9 ms·

Can mythbusters like Snopes.com keep up in a post-truth era?

59 points by ca98am79 10y ago

fdavison 10y ago
Sites like Snopes or FactCheck.org are not immune to their own political biases: https://ethicsalarms.com/2016/07/31/bye-bye-snopes-youre-dead-to-me-now/ https://ethicsalarms.com/2016/07/31/bye-bye-snopes-youre-dea...
- squozzer 10y ago
  It seems we need watchers to watch the watchers.
  - notahacker 10y ago
    And watchers to watch the watchers of the watchers, since the linked "EthicsAlarms" article uses the term "social justice warriors" without irony and asserts that Hillary's client pleading not guilty is the same as Hillary "asserting the complainant made up the rape story" and how very dare Snopes suggest otherwise... It's turtles all the way down.
- Turing_Machine 10y ago
  I've always been skeptical of any organization that feels the need to include "fact" or "truth" in its title. Cf. Pravda and "Honest John's Used Cars".
- saturdaysaint 10y ago
  I regard Snopes as sort of low rent but Ethics Alarms is a right-wing smear blog that seems to make comical attempts at portraying itself as a paragon of objectivity and educators in classical philosophy. At some point you have to choose your own curators.
  - Turing_Machine 10y ago
    They may or may not be a "right-wing smear blog", but I don't see how that is relevant to this case in particular. Are their assertions about Snopes mischaracterizing the facts in this case correct or not?
    - mcphage 10y ago
      The issue is where the statements are no longer mere facts. Like "successfully defended". Snopes claims that is false, because the client wasn't freed, Ethics Watch claims it is true because the client got a plea bargain. Which is it? Well, it could be interpreted either way. Take Clinton's laughter—the claim is "Clinton laughed about the case". Does that mean that "she laughed about the results", or "she laughed when discussing the case"? Which ever they discuss, people will criticize them using the other metric. Of course, both of these have the same problem: there's a claim, which can be interpreted 2 ways. Snopes defends the one they felt is meant, and this site criticizes them for the other. On its own, whatever. But these are interesting that, while Ethics Alert's interpretations may be valid, they're a lot less emotionally weaker. Take the laughter: - If Clinton had laughed about getting a rapist off, that would be bad. - She did laugh when discussing the case, and so that can be seen as "laughing about the case". - But "laughing about the case" isn't really bad. Nobody cares if she's discussing the case, and laughs about something. It's meaningless. But they do care about laughing about getting a rapist off. You see? These both have a similar bait-and-switch: - Claim: Something that people care about. - Snopes: That something didn't happen. - Ethics Alert: Something can also be interpreted this other way, which did happen. But the other way nowhere near as significant. So can you interpret "successfully defended" as "got a plea bargain". But if you try and substitute them both back into the original claim, one of them is really bad, and one of them isn't nearly so: - "Clinton freed a child rapist". - "Clinton got a child rapist a plea bargain". Suddenly it's like, so what? Lots of cases get plea bargains, for lots of reasons. Maybe the facts of the case are open to dispute, maybe the prosecutors don't have a strong case, maybe there was some procedural mistake. That's not a very strong criticism. Also, they accuse Snopes of responding to statements that aren't directly in the claim. Is that good, or bad? Well, if they do, then they're susceptible to attacks like this. If they don't, then they get to hear an endless litany of "no no when they say X it means Y and why didn't you address that point what are you trying to hide"? It's a no-win. As for the flags one, I don't know. And honestly, I don't particularly care. There was no shortage of patriotism on display at the DNC, that playing games about which days had flags and which days didn't and which days had the attendees make giant flags in their seats is childish. If they have the pictures mis-dated, then definitely they should be fixed—but this looks like a similar problem to the above, where critics use "They didn't show enough flags!" as a substitute for "The DNC was unpatriotic!", and while you might think they didn't use enough flags, there was no shortage of patriotic attitudes on display.
criddell 10y ago
Snopes? I'm more worried about Wikipedia. Thirteen million people were able to make Trump a Presidential contender. It would take a much smaller force to take over Wikipedia.
- mason240 10y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/wikiinaction https://www.reddit.com/r/wikiinaction
- pjc50 10y ago
  Wikipedia is already a source of contention, especially for history and politics outside the West or English-speaking world.
- Someone1234 10y ago
  Incidentally I added an edit to Wikipedia for Clinton's current VP pick Tim Kaine (before he was picked). Essentially his page has a bunch of his policies positions for big issues (LGBTQ, Abortion, Environment, etc), I added another one for his position on Gun Rights/Gun Control, fully cited, and really unbiased (neither for or against him, just raw facts). A mod came along, simply said "astroturfing" and removed it. I spend a decent chunk of time creating content, citing it, and a mod can just wipe it out without any real justification. All because they didn't want anything which could be seen as negative before he was picked as VP. The section has since been re-added with all of the same information by someone else, but it is the principle of the thing, that a mod didn't allow it at a politically inconvenient time and when it fell out of the spotlight it was allowed again.
