Checking facts and debunking falsehoods is out of fashion under Trump 2.0.

Sushi Das is an award-winning journalist, author, and journalism lecturer at RMIT University in Melbourne where she also spent eight years working international fact checking desks aligned with Meta and Facebook, focused on debunking online misinformation.

She was chief-of-staff for RMIT ABC Fact Check, which focused on political fact checking, from 2017 to 2021, before being named as associate director of RMIT FactLab where the attention was on debunking social media.

But those days are ending with online platform operators relinquishing fact checkers following the reelection of Donald Trump as United States president.

RMIT FactLab worked in partnership with Meta, but it was closed down in January after RMIT heard Meta’s that it would axe its fact-checking operations in the US.

Das spoke with The Diplomat’s Luke Hunt in Melbourne about the use of the word “lie” and the process of “enshittification,” which was named Word of the Year in 2023 by the American Dialect Society and is used to describe the decay of digital platforms – more so as AI leaves its mark.

It’s a complicated issue that stretches far and wide, from Peter Dutton’s failed bid to win the last Australian election and autocrats in Southeast Asia seeking to control the message that suits them, to transnational repression and criminals adept at handling the latest technology.

But some positive surprises did emerge from the research, which Das says has found that politicians do keep their promises most of the time.

Das worked at The Age newspaper for 22 years, where she held a series of senior positions, including news editor, senior writer and opinion editor, and her work has been recognized with two Melbourne Press Club awards.

She is also the author of "Deranged Marriage," an east-meets-west memoir about arranged marriage. As well as lecturing in journalism at RMIT, she is currently researching fact-checking for a PhD.