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Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

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Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#21

Post by jaywalk »

jjcon wrote: post #15

Can someone explain what the difference between this and pulling stuff off the AP machine is? I see almost identical news articles all the time across major news outlets. My partner used to work at a company and would write all their news, spotlights and press releases. They commonly would see paragraphs taken by major news outlets without attribution. She tells me that’s just how it was. I’m not in the industry but…

Where are you seeing that he copied from press releases? The article says "material plagiarized from news outlets such as the Guardian and the LA Times." That is very different from press releases.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#22

Post by rglover »

ramraj07 wrote: post #13
danso wrote: post #5

> Marchionni is reevaluating decisions Mikkelson made years earlier to not allow Snopes stories to be archived on the Wayback Machine and is empowered to make any changes necessary. Not the most immediate important thing, but hiding content from the Wayback Machine that is purported to be factual record is very problematic, to say the least

I’m still struggling to understand why they’d want to block that. Edit: on re-reading I realize it’s so that they don’t get caught for this plagiarism since their modus operandi was plagiarize first rewrite slowly.

Because they're a sham fact checking website and they don't want a paper trail.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#24

Post by daenz »

ramraj07 wrote: post #13
danso wrote: post #5

> Marchionni is reevaluating decisions Mikkelson made years earlier to not allow Snopes stories to be archived on the Wayback Machine and is empowered to make any changes necessary. Not the most immediate important thing, but hiding content from the Wayback Machine that is purported to be factual record is very problematic, to say the least

I’m still struggling to understand why they’d want to block that. Edit: on re-reading I realize it’s so that they don’t get caught for this plagiarism since their modus operandi was plagiarize first rewrite slowly.

The arbiters of truth get their legitimacy by never being wrong. Nobody is never wrong but you can give that illusion by removing any instances of you being wrong from history.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#25

Post by NotChina »

ramraj07 wrote: post #13
danso wrote: post #5

> Marchionni is reevaluating decisions Mikkelson made years earlier to not allow Snopes stories to be archived on the Wayback Machine and is empowered to make any changes necessary. Not the most immediate important thing, but hiding content from the Wayback Machine that is purported to be factual record is very problematic, to say the least

I’m still struggling to understand why they’d want to block that. Edit: on re-reading I realize it’s so that they don’t get caught for this plagiarism since their modus operandi was plagiarize first rewrite slowly.

So that their stated facts are not held to a consistent expectation.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#26

Post by headmelted »

jaywalk wrote: post #17
ramraj07 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m still struggling to understand why they’d want to block that. Edit: on re-reading I realize it’s so that they don’t get caught for this plagiarism since their modus operandi was plagiarize first rewrite slowly.

So they can silently change stuff without the ability for someone to go back and look at what it used to say.

Honestly I can almost imagine a way to arrive at this conclusion without it being shifty (although no idea what the case actually is here).

If you're going to debunk an article about something like a lack of vaccine safety and need to retract a couple of sentences later, but the overall conclusion is the same, then the conspiracists will be right on you with a diff of the changes from the archive trying to piece together what it all means and who paid you off.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#27

Post by jaywalk »

eplanit wrote: post #20
roody15 wrote: post #11

Snopes is truly disappointing and slanted. It’s early days it was a good reference tool… sadly in our divided times Snopes has clearly a political slant.

The Southern Poverty Law Center is a sadly similar story. They're downright extreme nowadays.

Hey everybody, SPLC just added eplanit to their extremists lists. We shouldn't listen to him.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#29

Post by DFHippie »

jjcon wrote: post #15

Can someone explain what the difference between this and pulling stuff off the AP machine is? I see almost identical news articles all the time across major news outlets. My partner used to work at a company and would write all their news, spotlights and press releases. They commonly would see paragraphs taken by major news outlets without attribution. She tells me that’s just how it was. I’m not in the industry but…

I take it these weren't press releases. They were articles published by other journalists under a byline. When you issue a press release, you have particular information you want other journalists to pick up and spread. Attribution doesn't matter to you. If you are a journalist, you want to be credited. This is your bread and butter. Whoever is plagiarizing you is stealing your work.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#30

Post by velcii »

nsizx wrote: post #10
m0llusk wrote: post #9

Snopes provides references and reasoning. It can be wrong, but the references can be checked by anyone interested in a subject. If Snopes were relying instead on because I said so then this might make sense, but it isn't. Maybe previous experience with fakery may have contributed to inspiration for a fact checking service?

You can just omit the references and reasoning that go against your narrative.

It might be time to rename IT as MIT, stands for Mis-information technology, which is what it is, as of now..
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