleading Tweets,” the company explains ([link removed]) . “Contributors can leave notes on any Tweet and if enough contributors from different points of view rate that note as helpful, the note will be publicly shown on a Tweet,” it says.

So when Biden tweeted that “real wages for the average American worker is higher than it was before the pandemic,” Twitter added a note stating: “Readers added context they thought people might want to know.”

The note said Biden’s tweet “contains a factual error,” explaining that “real” wages, meaning wages adjusted for inflation, were $11.15 an hour on average on March 15, 2020, “when US COVID lockdowns began” and $11.05 in June.

(A technical note: The wage data, which comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is for pay periods that include the 12th of each month, regardless of the length of the pay period, not for specific dates.)

But as Deputy Managing Editor Rob Farley writes ([link removed]) , economists pointed out that March 2020 isn’t the correct starting point to measure wages “before the pandemic,” as Biden said. Instead, January or February 2020 wage data would be more appropriate. And by that measure, real wages are slightly higher now than they were in January or February of that year ($10.98 and $11.01, respectively).

COVID-19 had already started affecting the economy before March 15, 2020. By late February, one economist noted, many people were already not leaving their homes.

And as Rob explained, real wages spiked early in the pandemic – not because of raises, but because many low-wage workers were laid off, while higher-paid employees remained.

But we do think there is some additional context readers might want to know.

Biden's claim sidesteps what has happened to real wages since he took office. And by that measure, real wages have gone down.

For more, see our story “The Twitter Debate About Biden’s Wages Claim ([link removed]) .”
HOW WE KNOW
The biotech company Oxitec fights mosquito-borne diseases by releasing genetically modified mosquitoes that are incapable of carrying disease. Matthew DeGennaro, an associate professor of biological sciences at Florida International University, told us Oxitec's project in the Florida Keys involves Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which carry diseases including dengue, Zika and yellow fever -- but not malaria, which is carried by Anopheles mosquitoes. Read more ([link removed]) .
FEATURED FACT
Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told us that researchers prefer using the total eligible population, as opposed to registered voters, when calculating voter turnout. This would account for factors like same-day registration. The University of Florida US Elections Project, for instance, calculated Wisconsin’s turnout rate in 2020 to be 75.3% of the voting-eligible population. Read more ([link removed]) .
WORTHY OF NOTE
El Tiempo Latino ([link removed]) , a Spanish-language publication in Washington, D.C., is translating some of our articles on political and social media claims for use on its website. That, in turn, enables us to post the Spanish-language versions of our work.

We already translate our SciCheck articles on health topics -- and El Tiempo Latino has published several of those articles -- but this new partnership allows us to broaden our Spanish offerings to readers.

For instance, El Tiempo Latino posted a translation ([link removed]) of our story ([link removed]) on social media posts that fabricated a quote from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and wrongly claimed he made the statement in his high school yearbook. We were able to then post the translation ([link removed]) on our site, too.

We're excited about this new opportunity to provide more Spanish content on FactCheck.org.

REPLY ALL

Readers: Will Facebook start charging 4.95 a month to accounts starting Monday?

Is it true that Facebook is going to start charging accounts $4.99 a month?

FactCheck.org Managing Editor Lori Robertson: No. This is a long-running falsehood – and if anyone suggested you should copy and paste a message in your Facebook feed to “opt-out” of such a charge, you don’t need to do that, either. Snopes.com has been debunking this claim for years, dating back to 2009 ([link removed]) .

We’ve received several messages from readers about this in recent months. But as Snopes writes ([link removed]) – most recently on June 14 – it’s a false claim that has popped up repeatedly over the years.

“There is no evidence that Meta will begin charging users $4.99 per month to use the platform, much less by ‘Monday,’” Snopes said, referring to Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, Meta.

In its Help Center, Facebook responds ([link removed]) to the question: “Does it cost money to use Facebook?” Answer: “No, we don’t charge you to use Facebook. Instead, we charge advertisers to show ads on Meta Company Products. This helps us make Facebook available to everyone without charging people for access to it.”

However, there is an option to pay for additional services on both Facebook and Instagram under a program called “Meta Verified ([link removed]) .” The company began testing this subscription service in the U.S. in March. The announcement said the service was aimed at “creators ([link removed]) ,” those who create content on the platform to build an audience and a business.

The Meta Verified option costs $11.99 per month through the web and $14.99 if purchased through your phone. It provides a “verified badge” that requires a government-issued ID and confirms the account belongs to a real person, increased protection from others impersonating the account, and “access to a real person for common account issues,” Meta said in its announcement.


** Wrapping Up
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Here's what else we've got for you this week:
* "U.S.-Acquired Malaria Cases Spark False Claims of Links to Gates-Funded Research ([link removed]) ": The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation supports research into fighting malaria, including funding a company that releases genetically modified mosquitoes that are incapable of carrying the disease. But reports of locally acquired cases of malaria in the U.S. have sparked social media posts that baselessly suggest Gates was behind the recent outbreak.
* "Bogus Claim About Miss USA Originated on Satirical Website ([link removed]) ": The Miss USA crown was passed to the runner-up earlier this year, and the Miss Netherlands title went to that country’s first transgender winner in July. Both will compete to be Miss Universe in December. But a Facebook post spreads a bogus claim about Miss USA boycotting the upcoming competition.

Y lo que publicamos en español ([link removed]) (English versions are accessible in each story):
* "Publicaciones en redes sociales alteran foto del anuario de la escuela secundaria de Ron DeSantis ([link removed]) ": A principios de este año, fue publicada la foto del anuario de la escuela secundaria donde estudió el gobernador de Florida, Ron DeSantis. La imagen fue expuesta en Reddit por una persona que afirmaba ser un excompañero de clase del republicano. Pero publicaciones en Instagram muestran una versión alterada de la foto del anuario que incluye una cita falsa de DeSantis haciendo referencia al rapero Sir Mix-a-Lot y a Nintendo 64.

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