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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

#401

Post by justin66 »

jethro_tell wrote: post #60
jjcon wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what about AP and Reuters?

Back when we had small town journalism, you'd get AP or Reuters as a service to be your world/national news department. The service was that they would give you a whole news department and you could copy paste the article and have your tiny news room writing about the basketball win and the bake sale. That was the deal, but it's a subscription service for one. Secondly, the AP or Reuters got the by line in your paper…

> Third, you don't change the article in any way. You don't use a piece of it, and ad you own comments. you paste the article on the page with an appropriate byline

This has never been how AP works. Where are you even getting this stuff?

AP traditionally provides stories in an "inverted pyramid" [0] structure, such that an outlet can use as much or as little of the story as they need to fill a given space on the page.

They're free to modify the text as much as they want to. Such an article will list the Associated Press and whatever journalists edited, contributed, or otherwise mangled the original article. My (least) favorite modern example of this is when the Fox News website takes an AP article that makes the Republican party look bad and adds or subtracts to it until it's less damaging. The people responsible for that mangling are listed as contributors to such an article, as is the AP.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism)

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

#402

Post by justin66 »

lazide wrote: post #92
DFHippie wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was only addressing press releases. I don't know about wire services. It's my understanding that publishing them as your own, or implicitly your own because of a lack of attribution, is just plagiarism.

If they pay the requisite fee it is licensed to them to do that, that is the wire services business model. It isn’t plagiarism if you pay for it and it’s done with the writers permission apparently.

>> It's my understanding that publishing them as your own, or implicitly your own because of a lack of attribution, is just plagiarism.

> If they pay the requisite fee it is licensed to them to do that, that is the wire services business model.

Licensees are required to attribute AP-sourced content to AP.

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

#403

Post by kortilla »

tablespoon wrote: post #229
kortilla wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but they need to be clear that they aren’t committed to it being an accurate story at the time of publish (expectation of a newspaper). If they want to be an encyclopedia then be one.

> Sure, but they need to be clear that they aren’t committed to it being an accurate story at the time of publish (expectation of a newspaper). You're misreading the situation. The media doesn't have a crystal ball any more than you or I do. They can be "committed to it being an accurate story at the time of publish," but then new stuff happens after that time, or they have the time to go into more depth. The news is…

Do you know what “at the time of publish” means?

By having a fluid changing story, two people won’t even have the same reference point if they both read the same NYTimes article.

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

#404

Post by wizzard »

hitpointdrew wrote: post #343
retsibsi wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What evidence is there of the efficacy of the vaccine that isn’t provided directly from Pfizer/Moderna? There are multiple observational studies looking at real-world effectiveness. If necessary I'll find some links, but have you looked?

I haven’t look for studies specifically, if you could link some that would be great. I just hear anecdotal evidence like “hospitalizations have gone down”. Which may be 100% true, but is hardly evidence that the vaccines are effective. The placebo effect is well known. It’s not shocking that hospitalization has gone down when the media has been beating the fear drum on how terribly dangerous the virus is 24/7, causin…

http://www.healthdata.org/covid/covid-19-vaccine-efficacy-su...

There's a PDF in this article that links to dozens of independent studies. Or, just google "covid vaccine efficacy" and it pulls up a bunch of links for you.

It really only takes a minimum of effort to answer these hard-hitting questions you've posed. As another example, I googled "why are pharmaceutical companies immune from liability over covid vaccine" and found https://www.hsdl.org/?abstract&did=848329 .

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

#405

Post by WCityMike »

kstrauser wrote: post #210

I really want to like Snopes, but I'm not convinced that they weigh evidence correctly. For example, they debunked the myth that Marilyn Monroe had 6 toes. First, I don't believe that she did . Or even care, for that matter. But at the time, one of their "facts" was that if she'd had a toe removed, she'd basically have to learn to walk all over again because it would throw her balance completely off. (Note: the artic…

I'm reminded of a paragraph in the Buzzfeed News investigation that brought this to light, indicating that Mikkelson in early days of Usenet was particularly known for trolling. That response to your inquiry seems particularly trollish.

