Step 5Reputable sourceWell documented
Check the date, and check for edits
Old news recirculates and pages change quietly
On the timeline · around Step 5 ·
Quick facts
- Tool
- web.archive.org
What happened
Look at when the claim was originally published. A true story from years ago, shared as if it happened today, misleads without containing a single false sentence. If you suspect a page has changed since it was first shared, paste its address into the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine to see earlier captures of the same page.
Why it matters
Date confusion is one of the cheapest ways to mislead, and one of the easiest to catch.
How we know
The Wayback Machine's own help pages explain how to look up a page's capture history by URL.
Sources
- Internet Archive. Using the Wayback Machine (Internet Archive help) (2024) · Reputable sourcehelp.archive.org · The domain "help.archive.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link checked and content matched (Jul 2026)
See something wrong? . Corrections with a source get fixed fastest.
Part of a guideHow to Fact-Check a Claim You Read Online6 steps · Read like a professional fact-checker: four moves that catch most bad claims in under two minutes.View all →