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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

#61

Post by ruined »

namdnay wrote: post #34
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…

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

it puts it into question because plagiarism like this is generally seen as unethical, and if you can prove someone did a significantly unethical thing, everything else they do can be put under scrutiny

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

#63

Post by gruez »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #48
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.

One possible scenario that's not evil: If they get something wrong and correct it, people that don't believe the correction can pass around links to the archive.org version before the correction. Not saying I agree with the decision or that's why they did it, just a possible reason.

Why is that a bad thing? It's clearly marked as an archive. I'm also not sure how that fixes the problem, considering that people could still pass around images, which are pretty much taken as seriously as the real site.

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

#64

Post by Veen »

DFHippie wrote: post #19

Plagiarism is wrong. It also isn't the same thing as publishing false or misleading information about the topic of the article plagiarized . In other words, the articles plagiarized don't become false or misleading because of the plagiarism.

It's misleading if it implies the plagiariser witnessed, researched, or analyzed an event, when all he did was copy someone else who did those things.

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

#65

Post by Veen »

revolvingocelot wrote: post #43
jaywalk wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is eplanit a disaster-capitalist or racist? That's usually what triggers it...

Which of those are Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Maajid Nawaz?

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

#66

Post by rglover »

dfee wrote: post #36
rglover wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because people believe what they want to believe.

I'm being downvoted because what I said is hurting people's feelings and sensibilities, but it's the truth.

The people who run it are, well...https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4042194/Facebook-fa....

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

#67

Post by mjburgess »

h_anna_h wrote: post #46
CDRdude wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide an example of an article that you feel has a clear political slant?

What about these? https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/blm-terrorist-rosenberg/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/biden-vaccine-passport/

I agree that the first should be "YES" and the second "Mixed".

The question is now whether you can find similar "right-friendly" stories that show a similar "hesitation" in the labelling. Probably you can.

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

#68

Post by h_anna_h »

gruez wrote: post #59
h_anna_h wrote: post #28

Previously about Snopes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21516283

>foodbabe.com Seriously? The same foodbabe that said "subway bread was made of yoga mats"?

I am not a fan of the site but this specific article seemed substantiated to me.

That being said I decided to remove it because it was linked in the linked post tree by beerandt.

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

#69

Post by revolvingocelot »

Veen wrote: post #65
revolvingocelot wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is eplanit a disaster-capitalist or racist? That's usually what triggers it...

Which of those are Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Maajid Nawaz?

According to the SPLC, their addition was a mistake, and the retraction seems honest and reasonable. [0]

Now, me, I like my organizations to never admit-- uh, I mean make mistakes.

[0] https://www.splcenter.org/splc-statement-video

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

#70

Post by majormajor »

h_anna_h wrote: post #46
CDRdude wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide an example of an article that you feel has a clear political slant?

What about these? https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/blm-terrorist-rosenberg/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/biden-vaccine-passport/

What do you think the errors are? The first one says "definition of 'convicted terrorist' is fuzzy, here are the specific convictions, which are different from what was claimed, which were dropped charges" which seems accurate for a "mixed" review - if the words you use are literally incorrect, how can you expect to have them reviewed as "true" even if you think it's a technicality. If they have a "mostly true" then there's a good argument that they should've used it; I don't know if they have that or not.

But the second one looks just plain correct. Here we are 5 months later and no Biden-mandated federal vaccine passports, after all.

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