  - notahacker 10y ago
    You get treated as a second class citizen if you're editing from an IP address or a new account... The other side of this is that I'd estimate that at least a fifth of UK MPs have been edited by someone in the MP's office or otherwise directly involved with their campaign at some point, sometimes even openly.
  - hatsunearu 10y ago
pjc50 10y ago
Rather more disturbing question: to what extent do people want the truth? Especially if it's kind of awkward. And how well do people cope with the messiness of the real world - things that are "somewhat true" depending on context, or probabilistic morality ("this policy is correlated with a loss of X days of average life expectancy").
- cmurf 10y ago
  According to Newt, voters don't want the truth in politics, especially because it's awkward. Voters want politicians to side with them on the basis of their feelings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnhJWusyj4I&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnhJWusyj4I&feature=youtu.be
- gilleain 10y ago
  Unfortunately, there is an underlying assumption in many debates, arguments, rants, discussions, and wikis online that simply presenting others with "THE TRUTH" is sufficient to change their viewpoint. I realised a while ago that this is unlikely to be the case. Unless someone is ready to be convinced of some particular fact or truth then you can talk at them until you are blue in the face and not get anywhere. It doesn't matter what clever logic you use, what pretty diagrams you make, or if you are polite or rude or patient or pithy. If someone has convinced themselves of some truth or other, then no statistic or image will un-convince them. Ultimately I believe that it comes done to differences in philosophy. Like a web of ideas in which each person is trapped, any statement from the outside world is filtered and altered by what people already believe. Even seemingly 'obvious' things such as what constitutes evidence; or what does it mean for a sentence to be true; or what is 'research'. Maybe I've been reading too many wikipedia talk pages.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    Indeed. Especially the idea of some "silver bullet" truth, the revelation of which is enough to get people to switch parties. People really underestimate the role of loyalty in politics. The Trump campaign is providing really spectacular examples of this: there are a lot of senior republicans who are really unhappy about him being the candidate, but out of loyalty to the system aren't going to break ranks publicly. But no amount of "surely this will convince people" argument is making a dent in his support. It's always hard on the internet to know if you're convincing bystanders. Your interlocutor is rarely going to give up, but what about everyone else reading who doesn't want to tip their hand?
Kenji 10y ago
Let's be frank: Every source of information is tainted when it comes to topics where political interests play a role. Simply because part of politics is misinformation and dogmatism, and it's nearly impossible to strip that off the information. As soon as the outcome of the research or investigation benefits or harms someone, there are very strong incentives to warp the results. The best thing we can do is collect all the raw evidence we have and let the people decide for themselves - but then again, evidence can also be altered or faked.
- merpnderp 10y ago
  "Every source of information is tainted when it comes to topics where political interests play a role." This times 100. Politics tends to cover things that aren't readily testable in scientifically repeatable ways. So decisions must be made on principles or ideologies which shade every topic. And since people are now basing their decisions on unprovable "facts" or claims, the line becomes fuzzy on what to believe and not to believe. So people tend to believe what reinforces what they already believe.
- kej 10y ago
  You don't even have to skew the results, you can impart bias just by choosing which stories to research. I've always liked the way Howard Zinn put it in the afterword to A People's History of the United States: >But there is no such thing as a pure fact, innocent of interpretation. Behind every fact presented to the world—by a teacher, a writer, anyone—is a judgment. The judgment that has been made is that this fact is important, and that other facts, omitted, are not important.
  - mod 10y ago
    You would be imparting a bias on some scale, sure. But to anyone wanting to verify a certain claim, you would impart no bias (they would land on your site, verify the claim, and leave), so long as you were honest & accurate.
MrZongle2 10y ago
The only one calling this a "post-truth era" is The Guardian. Falsehoods and rumors are nothing new. The speed by which they travel over the Internet is, but they're still spread by trolls, useful idiots and partisans as they have been for a long, long time.
- cmurf 10y ago
  Yeah but there was a time when most everyone believed in superstitions. The question not asked in the article is what happens to a society when a significant minority start believing in superstitions,give in to paranoia and conspiracy theories, etc. What happens in the aggregate when facts aren't persuasive? Is this sufficiently culturally different that it becomes untenable, and what does that mean?
