Hit Piece on Snopes.com

[blutoski]

Ouch.

Link: [EXCLUSIVE: Facebook 'fact checker' who will arbitrate on 'fake news' is accused of defrauding website to pay for prostitutes - and its staff includes an escort-porn star and 'Vice Vixen domme']

Blutoskitorial:

Ugh. I worked with DM back in the early days before snopes exploded with 9/11 traffic. I was aware he divorced, and they were not getting along, business partnership problems, &c. I don't think any of this is false BUT also don't think it impacts the credibility of the site. But obviously I expect this daily fail hit piece to be the start of an onslaught which will have massive impact on the willingness for news organizations to use them as 3rd party fact checking and validation.

Bad day for skepticism.

 

[abaddon]

Ouch.

Link: [EXCLUSIVE: Facebook 'fact checker' who will arbitrate on 'fake news' is accused of defrauding website to pay for prostitutes - and its staff includes an escort-porn star and 'Vice Vixen domme']

Blutoskitorial:

Ugh. I worked with DM back in the early days before snopes exploded with 9/11 traffic. I was aware he divorced, and they were not getting along, business partnership problems, &c. I don't think any of this is false BUT also don't think it impacts the credibility of the site. But obviously I expect this daily fail hit piece to be the start of an onslaught which will have massive impact on the willingness for news organizations to use them as 3rd party fact checking and validation.

Bad day for skepticism.

They had a messy divorce. What of it? Most divorces are messy in some way. It's a non sequitur to suggest this somehow transfers to anything else.

 

[Mike!]

His new wife seems to have nothing to hide.

 

[marplots]

Snopes meets Snoops.

 

[Pup]

That explains somebody called Kim LaCapria. I was looking some mundane thing up on snopes, and there was a slightly weird article by her, with an even weirder byline. I know Snopes has their April Fools jokes, but this was just strange.

Example: http://www.snopes.com/kohls-bankrupt-closing-818-stores/
Byline:

Kim LaCapria is a New York-based content manager and longtime snopes.com message board participant. Although she was investigated and found to be "probably false" by snopes.com in early 2002, Kim later began writing for the site due to an executive order unilaterally passed by President Obama during a secret, late-night session (without the approval of Congress). Click like and share if you think this is an egregious example of legislative overreach.

Lolwut? Apparently now I know.

 

[blutoski]

This is likely the start of a campaign against the concept of skepticism and fact checking.

I predict any site involved with fact checking will be targeted, us included.

[Why is Mail Online going after the fact checkers?]

 

[madurobob]

Our friends over at Doubtful News jumped on the bandwagon as well:
http://doubtfulnews.com/2016/12/snopes-takes-major-hit-to-its-reputation/

Thats what bugs me about this story - supposed skeptics being caught up in salacious details and innuendo. I thought it particularly egregious in the discussion about the co-owner saying he can't comment because of current legal wranglings with his ex. Thats a perfectly legitimate position and one any divorce lawyer would recommend, but:

How can fact checking organizations like Snopes expect the public to place trust in them if when they themselves are called into question, their response is that they can’t respond.

(I realize thats a quote from Forbes, but its presented with no tempering comment by Doubtful News that this is a perfectly reasonable position)

I'm not saying there is no story here - I think Snopes has gotten a bit caught up in viral media hype and I've seen some questionable posts by them that were obviously click-bait. But, overall, a lot to be happy with. The story should *not* be all about a middle-aged man leaving his wife for a young, buxom, free-spirited employee... but that seems to be all folks want to talk about.

 

[fagin]

That article is way too long for the average DM reader.

 

[Aepervius]

Those who have the most to lose if people start to fact check news, are the first to cast aspersion on the fact checkers. it is a tired old but very working tactic.

Notes how they go from aspersion on the founder with some fact, and shift unto stating that this cast doubt on the site veracity without presenting any evidence for it. They know many rubs will see "founder == bad guys" and will immediately associate the site with negative idea, in spite of the neither article providing evidence that the fact checking was wrong.

It is an age old method, unfortunately it works perfectly.

I expect more of such article to come.

 

[William Parcher]

I'm astonished at the salary.

