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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

#161

Post by tablespoon »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #101
corndoge wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a good thing. I want to see those changes. Preventing people from seeing the change log of a page because "conspiracy theorists might use it" is dangerous thinking. Saying that it's okay to forego transparency because it could be used to bolster people who disagree with you is backwards. That's precisely why transparency should be retained - when you're the person disagreeing, it benefits you.

Case in point: On Jan 6, NPR published an article with a 10AM headline and timestamp about the upcoming Trump rally. Later in the day, they changed the headline to be something like "Insurgents invade Capital building", but did not change the 10AM timestamp up top. One had to read the article to find the update timestamp. Newsmaxx, and thus many if its viewers looked at the headline and headline timestamp and trumpet…

> Later in the day, they changed the headline to be something like "Insurgents invade Capital building", but did not change the 10AM timestamp up top. One had to read the article to find the update timestamp.

News websites really need to stop continuously rewriting their articles. It's a PITA if you want to cite them as a source, then all the sudden what you cited isn't there.

I've had NY Times articles get completely rewritten while I read them (admittedly with some long pauses between when I started and finished), and when I went back to quote something, it wasn't there anymore.

I don't think this is nefarious or anything, it's just them trying to adapt to expectations that they'll always be up to date with the latest stuff. You have the same article about some rapidly changing story hanging around their app/website all day (and "most popular articles" facets), and I suppose most people expect those things to be up to date.

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

#162

Post by dheera »

pembrook wrote: post #144

All modern media companies today have been built by using these kinds of shady "growth hacks." Doesn't anybody see the irony of Buzzfeed calling out a fellow media company for using such tactics? Buzzfeed's entire growth strategy for years was copy-pasting content from trending reddit threads and turning them into "listicles" with clickbait headlines, then feeding them into Facebook. Was that not also plagiarism?

Exactly, I'm not actually surprised, don't most news media just copy articles from each other?

Every time I post a guest blog to a news site it appears on 10 other news sites within a day.

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

#163

Post by qkqk »

spiderice wrote: post #150
mavhc wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of evidence is your evidence?

What do you mean "your evidence"? I'm making no claims as to whether or not Snopes omits references. I'm merely pointing out that "My Grandma smokes and she's 100 years old" is not evidence that smoking doesn't kill.

> I'm making no claims as to whether or not Snopes omits references

Good, they clearly do not omit references, thanks for not challenging that!

Snopes has debunked hundreds of liberal falsehoods. Same thing as your grandma fallacy, er, example right? Those falsehoods the liberals said about Trump are actually true?

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

#164

Post by teddyh »

bifrost wrote: post #128

I initially thought Snopes was a great idea, and in the early days it seemed quite handy. Now its only really minorly credible. My personal experience was finding an article that talked about something I was directly involved in, and it was clearly wrong. I basically lost most trust in its ratings however it does seem to basically cover the issue in text. My main quibbles are with when the article covers something su…

> My personal experience was finding an article that talked about something I was directly involved in, and it was clearly wrong.

Snopes can only go by what other sources have written, since they weren’t there. If you have direct personal experience, it’s certainly likely that your view will differ from the one reported by Snopes, for two reasons: Firstly, your view is by definition limited and personal, and is likely skewed one way or the other. But secondly, all journalists who write about something have similar incentives (i.e. to write an interesting ‘story’), and will therefore likely all choose a similar narrative based on a similar starting point.

I should note that Wikipedia has the exact same problem, since Wikipedia must limit itself to secondary sources.

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

#165

Post by nostromo »

FireBeyond wrote: post #71
nradov wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Part of that was prompted by certain segments sharing Babylon Bee's posts unironically.

It was likely a targeted campaign to cut off the Babylon Bee's traffic source. The Bee had been targeting the Snopes brand for a while with headlines like, "Snopes Issues Pre-Approval Of All Statements Made During Tonight's Democratic Debate."

Facebook contracted with Snopes to fact check the news. Snopes knew that if they kept labeling obvious satire as false, The Bee would be more difficult to share on Facebook and potentially banned.

This happened, but Facebook realized the error and no longer uses Snopes for fact-checking.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2018/03/...

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

#166

Post by eagsalazar2 »

jaywalk wrote: post #27
eplanit wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Throwing out the baby with the bathwater, because the bathwater (after careful searching) was found to have some impurity, is itself a tactic for pushing an agenda, not a fair and rational response. You can't just say "added eplanit => all bad, no trust", you have to show a pattern and intent, neither of which you have even attempted to do.

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

#167

Post by eagsalazar2 »

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.

How so?

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

#168

Post by nowWut88 »

So now what?

The information is out there. Do we hold journalism accountable?

Do we change social rules?

Do we trust Snopes?

What’s the value of this information other than gossip?

Does it improve our scientific understanding of anything? Or just reiterate how useless 24/7 information cycles are?

I’m being sincere; constant scandal over… nothing burgers.

Meanwhile, the environment is burning up in part due to the systems we cobble together to distribute nonsense.

I struggle with the point of this culture. This is the equivalent of a paranoid neighbor peeking through the blinds and grunting nonsense in their house about their neighbors.

Such high standards, HN

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

#169

Post by pessimizer »

Clewza313 wrote: post #79

FWIW, the Mikkelsons (couple originally behind the site) had a messy divorce and the lawsuits between their various entities continue to this day. The plagiarism here does seem pretty clear cut, but it's likely the funders of investigation have their own axe to grind. https://www.npr.org/2017/07/26/539576135/fact-checking-websi...

Thanks for this, I had no idea why the site went downhill, and that dates it in my memory. Barbara Mikkelson was the only byline I actually remembered from Snopes, and was probably what I liked about it. I didn't know the other co-founder was an ex-usenet troll who started aggressively raising money right after she left, but it explains a lot.

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

#170

Post by luckylion »

dragonwriter wrote: post #138
nsizx wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> You can just omit the references and reasoning that go against your narrative. You can, but it will then be obvious to anyone familiar with the references or who has the power of reasoning that you have failed (innocently or not) to consider them, not that you have found something that debunks them.

But that doesn't matter, does it? Anyone familiar with the topic will already know what's up, and anyone interested enough to research the topic will be able to do so as well.

The point of declaring true/false is to have the final word for most readers. "No need to look further, Snopes said it's true". Sure, anyone can provide evidence to say you're wrong, but they're just some random blogger and nobody reads them. And on the off-chance that someone big picks them up, you apologize, adjust the verdict, and move on.

You don't need total control over the information of 100% of the population. Having a lot of control over the information diet of 70% of the population is great already.

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