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  Notably, this is mostly a "post-truth era" because the truth is now available. It's not like Nixon was all about honesty, it's just that we have unprecedented ability to fact-check the claims we hear.
Brendinooo 10y ago
It doesn't cover as many topics as some of the more well-known fact checking sites, but http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/ http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/ has a pretty good framework for evaluating claims, and the best answers tend to be really objective.
merpnderp 10y ago
It depends on what is meant by truth. It appears that Snopes decided the that the "no flags at the DNC" was false, but the C-SPAN evidence show that at times there were no flags on display. The whole issue is politicized asshattery, but Snopes decided that since at times there were flags, the whole issue was false leading a reader to believe there were always flags on display. Hat's off to Politifact for staying detached and reasonable, instead of partisan and pedantic. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/27/donald-trump/dnc-flag-missing-controversy/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/... http://www.snopes.com/flags-banned-at-dnc/ http://www.snopes.com/flags-banned-at-dnc/
- yk 10y ago
  Thing is, snopes and politifact debunk slightly different claims, but agree broadly on what happened. And it is not, that there is some "obviously right" claim^1 that needs debunking, but over a broad range of reasonable choices it is just the choice of the author which claim he wants to debunk. ^1 Actually there is, as many as there are readers.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > It appears that Snopes decided the that the "no flags at the DNC" was false, but the C-SPAN evidence show that at times there were no flags on display. If there were flags on display at any point during the DNC, the claim of no flags at the DNC (including both forms which Snopes explicitly was addressing, that "flags were absent" from the convention or that "flags were banned" at the convention) is false. The claim that there were moments without flags at the DNC is a distinctly different claim, which is not false, but also not the claim that snopes was addressing.
pdkl95 10y ago
> post-truth era The most terrifying statement I've ever heard from the US government is this quote[1] that the NY Times[2] attributes to an unnamed aid to G.W.Bush, which was supposedly said by Karl Rove. The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." [...] "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality [...] we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." We have a serious problem if this nonsense has started to become accepted enough to justify being called a "post-truth era". May I suggest trying to get as many people as you can to read Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World"[3]? A free democracy cannot rely upon snopes (et al) as the only filter of facts from opinions and lies. Remember Sagan's warning: I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-a... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World
colordrops 10y ago
There are several problems with sites like snopes and politifact. They are centralizing "truth", making themselves an authority, and creating a single point of failure. The information can be manipulated or misrepresented toward an agenda. Its even more powerful than mainstream media because people put more trust in these "truth" sites. Also, they make a judgement call with their meters and traffic light widgets as to the truth value of a claim. This is problematic because it makes judgement extrinsic, and creates a visual component that can be embedded out of context to drive people toward an opinion using only their emotions. A better version of these sites would teach about how to source information and use critical thought, then list as many verified sources on a topic as possible without making a judgement themselves as to the truth of the matter.
- mod 10y ago
  I don't fully agree. They present contradictory or supporting evidence. I don't think that is presenting oneself as the authority. Merely the fact-checker. If you're saying they should present all the same evidence and NOT decide whether the claim is true or false--I think that's a pretty trivial point. When I read snopes, I look at their evidence, not their actual rating. I know they have a bias and I don't want to include it in my own decision.
  - colordrops 10y ago
    > I look at their evidence, not their actual rating. Your behavior is not an indicator of behavior at large. The politifact truth-o-meter is regularly embedded on Reddit and other sites out of context by those with an agenda.
    - mod 10y ago
      Any source of information can be used improperly. We still owe it to ourselves to present facts without bias.
    - hatsunearu 10y ago
      Especially since politifact itself has shown political bias.
pklausler 10y ago
I've thought a bit about what living in a "post-truth" era really means, and I think that it comes down to a lack of accountability for lying. If there are people who support a candidate and don't care whether that candidate is lying to them or not, we're all in a bad situation. I find it fascinating that it's still considered to be shocking or unacceptable to call somebody a liar -- as if we prefer media that is complicit in the lack of consequences for lying.

