How I Fact-Check a Viral Claim in Under Ten Minutes (Perplexity)

The claim that fooled everyone in my group chat last month came as a screenshot: impressive numbers, no source, a statistic designed to be forwarded. My routine for these now takes under ten minutes in Perplexity, and it has killed four forwarded claims out of four attempts so far.

Step one: ask Perplexity to find the original source of the claim, phrased as 'what is the primary source for [claim] and when was it published.' Screenshots launder information by stripping provenance, and most viral claims die right here, because there is no primary source to find.

Step two is the date check the screenshot hides. 'Has this claim been disputed, retracted, or corrected since publication?' Viral posts love old news: a real statistic from 2019 presented as current. Perplexity is good at surfacing retractions and follow-up reporting because those tend to be on the same beat as the original.

Step three is the numbers check. If the claim cites a percentage, ask whether the denominator and methodology are known, and what independent sources say about the same figure. The pattern I see most: a true number extracted from a study about something narrower than the screenshot implies.

Step four is my favorite: ask Perplexity to steelman the claim, then to criticize it, in two separate prompts. If the criticism side produces stronger sources, the forward button stays untouched. Ten minutes, four steps, and the group chat gets a link to the actual study instead of a screenshot with feelings attached.