It seems so easy to debunk and define urban legends from your armchair. You do it by surfing the web and sometimes a little bit more. You only have to be smart. All of it can be done in your pajamas. Even if you can't arrive at a conclusion you can just say, "Undetermined".

David wanted his salary raised from $240,000 to $360,000 – arguing that this would still put him below the 'industry standards' and that he should be paid up to $720,000 a year.

Industry standards for a skeptic on the web? Kiss my ass you overpaid piece of overpaidness.

 

[mifune]

I'm astonished at the salary.

It seems so easy to debunk and define urban legends from your armchair. You do it by surfing the web and sometimes a little bit more. You only have to be smart. All of it can be done in your pajamas. Even if you can't arrive at a conclusion you can just say, "Undetermined".


Industry standards for a skeptic on the web? Kiss my ass you overpaid piece of overpaidness.

Except I am sure he is comparing himself to a senior exec/ceo at a similar sized (in net worth/revenue or some such financial metric) tech business. He is probably inflating the numbers but you can't fairly compare his job to some skeptic blogger.

 

[Pup]

Except I am sure he is comparing himself to a senior exec/ceo at a similar sized (in net worth/revenue or some such financial metric) tech business. He is probably inflating the numbers but you can't fairly compare his job to some skeptic blogger.

That's what I figured. If I debunk some urban legend and post it on the web, nobody cares. Even if I put Adsense on the page and get a few cents a day, I haven't done much. The Snopeses (Snopsi?) have built up a profitable web page that's as much a part of the language, almost, as eBay or Google. "Is that urban legend true?" "Did you Google it? Well then, what does Snopes say?" It's not: "What do the International Skeptics say?" When people start saying that, then this website and our fearless leader would be worth as much.

That's why the big bucks. Inflated, of course, as noted.

 

[Foolmewunz]

I'm astonished at the salary.

It seems so easy to debunk and define urban legends from your armchair. You do it by surfing the web and sometimes a little bit more. You only have to be smart. All of it can be done in your pajamas. Even if you can't arrive at a conclusion you can just say, "Undetermined".


Industry standards for a skeptic on the web? Kiss my ass you overpaid piece of overpaidness.

What a strange post. Are you paying him? I'm not real fond of the Kardashians but what they earn has nothing to do with how much I value them.

It's a business. If you can do his job, and that includes building a website with millions of hits and turning said site into a household name, well, go for it. The decision is not made based on whether someone else can fact-check. It's based on the overall value.

 

[stevea]

The idea of anyone arbitrating on "fake news" has the stench of censorship and potential for totalitarianism about it. No thanks.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

The idea of anyone arbitrating on "fake news" has the stench of censorship and potential for totalitarianism about it. No thanks.

It a yelling fire in the theater issue. You release a fake story and some idiot with a gun shows up to free the trafficked kids at a pizza restaurant.

Also, label something as fake news does not censor it, it's just another person's free speech. But then of course you will have competing political interests, some of which will no doubt, label real news they don't like as fake.

 

[Horatius]

The idea of anyone arbitrating on "fake news" has the stench of censorship and potential for totalitarianism about it. No thanks.

Except if you look at Snopes, they don't just arbitrarily label something as "fake", they actually make an effort to explain why it's considered fake, with references you can follow yourself, and determine if you agree with their conclusions. It just about the exact opposite of censorship and totalitarianism, and is, in fact, exactly the sort of standard you'd hope every news organization in the world would strive to follow.

 

[Foolmewunz]

The idea of anyone arbitrating on "fake news" has the stench of censorship and potential for totalitarianism about it. No thanks.

The idea of producing fake news has the stench of corruption and potential for totalitarianism about it. In a world when the leading advisors of the POTUS tell us that the facts don't matter - it's what people believe that matters, you want to leave Mrs. O'Neill in Waukesha at the mercy of professional fraudsters and their motives, whatever they are, for making up stories and selling them off as actual "news".

Such a strange world. We're supposed to have enough faith in the judgement of the individual that they can sift through articles and determine which ones are fake, on their own with no help, yet we can't trust those people to vet the various fact-checking sites to figure out which of THOSE they are willing to trust.