59 points by ca98am79 10y ago

Sites like Snopes or FactCheck.org are not immune to their own political biases: https://ethicsalarms.com/2016/07/31/bye-bye-snopes-youre-dead-to-me-now/ https://ethicsalarms.com/2016/07/31/bye-bye-snopes-youre-dea...

squozzer 10y ago
It seems we need watchers to watch the watchers.
- notahacker 10y ago
  And watchers to watch the watchers of the watchers, since the linked "EthicsAlarms" article uses the term "social justice warriors" without irony and asserts that Hillary's client pleading not guilty is the same as Hillary "asserting the complainant made up the rape story" and how very dare Snopes suggest otherwise... It's turtles all the way down.
Turing_Machine 10y ago
I've always been skeptical of any organization that feels the need to include "fact" or "truth" in its title. Cf. Pravda and "Honest John's Used Cars".
saturdaysaint 10y ago
I regard Snopes as sort of low rent but Ethics Alarms is a right-wing smear blog that seems to make comical attempts at portraying itself as a paragon of objectivity and educators in classical philosophy. At some point you have to choose your own curators.
- Turing_Machine 10y ago
  They may or may not be a "right-wing smear blog", but I don't see how that is relevant to this case in particular. Are their assertions about Snopes mischaracterizing the facts in this case correct or not?
  - mcphage 10y ago
    The issue is where the statements are no longer mere facts. Like "successfully defended". Snopes claims that is false, because the client wasn't freed, Ethics Watch claims it is true because the client got a plea bargain. Which is it? Well, it could be interpreted either way. Take Clinton's laughter—the claim is "Clinton laughed about the case". Does that mean that "she laughed about the results", or "she laughed when discussing the case"? Which ever they discuss, people will criticize them using the other metric. Of course, both of these have the same problem: there's a claim, which can be interpreted 2 ways. Snopes defends the one they felt is meant, and this site criticizes them for the other. On its own, whatever. But these are interesting that, while Ethics Alert's interpretations may be valid, they're a lot less emotionally weaker. Take the laughter: - If Clinton had laughed about getting a rapist off, that would be bad. - She did laugh when discussing the case, and so that can be seen as "laughing about the case". - But "laughing about the case" isn't really bad. Nobody cares if she's discussing the case, and laughs about something. It's meaningless. But they do care about laughing about getting a rapist off. You see? These both have a similar bait-and-switch: - Claim: Something that people care about. - Snopes: That something didn't happen. - Ethics Alert: Something can also be interpreted this other way, which did happen. But the other way nowhere near as significant. So can you interpret "successfully defended" as "got a plea bargain". But if you try and substitute them both back into the original claim, one of them is really bad, and one of them isn't nearly so: - "Clinton freed a child rapist". - "Clinton got a child rapist a plea bargain". Suddenly it's like, so what? Lots of cases get plea bargains, for lots of reasons. Maybe the facts of the case are open to dispute, maybe the prosecutors don't have a strong case, maybe there was some procedural mistake. That's not a very strong criticism. Also, they accuse Snopes of responding to statements that aren't directly in the claim. Is that good, or bad? Well, if they do, then they're susceptible to attacks like this. If they don't, then they get to hear an endless litany of "no no when they say X it means Y and why didn't you address that point what are you trying to hide"? It's a no-win. As for the flags one, I don't know. And honestly, I don't particularly care. There was no shortage of patriotism on display at the DNC, that playing games about which days had flags and which days didn't and which days had the attendees make giant flags in their seats is childish. If they have the pictures mis-dated, then definitely they should be fixed—but this looks like a similar problem to the above, where critics use "They didn't show enough flags!" as a substitute for "The DNC was unpatriotic!", and while you might think they didn't use enough flags, there was no shortage of patriotic attitudes on display.

criddell 10y ago

Snopes? I'm more worried about Wikipedia. Thirteen million people were able to make Trump a Presidential contender. It would take a much smaller force to take over Wikipedia.

