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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

#31
post #16

Snopes lost credibility when they teamed up with Facebook

Snopes lost credibility when they "fact checked" the Babylon Bee, a site which is clearly labeled as satire and never claimed to be real news. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/07/31/fact-c...

[deleted]

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

#32
post #17

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.

The MOT, may it always be right. But my MOT right, or wrong.

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

#33
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.

And what about AP and Reuters?

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

#34
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…

Media orgs will have a commercial deal with AP or Reuters that lets them more or less cut and paste whatever they want.

Here the guy got lazy and started copying filler from media without any agreement

I don’t see how it puts into question any fact checking though - the guy was just taking shortcuts to build articles, by plagiarising reliable journalists

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

#35
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.

Ad revenue? A traditional news org might put up a paywall, but that presumably goes against Snopes' mandate of debunking nonsense for the masses. We here at HN tend to paste paywalled article links into archive.is. Sure, an adblocker does the job of depriving beneficiaries of ad revenue just as well, but this way there's at least a chance.

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

#36
post #22

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.

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

How is this not a better established position? I see Snopes as pure, unadulterated bias. Honestly, I see all those fact checking websites the same way.

Which is fine, though humorously this pairs nicely with another thread on HN this morning about HS critical thinking courses around journalism, quite well.

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

#37
post #20
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.

people were saying the same thing about the SPLC when they were founded

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

#38
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 toge…

Then one can update to provide a prominent note of clarification, rather than rewriting history. This deprives conspiracists of the ability to go "See, they rewrite history" while providing the full story, warts and all.

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

#39
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 toge…

Conspiracists (and many others) disregard Snopes out of hand, so I highly doubt that was part of their thinking.

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

#40
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.

"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."
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