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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

#381

Post by parineum »

jeffbee wrote: post #313
tablespoon wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine Doctors trying to debunk the official fact-checker statements and being labeled as misinformation simply due to the fact that they disagree with the fact-checker! Though it's worth noting that MDs (and all other kinds of doctors) can be incompetent and/or batshit insane. For instance, I had the pleasure of viewing a video where a psychiatrist leaned on his MD credential to "debunk" COVID and the efficacy an…

The whole COVID "skeptic" circus is full of quacks with irrelevant credentials, like urologists and orthodontists. As a prominent example, I give you Rand Paul. If you take advice on infectious diseases from an ophthalmologist, you're going to have a bad time.

On the other hand, anyone who's taken a college anatomy class is more "expert" than a large majority of others, including some loud voices. Unfortunately, expert doesn't always mean well informed. That's why we look for the collective expert opinion rather than an expert's opinion.

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

#383

Post by dang »

MikeUt wrote: post #351
ALittleLight wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Snopes has pretty clear political biases that detract from their ability to fact check. An example is their article on "Sweden is the rape Capitol of Europe"[1] which they rate false. Their article talks about Trump and immigration and Farrage and doesn't really get to what they are supposed to be debunking, which is the rape Capitol thing. Sweden does have the highest rate of rape per capita in Europe. This…

More notable than how they use tangential evidence to debunk a claim (e.g. citing a drop in rape as evidence it's not the rape capital, and comparing the rate of rape in absolute terms, not per-capita), is which part of a claim they choose to debunk. According to the Swedish state TV, 58% of all convicted rapists were foreign-born [1], despite being only 19% of the population [2]. They could cite that as supporting "…

You're obviously using HN primarily for ideological battle, and that's against the site guidelines (regardless of whatever it is that you're battling for), so I've banned this account.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#384

Post by parineum »

TeeMassive wrote: post #259
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…

Good on you for remembering their credibility, but most people suffer from Gell-Mann Amnesia: > “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it…

I wasn't aware this effect had a name but it's what got me jaded on reading the news and how I always explain my feelings about it to people. Thanks for the link.

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

#385

Post by 6AA4FD »

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?

Why would you? The reviewers would just bounce your paper, perhaps as the other commenter alluded to, in part due to fair use concerns.

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

#386

Post by MikeUt »

dang wrote: post #383
MikeUt wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More notable than how they use tangential evidence to debunk a claim (e.g. citing a drop in rape as evidence it's not the rape capital, and comparing the rate of rape in absolute terms, not per-capita), is which part of a claim they choose to debunk. According to the Swedish state TV, 58% of all convicted rapists were foreign-born [1], despite being only 19% of the population [2]. They could cite that as supporting "…

You're obviously using HN primarily for ideological battle, and that's against the site guidelines (regardless of whatever it is that you're battling for), so I've banned this account. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

No hard feelings. Keep up the good work.

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

#387

Post by parineum »

pessimizer wrote: post #149
encoderer wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth remembering that the term “fake news” did not exist in the mainstream until 6 years ago. It used to be called “liberal bias in the media” but fake news is a political slogan like Death Tax or Cancel Culture and like political slogans of previous generations I am optimistic we will not be stuck here forever.

"Fake news" was a phrase originating from the Clinton camp. Trump's political history has many examples of him taking Clinton's ideas that were getting a little traction and turning them on her. They were very close at one point. The best defense against it is good journalism, honesty, clarity, and disclosure.

While on the topic, I remember reading articles during the 2016 election where journalists were doing legit work to track down the sources of those original "fake news" articles and the trail led to basically a business model that could be successful in poorer eastern european countries that just replied on clicks and they posted anything that'd garner a click. I even read an interview with one of them.

Then, when the narrative shifted to it being Russian intelligence, I never heard anything like my previous story again.

I'm really unclear what actually happened. Was that a progression of events, was it always Russian, was it never Russian?

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

#388

Post by LukeShu »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #250
colpabar wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had you checked the article after this encounter? I guess they eventually realized you were right and made the change, but I wonder when that happened. Other comments here discuss how it's odd that they don't allow their site to be archived, and it's interesting to see a real example that illustrates why they may not want that.

Silent edits seem like a huge red flag that your platform isn't trustworthy.

Silent edits and excluding themselves from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine so that you can't look in to the silent edits.

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

#389

Post by Tabular-Iceberg »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #356
ALittleLight wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a quote from the Foreword of that report - "According to the statistics presented by the EU, Sweden has long had the highest number of reported rapes per capita in Europe" Now, it's perfectly reasonable to say that rape is defined and reported differently in different countries and that's why rape appears more frequent in Sweden than in many other countries. In fact, I referenced that in my previous comment.…

Sweden surveys every single citizen, every single year, and asks them (amongst other things) whether or not they have been a victim of a sex crime. They also have a very broad definition of what "rape" is, compared to other Western countries. Calling them the "Rape Capitol" because they have the most progressive rape detection and classification system on Earth is stupid - that's why Snopes and other fact checkers de…

> Sweden surveys every single citizen, every single year, and asks them (amongst other things) whether or not they have been a victim of a sex crime.

Do you have a source for that claim?

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

#390

Post by AussieWog93 »

Tabular-Iceberg wrote: post #389
AussieWog93 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden surveys every single citizen, every single year, and asks them (amongst other things) whether or not they have been a victim of a sex crime. They also have a very broad definition of what "rape" is, compared to other Western countries. Calling them the "Rape Capitol" because they have the most progressive rape detection and classification system on Earth is stupid - that's why Snopes and other fact checkers de…

> Sweden surveys every single citizen, every single year, and asks them (amongst other things) whether or not they have been a victim of a sex crime. Do you have a source for that claim?

No, I made a mistake in saying that. As the sibling post stated, it's just a representative sample.
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