mason240 10y ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/wikiinaction https://www.reddit.com/r/wikiinaction
pjc50 10y ago
Wikipedia is already a source of contention, especially for history and politics outside the West or English-speaking world.
Someone1234 10y ago
Incidentally I added an edit to Wikipedia for Clinton's current VP pick Tim Kaine (before he was picked). Essentially his page has a bunch of his policies positions for big issues (LGBTQ, Abortion, Environment, etc), I added another one for his position on Gun Rights/Gun Control, fully cited, and really unbiased (neither for or against him, just raw facts). A mod came along, simply said "astroturfing" and removed it. I spend a decent chunk of time creating content, citing it, and a mod can just wipe it out without any real justification. All because they didn't want anything which could be seen as negative before he was picked as VP. The section has since been re-added with all of the same information by someone else, but it is the principle of the thing, that a mod didn't allow it at a politically inconvenient time and when it fell out of the spotlight it was allowed again.
- notahacker 10y ago
  You get treated as a second class citizen if you're editing from an IP address or a new account... The other side of this is that I'd estimate that at least a fifth of UK MPs have been edited by someone in the MP's office or otherwise directly involved with their campaign at some point, sometimes even openly.
- hatsunearu 10y ago

pjc50 10y ago

Rather more disturbing question: to what extent do people want the truth? Especially if it's kind of awkward. And how well do people cope with the messiness of the real world - things that are "somewhat true" depending on context, or probabilistic morality ("this policy is correlated with a loss of X days of average life expectancy").

cmurf 10y ago
According to Newt, voters don't want the truth in politics, especially because it's awkward. Voters want politicians to side with them on the basis of their feelings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnhJWusyj4I&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnhJWusyj4I&feature=youtu.be
gilleain 10y ago
Unfortunately, there is an underlying assumption in many debates, arguments, rants, discussions, and wikis online that simply presenting others with "THE TRUTH" is sufficient to change their viewpoint. I realised a while ago that this is unlikely to be the case. Unless someone is ready to be convinced of some particular fact or truth then you can talk at them until you are blue in the face and not get anywhere. It doesn't matter what clever logic you use, what pretty diagrams you make, or if you are polite or rude or patient or pithy. If someone has convinced themselves of some truth or other, then no statistic or image will un-convince them. Ultimately I believe that it comes done to differences in philosophy. Like a web of ideas in which each person is trapped, any statement from the outside world is filtered and altered by what people already believe. Even seemingly 'obvious' things such as what constitutes evidence; or what does it mean for a sentence to be true; or what is 'research'. Maybe I've been reading too many wikipedia talk pages.
- pjc50 10y ago
  Indeed. Especially the idea of some "silver bullet" truth, the revelation of which is enough to get people to switch parties. People really underestimate the role of loyalty in politics. The Trump campaign is providing really spectacular examples of this: there are a lot of senior republicans who are really unhappy about him being the candidate, but out of loyalty to the system aren't going to break ranks publicly. But no amount of "surely this will convince people" argument is making a dent in his support. It's always hard on the internet to know if you're convincing bystanders. Your interlocutor is rarely going to give up, but what about everyone else reading who doesn't want to tip their hand?

Kenji 10y ago

Let's be frank: Every source of information is tainted when it comes to topics where political interests play a role. Simply because part of politics is misinformation and dogmatism, and it's nearly impossible to strip that off the information. As soon as the outcome of the research or investigation benefits or harms someone, there are very strong incentives to warp the results. The best thing we can do is collect all the raw evidence we have and let the people decide for themselves - but then again, evidence can also be altered or faked.

merpnderp 10y ago
"Every source of information is tainted when it comes to topics where political interests play a role." This times 100. Politics tends to cover things that aren't readily testable in scientifically repeatable ways. So decisions must be made on principles or ideologies which shade every topic. And since people are now basing their decisions on unprovable "facts" or claims, the line becomes fuzzy on what to believe and not to believe. So people tend to believe what reinforces what they already believe.
kej 10y ago
You don't even have to skew the results, you can impart bias just by choosing which stories to research. I've always liked the way Howard Zinn put it in the afterword to A People's History of the United States: >But there is no such thing as a pure fact, innocent of interpretation. Behind every fact presented to the world—by a teacher, a writer, anyone—is a judgment. The judgment that has been made is that this fact is important, and that other facts, omitted, are not important.
- mod 10y ago
  You would be imparting a bias on some scale, sure. But to anyone wanting to verify a certain claim, you would impart no bias (they would land on your site, verify the claim, and leave), so long as you were honest & accurate.

