My fact-checker got a fact wrong

AMAN checks viral claims during breaking news. Paste a post, and it splits it into separate claims, searches official sources first, then looks for counter-evidence. Fixed, written rules — not the model — decide the status.

During a live test, it checked a post about an attack on Riyadh's airport. One claim said a Saudia pilot was among those killed. AMAN said contradicted.

It was wrong. Saudia and several major outlets had confirmed it.

I traced three causes:

1. An older official statement was being weighed against newer reporting.
2. An early casualty count was treated as if it were a denial.
3. Several major outlets were missing from the source list.

All three were fixed in a new version of the rules, and the claim now comes back confirmed.

The part that mattered most: serious claims are held for a human reviewer before anything is shown. The wrong verdict never went anywhere. Building the review step felt slow at the time. It was the best decision in the project.

A missing official statement is never a denial. I wrote that rule down after this.