It would seem to me that there's some sort of double standard at work and that double standard has to do with the moral myopia developed this year by the right. "Hey, it's helping my side? I'll defend it." Russian government-paid hackers? Golly, what's the problem? Voters should be able to figure it out. Clickbait faux journalism? No problem. Sic caveat emptor, after all.

 

[Mader Levap]

The idea of anyone arbitrating on "fake news" has the stench of censorship and potential for totalitarianism about it.

Pure drivel with projection as bonus.

How some site fact-checking some news censors that news? How it faciliates "potential for totalitarianism"? One would think it is opposite, as ability to make informed decisions based on facts is pretty critical for any functioning democracy.

Dear Stevea, it is obvious enough that you don't like that made up BS about your political opponent isn't believed. Awww, though luck.

 

[Butter!]

The idea of anyone arbitrating on "fake news" has the stench of censorship and potential for totalitarianism about it. No thanks.

I don't see how. Either something happened as reported, or it didn't. Or it contains dubious bits.

Your argument makes no sense to me, personally. Have you ever actually read many Snopes articles? Even if the author's personal biases peek through at times (though I've only ever really thought Kim LaCapria was guilty of that on Snopes - she writes like a giddy freshman and includes too much personal flavor), THAT never has anything to do with the conclusions reached. The authors just describe all the sources they checked in order to prove, debunk, and/or explore a particular claim, and then they discuss what that information might mean.

I don't see what could be less arbitrary. "Hey, so we looked into this claim, and we found this, this, and this evidence that supports part of it, this and this evidence which pretty much disproves the other part, and we couldn't find any evidence one way or the other for this other part. So, in our opinion, this one's mostly B.S. Here are our sources we used, and here's why we think what we do. Check 'em out! See what you think."

Yeah, we're mere inches away from government storm troopers, FEMA camps, and the Ministry of Truth writing our newspapers here. Gimme' a break.

If someone isn't so fond of reading, exploring linked sources, or concentrating, then yeah, Snopes might seem "arbitrary." You click on a claim, you scroll down, you see a big red or green circle-stamp with a declaration plastered next to it - MOSTLY FALSE, etc. Well just who the hockeypuck are THEY to proclaim that? Answer: They are people with a bunch of reasoning detailed right below the offending arbitrary stamp, if one cares to scroll down and temper his/her outrage long enough to read the explanation.

Also, Snopes isn't a religion. There have been numerous times I read their reasoning for declaring some claim or another True or False, and decided I disagreed they'd dug up enough confirmed information to draw a conclusion. That's the beauty of the article-authors explaining their reasoning. You don't have to agree. And you don't have to take their word for it. No one's going to kick you out of the gang for disagreeing, questioning, or anything else. Because there is no gang.

Where's the censorship? Who's censoring whom? If anything, Snopes more widely publicizes some of these crazy claims and stories by reprinting them on their (very popular) website and talking about them. I'm no expert, but that seems awfully close to the opposite of censorship to me.

 

[Pup]

I don't see how. Either something happened as reported, or it didn't. Or it contains dubious bits.

Your argument makes no sense to me, personally. Have you ever actually read many Snopes articles? Even if the author's personal biases peek through at times (though I've only ever really thought Kim LaCapria was guilty of that on Snopes - she writes like a giddy freshman and includes too much personal flavor), THAT never has anything to do with the conclusions reached. The authors just describe all the sources they checked in order to prove, debunk, and/or explore a particular claim, and then they discuss what that information might mean.

(Snip because Snopes says the rest of the post is right there and you can just go read it. )

That's an excellent summary and exactly what I've found. There's data to explain why they conclude what they do, and that's what it all boils down to. Saves me the work of looking up the links with the best quotes from insiders, or photos, or whatever explains the situation being judged, but I don't have to come to the same conclusion they do. I will have a new set of data after I'm done reading an entry though. Sometimes they're so thorough I just want to yell "Get to the point! I want to know if that painting is a fraud, not the whole history of painting from cavemen forward." But that's not really a fault. They try to be complete and comprehensive.