Our notice was drawn to a fact-checking by Politifact that wrongly reported igettalk.com as a source of conspiracy theories following Alexa’s response to questions on the creation of Hurricane Helene.
During Hurricane Helene’s onslaught, we published an article on October 1, 2024, that covered some of the events that happened at that time. A clear section of the article, written under a bold subheader titled “Lithium Mining & Hurricane Helene Conspiracy,” reported on viral claims that alleged that the tragic storm was not natural and was man-made by the U.S. Government for acquiring lithium-rich lands.
One of the video sources of the conspiracy theory was embedded in the section of the article.
The report was made following the ethics of good journalism to report on important and bothersome matters from all sides, and as could be seen in the initial copy of the article, was not geared towards promoting the conspiracy theory.
Alexa Taking Sections Out Of Context And Citing igettalk.com As Source
While the claims continued to go viral on social media, notably X, as the devastation from the hurricane weighed on, people started trying to get confirmation if it was really true.
Many went to Alexa to ask if “Hurricane Helene was artificially created”, and unfortunately, Alexa gave them the wrong answer, and wrongly cited igettalk.com as the source (despite the source of the claims included in the article).
Alexa lifted a section of the article that wrote the reasons those conspiracy theorists claimed Hurricane Helene was artificially created for (grabbing lithium-rich lands), and fed them to its users as why it was man-made.
“To reduce the amount that can be paid out as compensation, Hurricane Helene was then artificially created, just like cloud seeding used to control and manipulate the weather, to flood and devastate those places and crash the value of land there.“
Below is a sample of Alexa’s response.
Our Efforts
I Get Talk became aware of the situation on October 5, 2024, when it started receiving messages it. We made our clarifications clear and immediately tried to stop Alexa from continuing to give out the wrong information to people.
We made several edits on that section of the article to force Alexa to read and update itself. To make that happen, we added “Unfounded” To The Conspiracy Theory In The subheader, to let Alexa know it should not serve reports on conspiracy theories as factual truths. However, it failed to achieve the result.
Other phrases were then added in bold, such as “unfounded conspiracy theorists allege” and “unverified school of thought” in that section of the article to make Alexa better understand the context. But that too did not work.
Next, we added “according to these unfounded conspiracy theorists on Twitter formerly known as X” to that part Alexa was picking and reading. The purpose, again, was to force it to read it aloud when it would respond to its users. However, that too failed.
Lastly, we included the phrase, “PLEASE DO NOT TAKE THIS AS A FACT ALEXA” at the end of the paragraph, and it seemed to work. We are not sure if the wrong answers from Alexa stopped coming as a result of the phrase or if it was a result of their own effort that might have coincided with ours.
Below is a screenshot from Web Archive on October 5, 2024.
Politifact’s Wrong Assessment Of I Get Talk
On October 8, 2024, Politifact published an article as part of its fact-checking on the matter. While maliciously downgrading I Get Talk as a mere news and entertainment blog, it referenced us to the conspiracy theory without stating that we were only reporting the matter and had, in fact, clearly stated it as a conspiracy theory first.
Politifact did not state that Alexa took the paragraph out of context, nor did it note that igettalk.com was not the source of the fake claims as cited by Alexa.
It did not check archived versions of the article to see the original post and the changes made by igettalk to stop the wrong reporting from Alexa.
In fact, the fact-checking source wrongly reported that the phrase “PLEASE DO NOT TAKE THIS AS A FACT ALEXA“, was put up by I Get Talk as a source of disclaimer from a wrong reporting.
The wrong assessment from Politifact on I Get Talk as the source of a false conspiracy theory wrongly resulted in major search engines like Google and chatbots like its Gemini to classify it as an untrustworthy news source.
I Get Talk contacted Politifact through its Truth-O-Meter and appeals on the 16th of May, 2025, to look into the matter, but have not received a response yet.
I Get Talk stands on the path of credible, fair, and transparent journalism, reporting all sides, airing people’s voices, and clearly stating the context where they belong.
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