Fact Checking Policy

What gets checked

Before publication, every article at Oton Technology is checked against the material it rests on. That means the specific claims, not the general impression: names, numbers, dates, versions, identifiers, quotes, and the causal statements that connect them. A sentence that says one thing caused another is a claim and is checked like any other.

How a claim is verified

The standard is simple. Every material claim traces back to something a reader could examine: a document, a recording, a dataset, a named person on the record, or direct observation. If a claim cannot be traced that way, it is either attributed openly to its source or removed.

Identifiers are checked character by character, because a wrong CVE number, build number, model number or ticker is not a small error. It sends a reader to the wrong thing entirely. Prices are checked with their currency, their date and their market. Figures reported in one currency are not silently converted.

Quotes are checked against the transcript or recording where one exists. We do not tidy a quote into better grammar, and we do not compress two separate remarks into one set of quotation marks.

Claims we treat with extra care

Some categories are wrong more often than others and get a second pass. Security severity claims are checked against the advisory rather than the coverage, since severity is frequently inflated in retelling. Performance claims are checked for test conditions. Market share and shipment figures are checked for whether they are counted or modelled, and by whom. Funding and valuation numbers are checked against the filing where one exists, because the announced figure and the filed figure are not always the same.

Claims about what a company will do in future are treated as statements of intent, not fact, and written that way.

When we cannot confirm

If a claim matters to the story and cannot be confirmed, we have three options and we use them honestly. We attribute it clearly to its source, we state plainly that we could not verify it, or we leave it out. What we do not do is publish it in a form that lets a reader assume it is established.

Where a company declines to answer a material question, the article says that the question was put and declined. A refusal is information.

After publication

Checking does not stop when an article goes live. Reader challenges are taken seriously and checked against the source material rather than defended by reflex. Where a challenge is right, the article is corrected under the Corrections Policy. Where it is wrong, we will usually explain why, because a reader who took the time to write deserves a reason.