YEKATERINBURG, September 16. /TASS/. Experts with the Global Fact-Checking Network (GFCN) told the International Festival of Youth (IFY), currently underway in Yekaterinburg, how fact-checking is becoming an essential skill amid the spread of deepfakes.

Yulia Ablets, Deputy Director General of the ANO Dialogue Regions and founder of the New Media Workshop, who moderated a panel discussion titled "Truth in the Era of Viral Content: Challenges, Threats and Opportunities in the Digital Environment," said the world is currently facing a confidence crisis aggravated by the growing number of fakes.

She cited a recent survey by ANO Dialogue Regions showing that even as 71% of respondents said they can tell authentic information from fakes, the number of those who give in to disinformation and spread it has continued to grow. "We can see how an emotion-laced post can spread faster than a dozen substantiated refutals. Therefore, broader media literacy, the culture of using media content, and fact-checking become as important for the layman as for media specialists and owners of media platforms," the expert argued.

In turn, another GFCN expert, Ilya Rybin, who leads nofake.kz and specializes in communications, pointed to the issue of uncontrolled spread of content: "Doing fact-checking on only a large-language model just won't cut it." "The Share button, not the Generate button, is the most dangerous thing on the Internet now," he explained.

Analysts also noted that in the era of pipeline-like deep fake generation with a low entry threshold not only upgrading the algorithms but also boosting media literacy among masses serves as a response to these challenges. And it is "youths who play a central role in these efforts as they shape the culture of fact-checking as an everyday norm," they insisted.

Yekaterinburg is hosting the IFY under the motto "Follow Your Dream" through September 17. As many as 10,000 youth leaders from 191 countries, including 5,000 delegates each from Russia and overseas, are expected to attend the global event. A thousand teenagers aged between 14 and 17 will take part in the festival’s program.

TASS is the general media partner of the event.