Corrections Policy

Change: The source URL for Ohio Revised Code § 2151.421 (codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section/2151.421) has been intermittently returning 502 Bad Gateway. Replaced with the Justia mirror URL (law.justia.com/codes/ohio/title-21/chapter-2151/section-2151-421/), which hosts the same statutory text and is consistently accessible.

Reason: A source URL that returns 502 cannot serve its purpose. The Justia mirror provides the same statutory text and is a stable legal reference site.

Change: The examples field attributed the 37% manipulation rate and 14x engagement figure to "De Freitas et al., Journal of Consumer Research, 2025" (the "AI Companions Reduce Loneliness" paper). Those statistics come from a different paper by the same lead author: "Emotional Manipulation by AI Companions" (arXiv 2508.19258, 2025 working paper). Corrected the attribution and updated the source URL. Also corrected the description: the 37% figure covers all six manipulation tactic categories, not just guilt/FOMO specifically.

Reason: Attributing statistics to the wrong paper is a source-claim mismatch. The JCR paper studies loneliness reduction; the exit-flow manipulation statistics come from the arXiv working paper.

Change: The seed case excerpt for the UK patriots AI image said it was "shared 2 million times." The source says it was "viewed almost 2 million times" and reshared 16,000 times. Changed "shared" to "viewed" in both the excerpt and the hero text.

Reason: Views and shares are different metrics. The actual share count was 16,000, not 2 million. Conflating views with shares overstates the propagation.

Change: The page said Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted on "six counts." She was convicted on five of six counts, acquitted of enticing a minor to travel. Corrected to "five of six counts" with the acquittal noted.

Reason: A conviction count is a specific factual claim. Overstating the conviction count by one is the kind of precision defect this site exists to catch.

Change: The H.R.4405 entry said "Senate unanimous same day; signed by Trump the next day." The congressional record shows the House passed it Nov 18, the Senate passed it Nov 19, and Trump signed it Nov 19. Corrected to "Senate unanimous November 19; signed by Trump the same day."

Reason: The Senate did not pass it the same day as the House (Nov 18 vs Nov 19), and Trump signed it the same day the Senate passed it, not the next day.

Change: The source link for Tyler Barriss's 20-year federal sentence pointed to a January 2018 CBS article about his initial false-alarm charge, not the March 2019 sentencing article. The claim was accurate; the citation was wrong. Replaced with the correct CBS sentencing article. The Wired source title was also corrected from "Swatting Can Be Deadly. It's Also Poised to Get Worse" to the actual article title "It Started as an Online Gaming Prank. Then It Turned Deadly".

Reason: A citation that points at an article not containing the information it supports is the same defect class as a dead link. The sentence was always correct, but a reader clicking through would have found a charge article, not a sentencing article.

Change: The piece said Jake Lang served four years for an eleven-count indictment and that Donald Trump dismissed his convictions. Lang has no convictions. He spent four years in pretrial detention as the longest-held January 6 defendant still awaiting trial, and was pardoned before that trial happened. The Minneapolis passage was also re-sourced from Wikipedia onto Star Tribune and NBC News reporting, and three details in it were tightened to match what those outlets documented.

Reason: The error was inherited from Wikipedia, which describes the dismissed charges as dismissed convictions. Reporting confirms he was never tried. Saying a named living person was convicted of crimes he was only ever charged with is the kind of error this site exists to catch, so it is logged here rather than quietly amended.

Change: Verdict changed from "False" to "Institutional deception".

Reason: The previous verdict "False" was ambiguous, it was unclear whether it referred to Hillsong's denials being false or the propaganda being false. The new verdict is more precise.

Change: Verdict changed from "False" to "Institutional deception". Language softened from direct "cult" labeling to BITE model clinical framing.

Reason: Editorial alignment with clinical framing standards: use BITE model terminology instead of "cult" label. The previous verdict was ambiguous for an institutional analysis post.