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

#406

Post by bifrost »

evgen wrote: post #251
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…

I hate to be the one to tell you, but just because you were 'directly involved' in something does not mean you know what was going on. Every day courts are filled with people who witness an event and present their own personal viewpoint upon the events; when the viewpoints differ it is not always because someone among them is being deceitful, sometimes two people can see the exact same set of events and walk away wit…

I was one of three people working on the project, the other two people on the project also agreed that Snopes was full of it. The one source they used was from a rehash of a blog post. They made no attempt to interview any of us.

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

#407

Post by deertick1 »

tablespoon wrote: post #373
deertick1 wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't seem silly at all to me : the known risks of covid are pretty tolerable. Death rate is extremely low for my demographic. So lets say I have a 30% chance of getting covid without a vax and a .1% chance of serious long term illness or death from covid. Now If I get the vaccine, I have a 1% chance of getting covid, and.01% chance of serioues injury or death + an unkown chance of unkown serious health complicatio…

>> It seems silly to worry about completely hypothetical and unknown long-term risks of vaccination when getting COVID-19 has very serious, well known short-term risks. > Doesn't seem silly at all to me : the known risks of covid are pretty tolerable. Death rate is extremely low for my demographic [emphasis mine]. That perspective is why we can't have nice things.

Not really dude. If I was around other people even remotely often it would be a different story but I work from home, dont really hang out with people, and wear an n95 when I have to go to the store.

It doesn't make me a bad person to be unvaccinated. It would if I was cavalier about potentially getting others sick...

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

#408

Post by deertick1 »

snypher wrote: post #377
deertick1 wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't seem silly at all to me : the known risks of covid are pretty tolerable. Death rate is extremely low for my demographic. So lets say I have a 30% chance of getting covid without a vax and a .1% chance of serious long term illness or death from covid. Now If I get the vaccine, I have a 1% chance of getting covid, and.01% chance of serioues injury or death + an unkown chance of unkown serious health complicatio…

You imply that the long term risks of covid-19 are known, so conflating the unknown/imaginary risks of both, that leaves getting the vaccine a better deal, because 'you have less change of getting sick'.

Yeah you make a good point. No idea what long term risks of covid are.

I guess I just feel more comfortable rolling the dice with a natural (maybe? Lmao) disease than a product made by the same companies that were public enemy #1 just months before they became our "saviours"

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

#409

Post by teddyh »

meragrin_ wrote: post #286
teddyh wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 likel…

> Snopes can only go by what other sources have written, since they weren’t there. I have supplied information to correct articles. They were never updated. This information was easy to come by. One in particular involved timelines/history of bills in the US Congress which they were very wrong about. All you have to do is go to Congress's website and look up the history. The "fact checker" could not even bother to do…

OK, but that’s a bit vague. Do you have the links to the incorrect Snopes story and links to the articles with correct information?

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

#410

Post by tablespoon »

deertick1 wrote: post #407
tablespoon wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It seems silly to worry about completely hypothetical and unknown long-term risks of vaccination when getting COVID-19 has very serious, well known short-term risks. > Doesn't seem silly at all to me : the known risks of covid are pretty tolerable. Death rate is extremely low for my demographic [emphasis mine]. That perspective is why we can't have nice things.

Not really dude. If I was around other people even remotely often it would be a different story but I work from home, dont really hang out with people, and wear an n95 when I have to go to the store. It doesn't make me a bad person to be unvaccinated. It would if I was cavalier about potentially getting others sick...

> Not really dude. If I was around other people even remotely often it would be a different story but I work from home, dont really hang out with people, and wear an n95 when I have to go to the store.

> It doesn't make me a bad person to be unvaccinated. It would if I was cavalier about potentially getting others sick...

Then you truly are a rare bird.

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