The Latvian startup Toneboard in co-operation with Re:Baltica, the Baltic analytical journalism center, have announced that they will be receiving financing from the Google-backed “Digital News Initiative” fund to develop their factpchecking platform, 4Facts.org.

The total size of the fund is 22 million euro, which have been made available to 107 projects in 27 countries. Altogether 988 projects applied for the funding. The “Ir” magazine reported that of the funded projects, 49 projects require up to 50,000eur to develop prototypes. 31 projects are mid-sized peojects that require up to 300,000 eur financing, while there are 27 large-scale projects that require up to 1 million euro. 

The joint Toneboard and Re:Baltica project will receive 50,000eur to develop a prototype. “Currenty we’ve thought of the concept. The technical schetch of the prototpye is done, and what it’ll look like is substantially described. The first potential “fact checkers” have been approached. We have funding for the prototype, meaning we can build something very small and demonstrate that it’s capable of functioning. We’re going to build the prototype and we’ll analyze if it can work. By prototype, in this case, we understand not only the technical solution, but also the usability criteria and volume capacity when it comes to fact-checking.” says Martins Vaivars, CEO of Toneboard (pictured).