About us
Four developers, from the Allier to Bordeaux, who care about the local press
The local paper reports the town council, Sunday’s match, the week’s births. People believe it because they know it. Websites now pass themselves off as it: we want everyone to be able to know who they are dealing with.
Why we started
We wanted to put our skills to work for the public good, as we have already done together on other projects. Working on disinformation is a choice, and for us an honour.
From a label to a card
We started from a transparency label. But a label passes judgement: we turned it into a factual identity card, the vehicle registration of news sites.
Adding to the State’s work
VIGINUM only deals with foreign interference, Afnic only with .fr. We add continuous monitoring, a card anyone can read and documented reports.
What the figures say
Reading VIGINUM’s reports, we realised how large the problem is: more than a hundred imitations of local newspapers under .fr, filled with articles rewritten by AI. We want to fight them all year round, and let every reader know who they are dealing with.
- 100+fake local newspaper titles registered under .fr before the 2026 municipal elections, suspended by Afnic
- 355domain names impersonating media detected by VIGINUM in 2023
- 67%of French people trust their local press: that trust is the target
Sources: VIGINUM, RRN report 2023 and report on the 2026 municipal elections · Afnic · Kantar 2024
We do not claim that these sites swung an election. Once the tool is in place, spotting them early costs little, and an identity card for media remains useful outside election periods.
See you at the Grand Palais
Recto was selected for the Disinformation and Democratic Sovereignty Hackathon, at the Grand Palais in Paris, from 2 to 4 December 2026. We are coming with a working prototype: cards built from public registers, an area for local correspondents and a browser extension. And we want Recto to carry on after the final.
What we believe in
Facts, never opinions
A vehicle registration does not say whether you drive well: it says who owns the car and since when. We do the same for a news site. Judging articles remains the work of journalists and fact-checkers.
Local correspondents close to the ground
A fake Moulins newspaper is spotted in Moulins. Citizens, digital mediators and librarians review the cards of their department, with local journalists as referents, on the model of the Baltic “elves”, the volunteers who answer disinformation online.
Report, not sanction
Recto takes nothing down and rates no one. We send files to the authorities, who alone decide what follows. Every outlet can dispute its card, and a person always examines it.
The team
We are four developers, one student and three former students of Epitech, based in the Allier and in Bordeaux. We have already run several projects together, at Synaptic Hub and then at AXO-LAB. Recto is published by the studio AXO-LAB, which also sets out to run projects for the public good.
Join us
The four of us will never review every news site in France. Recto needs local correspondents in every department, people who know their newspapers. Half an hour a week is enough.
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