MrZongle2 10y ago

The only one calling this a "post-truth era" is The Guardian. Falsehoods and rumors are nothing new. The speed by which they travel over the Internet is, but they're still spread by trolls, useful idiots and partisans as they have been for a long, long time.

cmurf 10y ago
Yeah but there was a time when most everyone believed in superstitions. The question not asked in the article is what happens to a society when a significant minority start believing in superstitions,give in to paranoia and conspiracy theories, etc. What happens in the aggregate when facts aren't persuasive? Is this sufficiently culturally different that it becomes untenable, and what does that mean?
Bartweiss 10y ago
Notably, this is mostly a "post-truth era" because the truth is now available. It's not like Nixon was all about honesty, it's just that we have unprecedented ability to fact-check the claims we hear.

Brendinooo 10y ago

It doesn't cover as many topics as some of the more well-known fact checking sites, but http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/ http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/ has a pretty good framework for evaluating claims, and the best answers tend to be really objective.

merpnderp 10y ago

It depends on what is meant by truth. It appears that Snopes decided the that the "no flags at the DNC" was false, but the C-SPAN evidence show that at times there were no flags on display. The whole issue is politicized asshattery, but Snopes decided that since at times there were flags, the whole issue was false leading a reader to believe there were always flags on display. Hat's off to Politifact for staying detached and reasonable, instead of partisan and pedantic. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/27/donald-trump/dnc-flag-missing-controversy/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/... http://www.snopes.com/flags-banned-at-dnc/ http://www.snopes.com/flags-banned-at-dnc/

yk 10y ago
Thing is, snopes and politifact debunk slightly different claims, but agree broadly on what happened. And it is not, that there is some "obviously right" claim^1 that needs debunking, but over a broad range of reasonable choices it is just the choice of the author which claim he wants to debunk. ^1 Actually there is, as many as there are readers.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> It appears that Snopes decided the that the "no flags at the DNC" was false, but the C-SPAN evidence show that at times there were no flags on display. If there were flags on display at any point during the DNC, the claim of no flags at the DNC (including both forms which Snopes explicitly was addressing, that "flags were absent" from the convention or that "flags were banned" at the convention) is false. The claim that there were moments without flags at the DNC is a distinctly different claim, which is not false, but also not the claim that snopes was addressing.

pdkl95 10y ago

> post-truth era The most terrifying statement I've ever heard from the US government is this quote[1] that the NY Times[2] attributes to an unnamed aid to G.W.Bush, which was supposedly said by Karl Rove. The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." [...] "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality [...] we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." We have a serious problem if this nonsense has started to become accepted enough to justify being called a "post-truth era". May I suggest trying to get as many people as you can to read Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World"[3]? A free democracy cannot rely upon snopes (et al) as the only filter of facts from opinions and lies. Remember Sagan's warning: I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-a... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World

colordrops 10y ago

There are several problems with sites like snopes and politifact. They are centralizing "truth", making themselves an authority, and creating a single point of failure. The information can be manipulated or misrepresented toward an agenda. Its even more powerful than mainstream media because people put more trust in these "truth" sites. Also, they make a judgement call with their meters and traffic light widgets as to the truth value of a claim. This is problematic because it makes judgement extrinsic, and creates a visual component that can be embedded out of context to drive people toward an opinion using only their emotions. A better version of these sites would teach about how to source information and use critical thought, then list as many verified sources on a topic as possible without making a judgement themselves as to the truth of the matter.

mod 10y ago
I don't fully agree. They present contradictory or supporting evidence. I don't think that is presenting oneself as the authority. Merely the fact-checker. If you're saying they should present all the same evidence and NOT decide whether the claim is true or false--I think that's a pretty trivial point. When I read snopes, I look at their evidence, not their actual rating. I know they have a bias and I don't want to include it in my own decision.
- colordrops 10y ago
  > I look at their evidence, not their actual rating. Your behavior is not an indicator of behavior at large. The politifact truth-o-meter is regularly embedded on Reddit and other sites out of context by those with an agenda.
  - mod 10y ago
    Any source of information can be used improperly. We still owe it to ourselves to present facts without bias.
  - hatsunearu 10y ago
    Especially since politifact itself has shown political bias.

pklausler 10y ago

I've thought a bit about what living in a "post-truth" era really means, and I think that it comes down to a lack of accountability for lying. If there are people who support a candidate and don't care whether that candidate is lying to them or not, we're all in a bad situation. I find it fascinating that it's still considered to be shocking or unacceptable to call somebody a liar -- as if we prefer media that is complicit in the lack of consequences for lying.