Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by betwixthewires » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

I'd ask for a fact check on that, but I don't need one because buzzfeed is a reputable, trustworthy publication.

Kidding aside, this was widely known as far back as 2016 and discussed heavily online, but called a conspiracy theory and criticized by all the reputable rags that rely on fact checking to lie to you and convince you that you can't trust your own judgment. The fact that this is being reported now probably means someone became no longer useful, every last one of these fact checkers and reputable news publications are doing things like this daily and gaslighting their readers.

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

#172

Post by technothrasher » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

mherdeg wrote: post #157

Yeah I don't trust Mikkelson's writing very much because of this Snopes article: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/swallow-spiders/ (mentioned in the article). It's not in the special section of their site marking it as satire or anything but it cites a nonexistent source ("Lisa Birgit Holst", anagram for "this is a big troll"). The weird thing is that … as far as I could tell the real origin of the "people eat eight…

I remember being freaked out as a kid in the 1970's at the "you eat spiders while you sleep" urban legend, so it predates that 1992 humor column by at least 15 years or so.

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

#173

Post by danso » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

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?

Here's an example of what you're talking about:

The original r/AskReddit thread ("What feels illegal, but isn't?"): https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/aszfh3/what_feel...

The Buzzfeed repurposing of that thread ("19 Things That FEEL Illegal Even Though They Definitely Aren't"): https://www.buzzfeed.com/stephenlaconte/if-you-have-a-guilty...

And a r/mildlyinfuriating thread about Buzzfeed's repurposing ("Buzzfeed blatantly copying their articles from AskReddit threads"): https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/axb6cw/b...

As the r/mildlyinfuriating discussion points out, the Buzzfeed article is both prefaced with the origin — i.e. "This week, a Reddit thread asked users that very question..." — and a link to that source. And each item (i.e. Reddit comment) is attributed to the Reddit user (e.g. "Walking out of the store without buying anything." —lassissal), and a link back to the user comment. Plagiarism is the act of claiming authorship for someone else's content. Buzzfeed's profit-by-curation may be distasteful, but it's not plagiarism.

In any case, I think the average person understands that Buzzfeed is an aggregator, with a mission to get clicks and to entertain. Stealing content is wrong no matter what, but it isn't a direct contradiction of Buzzfeed's purported core purpose. Snopes' purported core purpose is to "have the real facts", and that purpose is directly undermined by lying about others' work being your own.

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

#174

Post by TimPC » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 5:24 PM UTC

eagsalazar2 wrote: post #159

TimPC wrote: post #158

The biggest problem with Snopes is their unwillingness to rate something as opinion rather than fact. As a result they assign truth ratings to things that are mostly opinion pieces and those truth ratings are often accusing the opinion piece of making something up. The opinions in said pieces may or may not be well supported by facts but they are still opinions and calling one false is misleading at best and dangerou…

Can you provide a link to an article you feel is especially illustrative of this problem?

I’d rather focus on the broader claim that the right set of answers for fact checking is {True, False, Opinion} the get bogged down in the specifics of the exactly correct boundaries between these categories, which has some subjectivity and is likely to become the main topic of discussion if any example is provided.

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

#175

Post by lozaning » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 5:25 PM UTC

betwixthewires wrote: post #171

I'd ask for a fact check on that, but I don't need one because buzzfeed is a reputable, trustworthy publication. Kidding aside, this was widely known as far back as 2016 and discussed heavily online, but called a conspiracy theory and criticized by all the reputable rags that rely on fact checking to lie to you and convince you that you can't trust your own judgment. The fact that this is being reported now probably…

Buzzfeed News != Buzzfeed. One has a pulitzer and the other tells you what Hogwarts house you're in.

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

#176

Post by tsimionescu » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 5:27 PM UTC

danso wrote: post #173

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?

Here's an example of what you're talking about: The original r/AskReddit thread ("What feels illegal, but isn't?"): https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/aszfh3/what_feel... The Buzzfeed repurposing of that thread ("19 Things That FEEL Illegal Even Though They Definitely Aren't"): https://www.buzzfeed.com/stephenlaconte/if-you-have-a-guilty... And a r/mildlyinfuriating thread about Buzzfeed's repurposing ("Buzz…

> Plagiarism is the act of claiming authorship for someone else's content. Buzzfeed's profit-by-curation may be distasteful, but it's not plagiarism.

If I were to publish an article that is a word for word copy of another article, with proper attribution, would I not be accused of plagiarism?

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

#177

Post by pessimizer » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 5:27 PM UTC

> Many prominent news organizations, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and BuzzFeed News, have acknowledged plagiarism in their own pages and publicly corrected the record, as Snopes is doing now.

How does a sentence like this end up in a supposedly serious article? Bad editing? Does Buzzfeed own a piece of Snopes?

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

#178

Post by TimPC » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 5:28 PM UTC

eagsalazar2 wrote: post #159

TimPC wrote: post #158

The biggest problem with Snopes is their unwillingness to rate something as opinion rather than fact. As a result they assign truth ratings to things that are mostly opinion pieces and those truth ratings are often accusing the opinion piece of making something up. The opinions in said pieces may or may not be well supported by facts but they are still opinions and calling one false is misleading at best and dangerou…

Can you provide a link to an article you feel is especially illustrative of this problem?

I also think the right thing to do is pull out individual claims in articles and rate the claims rather than trying to rate the article as a whole. There are a few edge cases where entirely true facts are put together in misleading ways that might get assigned higher than ideal truth ratings in this construction but I think it does far better than trying to rate articles as a whole which confuses the matter entirely and introduces a lot more subjectivity.

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

#179

Post by akiselev » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 5:29 PM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #176

danso wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an example of what you're talking about: The original r/AskReddit thread ("What feels illegal, but isn't?"): https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/aszfh3/what_feel... The Buzzfeed repurposing of that thread ("19 Things That FEEL Illegal Even Though They Definitely Aren't"): https://www.buzzfeed.com/stephenlaconte/if-you-have-a-guilty... And a r/mildlyinfuriating thread about Buzzfeed's repurposing ("Buzz…

> Plagiarism is the act of claiming authorship for someone else's content. Buzzfeed's profit-by-curation may be distasteful, but it's not plagiarism. If I were to publish an article that is a word for word copy of another article, with proper attribution, would I not be accused of plagiarism?

You might be accused of a copyright violation, but not plagiarism.

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

#180

Post by lilyball » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 5:29 PM UTC

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?

Buzzfeed cites its sources for its listicles. That’s the exact opposite of plagiarism.