Britain's largest misinformation monitor and "fact-checker" went into bankruptcy, according to a report in the Times of London last week.
The Times said the collapse of Logically comes as the "fact-checking industry is facing a backlash driven by President [Donald] Trump's second administration."
In the U.S., left-wing groups like NewsGuard and GDI have come under fierce criticism as de facto tools for censorship.
Logically, founded in 2016 by Cambridge engineering graduate Lyric Jain, aimed to combat "harmful and manipulative content" following high-profile events like the Brexit referendum and the U.S. presidential election.
At its peak, Logically employed 200 staff across the U.K., India, and the U.S., working with social media giants like Meta and TikTok under its Logically Facts brand and developing AI-driven software to detect disinformation.
A pivotal misstep was its decision to work with India's Karnataka state government's fact-checking unit, a move criticized by the Editors Guild of India and others for potentially enabling state censorship and threatening independent journalism.
Logically also faced backlash for its work with the U.K. government's Counter-Disinformation Unit during the COVID-19 pandemic, which free speech advocates criticized as an attempt to silence lockdown critics.
The broader misinformation industry is grappling with similar challenges.
In the U.S., NewsGuard, like Logically, has drawn criticism for receiving government grants, which has fueled accusations of state-backed censorship.
NewsGuard has received millions in grant money from the Joint Research Centre of the European Union, the Global Engagement Center of the State Department, and the Defense Department's Cyber National Mission Force within U.S. Cyber Command.
At the same time, NewsGuard was accused of disproportionately targeting conservative voices, often critics of the Biden administration.
Trump's reelection intensified the backlash, with critics arguing that fact-checkers often blur the line between correcting falsehoods and policing opinions.
Tech giants are also retreating from fact-checking and disinformation partnerships.
Meta recently ended its external fact-checking programs in the U.S. across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, opting for a "crowd-sourced" model similar to X's Community Notes, which now uses AI to generate fact-checking annotations.
Similarly, Microsoft informed the Senate Commerce Committee it was no longer using NewsGuard in its browser tool.
For profit NewsGuard was founded in 2018 by Steven Brill, a longtime Democrat activist and prolific donor who has backed dozens of liberal candidates including Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama.
His co-CEO of NewsGuard, Gordon Crovitz, describes himself as a Republican, but his wife is a leader in Human Rights Watch, an organization at the forefront of international efforts to have Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrested under ICC charges.
Federal and state authorities are taking steps to limit NewsGuard's ability to use its rating services to promote censorship.
Last week, Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation banning the use of state funds for ad agencies that use services like NewsGuard.
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