Lyric Jain, who founded Logically in 2017,[5] said he was partly inspired by his grandmother's turn to misinformation before she died of pancreatic cancer.[6][7] A WhatsApp group that spread misinformation led her to replace "her cancer medication in favour of unproven, alternative treatments."[6] He also witnessed the spread of misinformation in Britain around the time of the Brexit referendum.[7]
An MIT grant helped launch the company.[7] Logically first operated solely from Britain, employing 30 British residents by 2019.[8] In early 2019, the company expanded to India, recruiting 40 employees who perform most of the company's fact-checking.[8] In its 2019 seed round, Logically raised $7 million.[8] In 2020, it raised another €2.77 million,[9] including from the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund and XTX Ventures.[10] As of 2020,[update] Logically had 100 employees.[11]
In July 2020, the International Fact-Checking Network certified the company's Logically Facts unit as a fact-checker. The certification was renewed in September 2021 and January 2023.[12]
In July 2022, Logically received $24 million in funding from the Alexa Fund, Amazon's venture capital unit.[13] At that time, Logically had 175 employees in its US, UK and Indian branches. Jain said that while the company's main customers were the American, British and Indian governments, retail brands were also turning to it for help with protecting themselves from attacks by business rivals.[14]
In June 2023, The Daily Telegraph reported that Logically was paid more than £1.2 million by the UK government to analyse disinformation terms online alongside its partnership with Facebook. Such topics included narratives pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic, including anti-lockdown and anti-COVID-19 vaccine sentiment.[15]
Operation
Logically says it uses artificial intelligence to initially filter claims, saying that they use "AI to run claims through a database of previously checked facts, and assign a score of how likely that claim is to be accurate, based on past claims and the credibility of its source".[7] After this matching process, human employees use their judgment to assess whether they believe claims to be true or false.[7][14] Jain said in 2022, "There are clear limitations of going with a technology-only approach... and so we also retain the nuance and expertise that the [human] fact checkers are able to bring to the problem. It is essential in our view to have experts be central to our decision making."[14]
In March 2021, Logically launched a service named Logically Intelligence (LI), which is aimed at helping governments and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to identify and counter online misinformation. The service collects data from thousands of websites and social media platforms, then analyses it using an algorithm to identify potentially dangerous content and organise it into narrative groups.[16] Jain said the company monitors how its clients use the platform and that any use that deviates from monitoring misinformation requires approval from the company's ethics board.[17]
From August 2020 to June 2022, Logically offered a browser extension to help users check the credibility of online articles and fact-check claims.[18][19][20]
Investigations
Logically helped The Guardian disprove claims by an English pastor that 5G technology was connected to vaccination tracking.[18] Logically is one of many companies hired by TikTok works to curtail disinformation on the social network.[21][22][23]The New Yorker noted its tracking of disinformation related to healthcare and the COVID-19 pandemic.[24]
In August 2021, researchers at Logically identified the prominent QAnon influencer GhostEzra as Robert Smart, an evangelical Christian from Florida.[25][26][27] GhostEzra was prominent for promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories[25][26] and sharing the neo-Nazi propaganda film Europa: The Last Battle in QAnon communities.[28][29]
In February 2022, the BBC cited Logically's research in tracking the rise of pro-Russian accounts linking Ukraine to Nazi ideology following the 2022 Russian invasion of the country.[33]
^ abThomas, W. F. (12 January 2022). "Disclose.tv: Conspiracy Forum Turned Disinformation Factory". Logically. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022. Retrieved 26 October 2022. Disclose.tv, a disinformation outlet based in Germany, is bringing fake news to a timeline near you... On the Discord and Telegram group message for Disclose.tv, anti-vax conspiracies, antisemitism, racism, and transphobia are easy to find. On these platforms, messages run the gamut from moderate political beliefs and chatting about aliens to outright Holocaust denial and Nazism.
^Schumacher, Elizabeth (8 February 2022). "Disclose.TV: English disinformation made in Germany". Deutsche Welle. Archived from the original on 26 October 2022. Retrieved 26 October 2022. Piper and Thomas found what they described as "hate speech and Holocaust denial" flourishing in Disclose.TV's groups on the Discord app and Russia-based messaging service Telegram.
^Thomas, W. F. (11 February 2022). "Telegram: The Social Network Where Conspiracies Meet". Logically. Archived from the original on 14 January 2024. Retrieved 14 January 2024. Similarly, in the group for Disclose.tv, a sketchy news aggregator site that began as a paranormal and conspiracy theory forum, users shared links to other channels filled with neo-Nazi propaganda.