“Fake news” continues to spread like wildfire across the western world, and American philanthropy is at the forefront of the battle to address it. From the recent prototype fundsponsored by the Knight and Rita Allen Foundations and the Democracy Fund, to the Gates, Ford, and Knight Foundations’ collaboration with Democracy Fund in support of CUNY’s News Integrity Initiative, to Craig Newmark and others’ investment in Poynter’s fact-checking initiative, many in philanthropy are seeking to help mitigate the effects of disinformation and propaganda.

To date, the most prominent philanthropic interventions have focused on the front end, to improve the quality and reliability of journalism produced, or on the back end, via fact-checking and media literacy aimed at information consumers. Political advertising, foreign meddling, and “fake news” on Facebook have dominated recent headlines, but within philanthropy fewer funders have focused on the role that online platforms play in distributing information—perhaps because these large commercial platforms are opaque and hard to influence, or perhaps because these other avenues represent more familiar territory...

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