About Antifake.am

Antifake.am

Overview

Antifake.am is a fact-checking and media-monitoring website based in Yerevan that publishes in Armenian and checks claims by officials and media. It focuses on disinformation, fake news and media criticism. In the Wikipedia list of newspapers in Armenia it is listed among online outlets affiliated with the Republican Party of Armenia. Its history is more complicated than the fact-checking label suggests: international researchers have criticised it as a partisan project that presented itself as impartial fact-checking, while Armenian journalistic organisations have defended it against state pressure as an opposition platform. Both parts of that record are set out in this profile.

The site billed itself as independent and impartial mass media. Its best-known devices were a Nikol-O-Meter and Fake News Statistics features in its sidebar, designed to track whether Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan kept his promises. Researchers noted that those measures were heavily skewed and had not classified a single one of Pashinyan's statements as true, an early sign of the outlet's actual editorial direction.

Origins and the Post-2018 Context

Antifake.am emerged after the 2018 Velvet Revolution brought Nikol Pashinyan to power. The Atlantic Council's DFRLab, in a two-part investigation published in May 2019, described a network of online actors campaigning against the new government under the hashtag SutNikol, meaning Fake Nikol, and identified Antifake.am and the Adekvad movement as presenting themselves as a united front in that campaign. The DFRLab analysis argued that such groups used a specific technique: presenting themselves as impartial fact-checkers to build trust, then injecting biased narratives into political discourse.

The same research documented coordination between the pages, including joint public appearances by known operators and parallel content, such as material discouraging Armenians from obtaining the Gardasil HPV vaccine, which Antifake.am published as an article questioning what the Ministry of Health was hiding. Facebook's moves in March 2019 to curb vaccine misinformation formed the backdrop to that episode. These findings are reported here as the DFRLab's analysis; the outlet itself rejected such characterisations, and a critical response in The Armenite accused the DFRLab of botching its account of local media.

People and Editorial Leadership

Armenian journalistic organisations' statements list Astghik Matevosyan as chief editor of AntiFake.am. The outlet's later public identity became closely associated with the Imnemnimi podcast, co-authored and hosted by Vazgen Saghatelyan and Narek Samsonyan. Samsonyan had earlier identified himself as chairman of the Civil Consciousness NGO in material examined by researchers, and both men were known operators in the network of anti-government online projects that researchers mapped after 2018.

Knowing these names matters because Antifake.am's own pages historically offered little information about its operators or mission, a lack of transparency that researchers criticised. The contrast between an anonymous fact-checking brand and identifiable political activists behind it is central to how media-literacy specialists use this outlet as a teaching example.

The Fact-Checking Debate

Antifake.am is a case study in the contested meaning of fact-checking in a polarised society. Genuine Armenian fact-checkers, such as the Fact Investigation Platform and CivilNet Check, publish methodology, name their staff and join transparency initiatives. Antifake.am, by contrast, was accused by the DFRLab of deceptive fact-checking: using the form of verification, verdicts, meters and statistics, in the service of one political camp. Its promise-tracking of Pashinyan classified none of his statements as true, which researchers treated as evidence of predetermined conclusions.

The outlet's defenders saw it differently: as an opposition voice scrutinising a powerful government that itself commanded state media and loyal outlets. Both readings agree on the underlying facts of its content and alignment; they differ on whether partisan scrutiny presented as fact-checking is legitimate political speech or a manipulation technique. This profile presents the documented record and both interpretations without adopting either.

November 2025 Arrests and Press-Freedom Response

On 13 November 2025, National Security Service officers arrested Vazgen Saghatelyan and Narek Samsonyan, the co-hosts of Antifake.am's Imnemnimi podcast, and a court ordered them held in custody for two months. According to the Yerevan Press Club's statement of 14 November 2025, the case stemmed from profanities and insults directed at Prime Minister Pashinyan, National Assembly Speaker Alen Simonyan and other officials in two podcast episodes released after an interview with former President Serzh Sargsyan. The prosecution, launched following a report by Simonyan, was brought under articles of the Criminal Code on hooliganism committed by a group using information technologies.

The same statement records that the National Security Service searched the Antifake.am office and seized its equipment, that journalist Davit Fidanyan was arrested on charges of obstructing justice, and that employee Ishkhan Khosrovyan was arrested and released hours later. The undersigned journalistic organisations condemned the use of disproportionate force and brutal pressure, including the involvement of the security service, the arrest of staff not directly related to the issue and the seizure of all editorial equipment, which disrupted the opposition platform's work. Whatever view is taken of the outlet's content, the episode became a significant Armenian press-freedom case.

Affiliation and Political Position

The national press list classifies Antifake.am among outlets affiliated with the Republican Party of Armenia, the party of former presidents Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan. Its content record is consistent with an anti-Pashinyan, former-authorities-aligned position: relentless scrutiny of the prime minister's promises, amplification of opposition narratives and, in 2025, a podcast platform for an interview with Serzh Sargsyan. No formal ownership record was found in the sources used here, so affiliation should be read as editorial and political closeness rather than proven corporate ownership.

Its editor was also a signatory, alongside editors of other opposition outlets, of a Union of Journalists of Armenia statement on the fight against disinformation, which accused the authorities of censure, unprofessionalism and manipulation. That episode shows the outlet operating as part of an organised opposition media bloc, whatever label is applied to its fact-checking.

Content and Methods

The site's content combined claim checks, media criticism and political commentary in Armenian, aimed at Armenian-speaking domestic audiences following politics online and on Facebook. Researchers who analysed its social output found that Antifake.am primarily shared photos and links, while its partner project Adekvad concentrated on video, a division of labour between the two brands. Its website articles questioned official claims on subjects from health policy to government promises, always, in the period studied, to the government's detriment.

For readers, the practical guidance is the same as the researchers': check who is checking. A verdict from Antifake.am is evidence of what the opposition camp disputes, and its underlying citations can be followed, but its classifications were not produced by a transparent, even-handed methodology and should not be treated as neutral arbitration.

Place in Armenian Media

Yerevan is the centre of Armenian journalism, and almost all national online outlets are based in the capital. Since the late 2000s, as internet access spread, web-only news sites have overtaken print newspapers in reach, publishing continuously through the day rather than to a daily print deadline. Readers in Armenia and in the large Armenian diaspora follow these sites for fast political news, and international monitors including Freedom House and the Yerevan Press Club regularly include the leading portals in their studies of Armenian media pluralism, ownership and press freedom. Within that system, Antifake.am illustrates two truths at once. It shows how easily the respected forms of fact-checking can be borrowed by partisan projects, which is why Armenia's genuine fact-checkers invest in transparency certification. And its treatment by the security services in 2025 shows how opposition outlets, however partisan, can become press-freedom cases when the state responds with arrests and equipment seizures rather than rebuttal.

Limits of Available Information and Outlook

Public information about Antifake.am's legal structure and financing is limited, and its own historical lack of disclosure is part of its record. This profile relies on the DFRLab investigations, Yerevan Press Club and journalists' union statements, and the national press list, which together document its content, people and political position far better than the outlet documented itself.

After the November 2025 arrests and the seizure of its equipment, the outlet's operating future was uncertain at the time documented by those statements. Its significance is nevertheless secure in Armenian media history: few outlets demonstrate so clearly the collision, after 2018, between new fact-checking forms, old political loyalties and the state's power over critical media.