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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

#121

Post by soheil »

danso wrote: post #50
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…

Reprinting and attributing is allowed. Copying and not attributing it isn’t, because besides the whole theft aspect, it implies that you yourself observed or researched the given assertions.

I don't think attribution is as necessary as you make it sound like at least when it comes to AP/Reuters stories used by news orgs that are in partnership with them.

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

#122

Post by pessimizer »

I think the main take-away from this is that these "factcheckers" are just copying from a single line. In the desperate attempt to scoop up more cash, Snopes did the rewriting after posting rather than before, but as long as what you posted was identical to the NYT/WaPo line, it wouldn't be subject to any sort of examination or critique.

Anyway, aren't Snopes pages just links that Democrats post without reading as a comment under a reactionary or socialist relative's post on Facebook? Nobody is reading them, so the only thing that matters is the headline and the graphic.

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

#123

Post by meowface »

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 doesn't disprove any fact-checking articles, but, as a hypothetical example, imagine if you learned a fact-checker was convicted of writing lots of bad checks. They might be perfectly honest in other areas of their life, but it creates a lot more skepticism, since you know they're willing to be dishonest in that one case.

Plagiarism isn't necessarily as dishonest as financial fraud, but it's still a form of dishonesty and likely also intellectual laziness. Dishonesty and intellectual laziness are the opposites of what you want in a credible debunker/verifier, no matter the relevance or severity.

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

#124

Post by paulpauper »

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…

false attribution is worse than no attribution

He was taking ownership of work which was not his and profiting from it with ads and facebook traffic.

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

#125

Post by psychometry »

busymom0 wrote: post #105
qkqk wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remind me of their narrative again? They say that > "Trump did not explicitly tell people to 'storm' or 'breach' or 'break into' the [US] Capitol." and included the reasoning that > the president called on supporters to “peacefully and patriotically” march or walk to the Capitol ...but wait, their far-left narrative! Why didn't they omit those references and reasoning?! https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-tell-su…

Almost all these “fact checkers” exposed themselves on the lab leak theory which they had to redact after 1.5 years. Relying on any of them as a source of “truth” is asking for trouble. They are more of a narrative check.

Let me guess, you're one of those idiots who thinks that modifying your stance when presented with new evidence is bad because it's "flip-flopping"?

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

#126

Post by comrh »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #87

Outsourcing reality checks to private organizations is a serious problem with 21st century America. The Southern Poverty Law Center is another similar org that is treated as authoritative yet has zero safeguards or unbiased processes.

Newspapers have been a thing for hundreds of years

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

#127

Post by dragonwriter »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #112
dragonwriter wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An example being SPLC labeling ex-muslims as hateful "islamophobes". Why is that an example? Plenty of ex-whatever-religion (or even ex-particular-denomination) people turn right into the most extreme and hateful bigots against the group they departed. It’s a frequently commented on phenomenon among religious people, often not focussing on betrayal by departing members (where the bias of attachment to their own ide…

Perhaps the phobia suffix in this case is being used as a political tool? Do you really think that ex-Muslims are irrationally fearful of Muslims? Or, perhaps is handwaving away as "phobia" a cop out to any criticism at all? EDIT: Seems like it still works, just call someone a phobe or an ist and instantly shut down any criticism. There are no ex-Muslims with valid issues against Islam because they're just bigoted, o…

> Perhaps the phobia suffix in this case is being used as a political tool?

The use of “-phobe” as a suffix with the meaning “bigot against” (rooted originally in the belief that bigotry is tied to fear, but now operating largely independent of any assumption of the basis of the particular bigotry) is pretty well-established in English; the main case where its not used are for gender-based bigotry where the “mis—ist” circumfix is used around an existing Greek root.

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

#128

Post by bifrost »

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 substantially and then says the rating only depends on less than 10% of the article.

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

#129

Post by latexr »

vfclists wrote: post #100

HN is becoming less and less a place where issues are rarely discussed. The most irrelevant comments always rise to the top and more and more people join in and waffle about nothing. The interesting point in the article is this one: "Snopes VP of Editorial and Managing Editor Doreen Marchionni suspended Mikkelson from editorial duties pending “a comprehensive internal investigation.” He remains an officer and a 50% s…

> How can the whatever whatever suspend her boss from editorial duties pending a comprehensive internal investigation? Did she clear that with her boss first?

From David Mikkelson’s statement (scroll to the bottom):

> I have given full authority to our managing editor, Doreen Marchionni, to take any measures needed to address these issues.

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

#130

Post by commandlinefan »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #104
ceilingcorner wrote: post #87

Outsourcing reality checks to private organizations is a serious problem with 21st century America. The Southern Poverty Law Center is another similar org that is treated as authoritative yet has zero safeguards or unbiased processes.

PayPal recently partnered with the ADL to ban accounts and prevent the wrong people from making transactions. Should be beyond concerning that not only they did that, but celebrated themselves for it. The ADL has ever widening definition of “problematic“ that extends to political topics far outside of their mission statement. I would really have to think about who is less biased, the SPLC or the ADL.

To me the biggest promise of cryptocurrency is the hope of an "uncensorable" form of commerce.
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