How we curate

rumors.fyi is curated, not crowdsourced. Nothing appears on the site automatically. Every item you see was reviewed by a human before publication, and many submissions are rejected before they ever appear. This page explains, plainly, how that workflow runs.

1. We are not a news organization

We do not employ journalists. We do not break stories. We do not independently investigate. We are a small team that watches public sources, reads the tips that come through our submission form, and decides - by hand - whether an item is worth surfacing alongside a link to where it originally appeared. If we have done our job, every row gives you something to read and a place to read more.

2. Where submissions come from

Items on the site arrive through two channels:

• Public reports. Posts on X, Blind, Reddit, Hacker News, LinkedIn; YouTube clips; substacks; tech-press stories. If a credible-looking claim is circulating publicly and a real source can be linked to, it is a candidate for the tracker.
• Visitor submissions. Anyone can submit a rumor through the form at the top of the site. Every submission lands in a queue at pending status, visible only to us. None of them appear on the public site until a human reviews and publishes them.

3. What we look for

Before publishing, we ask a short list of questions:

• Is there a source we can link to?Items marked “verified” require a source URL that we can read end-to-end. Items marked “rumored” may carry a softer source, but we still want something concrete enough that a reader can form their own view.
• Is it about a company, not an individual? We track companies - their layoffs, reorgs, leadership shuffles, comp changes. We do not name junior or non-executive employees. Items that exist only to identify specific people are rejected.
• Is it specific enough to be useful?“ Big tech is laying off” is not a rumor. “Company X cut N people in product on Y date, according to Blind” is.
• Does it look like an NDA breach or material non-public information? If yes, we decline it.
• Is it likely to be defamatory? If a claim attacks a named person or company without any public sourcing, we err on the side of declining.

4. Rumor vs. confirmed

Every item carries one status, and there are only two:

• Rumor. The default. The claim is circulating but has not yet played out in public. It may turn out to be true. It may turn out to be wrong. Treat it accordingly.
• Confirmed.The rumor has since played out in public, and a human on our side has marked it confirmed - ideally with a source pointing to the proof. “Confirmed” means it happened, not that the company issued a statement.

That is the whole model - no credibility tiers, no scores. An item is a rumor until it earns the confirmed label.

5. What we will not publish

The list is not exhaustive, but the patterns that get a submission declined fast include:

• Naming junior or non-executive employees. We will redact a name before we publish a story that requires one.
• Salary or comp data tied to a specific identified person.
• Material non-public information about publicly traded companies (e.g., unannounced earnings, pending acquisitions obtained from someone with a duty of confidentiality).
• Trade secrets, source code leaks, internal documents.
• Claims that read like a personal grievance dressed up as a rumor.
• Anything obtained in breach of an NDA or court order.
• Items with no plausible source and no way for a reader to independently evaluate them.

6. Editing, correcting, and retracting

We edit submissions for clarity and length before publishing. We are conservative about removing detail that affects meaning.

When we get something wrong, we will correct the item in place and note the change, or retract it and log the retraction on our Retractions and Corrections page. We do not silently delete published rows.

If you believe an item on the site is wrong, misleading, or should not be public - including because it is defamatory or identifies you - use the Dispute or remove link on the row, or write to legal@rumors.fyi. We read every message and respond. A responsive takedown channel is not just polite; it is part of how we operate.

7. Our limits

We are small. Our review is careful but not perfect. We do not have lawyers on retainer, we do not have a fact-checking desk, and we do not have a way to verify anonymous tips that lack a source. We try to make the limits of what we know visible, in each label and in every disclaimer. We rely on you to do the same - to click the source, to read the original, and to form your own view before passing anything along.

If you have a question about how we handled a specific item, write to legal@rumors.fyi.