7 ms·

I have personally asked an individual why they don't trust snopes. Their claim is that it's a Democrat rag towel and shill. I then ask, then what fact-checker

I have personally asked an individual why they don't trust snopes. Their claim is that it's a Democrat rag towel and shill. I then ask, then what fact-checker would you trust? Their response: None of them. Congratulations. We've reached a point, for this individual, where "facts" as decided in the common forum are suspect and the only thing they trust is themselves (and whatever non-Mainstream Media they listen to). We have reached a point where the only truth is what they decide is the truth. That is a non-trivial problem to resolve. If we can't even agree what basic facts are, there is no way to even have a discussion.

grzm 10y ago
This is something that concerns me a lot as well. How do we rebuild this?
- makomk 10y ago
  Well, for a start we'd need some form of fact checking that was actually about just the facts rather than political spin, and that's really hard to do once politics becomes involved. Even purely factual questions like whether someone said something or not become blurry. For example, take the child rape trial Hillary Clinton was a defence attorney for, in which she claimed that an unspecified person had told her the victim "is emotionally unstable with a tendency to seek out older men and to engage in fantasizing" and "has in the past made false accusations" to justify putting her through a nasty court-ordered psychiatric exam. Is this the same as Hillary herself making the claims? The original viral version and the victim saw it this way. Snopes argued that this was a lie because the document showed that other people had made the claims, neglecting to mention that the interpretation and wording was Hillary's and the existence and honesty of these other people rested entirely on her word. Neither of these is inherently more truthful than the other, it's a question of which spin is politically convenient. This is probably the most clear-cut example imaginable too, since it's about the contents of a court filing. Most of the world is a lot more factually unclear, visible only through a lens of conflicting evidence and multiple sources of information.
  - grzm 10y ago
    A couple thoughts: - How do we get broad, bi/cross/multi-partisan support? - Is there any precedence for news articles having citations/eligible for peer-review (post-published, of course) similar to scientific papers?
- tomjen3 10y ago
  By meeting the other side, if at all possible in person but at least by video chat, show respect and genuinely care about their side. Either that or find a common enemy, such as Mexico (after the civil war).
linkregister 10y ago
I have personally seen people turn away from Fox News after an excess of anti-Trump coverage; though I guess by now Fox is prolific enough to reliably called Mainstream Media.
meric 10y ago
Read the wikileaks emails yourself. You've got eyes, you don't need to rely on New York Times editors to read it for you.
- tdb7893 10y ago
  Generally those fact checking sites will link to sources. It's much easier to find sources through them then to go digging through the emails manually.
- Spellman 10y ago
  Did and done. However, I fail to see why Wikileaks is considered a Fact-checker, or how this pertains to a belief that NO fact-checker is reliable. Are you claiming that Wikileaks is trustworthy and can replace a fact-checker, but isn't a fact-checker? Because that seems a bit circular and oxymoronic to me. Perhaps if you provided an alternative fact-checker source? The person in my original post has written off all fact-checking period.
  - yarou 10y ago
    You missed the point and sentiment of his comment. Wikileaks is not the fact checker in this case, you are. You were being invited to look at the raw data and draw your own conclusions/truths from it, not somebody else's.
    - sushiwarrior 10y ago
      You are being invited to look at "raw data" which is actually filtered, has important information retained for collateral and insurance, and decides when to release things for "maximum impact". To consider this alternative somehow a totally unbiased and impossible to refute thing just because it was founded in the internet era is absurd. It is run by human beings, it is not simply a "upload files here and instantly distribute them" tool. They have their own inherent bias and it is dangerous to consider receiving information that detailed and classified to assume that nobody else dealing in classified information has anything to hide. Obviously people will look bad if you get to snoop through all their trash, but the neighbour was the one who actually let you snoop in their trash, and they won't let you look in their trash either.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
234dd57d2c8db 10y ago
Have you done any research at all on snopes? I just spent 5 minutes on google and found that one of snope's main "fact-checkers" is Kim Lacapria. She used to write for a blog called "The Inquisitor", a site known for posting bad news stories, similar to the right-wing Alex Jones programme. They have published fake quotes and stories without doing research: http://www.inquisitr.com/670091/retraction-and-apology-to-roger-moore/ http://www.inquisitr.com/670091/retraction-and-apology-to-ro... http://www.rawstory.com/2015/07/story-about-costco-pulling-dinosaur-cake-was-hoax-by-insquisitr-contributor/ http://www.rawstory.com/2015/07/story-about-costco-pulling-d... As for Kim, she describes herself as "...an openly left-leaning individual myself", if you ctrl+f for those words here: http://www.inquisitr.com/402558/scandal-envy-behind-petraeus-drama-allegations-obama-ignored-benghazi/ http://www.inquisitr.com/402558/scandal-envy-behind-petraeus... As you can see, journalistic integrity is lacking from both sides of the political spectrum. Please do not get all high-and-mighty and think you're better than everyone else, because you would be falling into the same trap you mock others for. I hope in the future you will examine sources with a more objective view and keep an open mind, and not just believe whatever someone wants you to believe so they can make a quick buck off of your ignorance.
- alexc05 10y ago
  In fairness, I should mention that by "auto snopes" I mean "implement an auto-debunker" or even just "auto fair balance" which automatically adds "the other side" to anything linked on facebook. I have no hat in the ring with respect to which side publishes the truth, I just think that if something is FALSE facebook could alter their UI to immediately debunk something. Like the other quote of Trump saying "I'd run as a republican because they're the dumbest" could have a big "FALSE - he never said that" right underneath. People who thought it was funny could still post it until their hearts were content - but nobody would be FOOLED
  - 234dd57d2c8db 10y ago
    Thanks for clarifying that! I don't have any skin in this game either, and I agree it might be helpful to have an auto-bias feature, but it needs to be completely transparent and open so we can fact-check the fact-check checkers ourselves :) Someone must fact-check the fact checkers, and facebook should do their best to ensure this is possible with any system they decide to implement.
gregpardo 10y ago
The problem these 'fact' checkers have become leftist doctrines... You just point to snopes or politifact and that is end of discussion? That's not how the world works. Wikileaks is a far more credible source than either of these. People need to do their own research if they want to form conclusions not just little to prepackaged conclusions.
- nkassis 10y ago
  I would argue that wikileaks on it's own can also be very misleading. Reading emails out of context and without knowing if they've been altered is probably not the best way to get a full picture. The value add of media looking at them is they can also go and get other sources to add context or to corroborate what they are reading in the wikileaks releases. Sources which aren't available to everyone. It's also easy to be fooled into seeing things as nefarious which are in the end benign when given context.
  - EvilTerran 10y ago
    Give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, and I would find something in them to have him hanged. ... and now Wikileaks has invited the whole internet to come play Richelieu with them, only with ten thousand times the ammunition the Cardinal (apocryphally) asked for. The online mob has been accusing (eg) Podesta and his correspondents of all kinds of insane things - from corruption & arms dealing to satanism & child abduction - based on the flimsiest of cherry-picked quotes, even when the context (beyond the leaks, within them, even in the very same email sometimes) showed without doubt that their claims were obvious bunk. And Assange merrily fed into that: drawing spurious connections on his twitter feed; linking/retweeting the fever dreams of naked partisans; and dragging out a single dump into an episodic drip-fed spectacle, all the better to whip his fans into an inquisitorial vigilante frenzy. "wikileaks on it's own can also be very misleading"? I can't argue with that - except perhaps to say it's far too charitable.
    - jerkstate 10y ago
      There's a lot of stuff in wikileaks that merits investigation but the MSM never did their job. Just wholesale dismissal from comedianchors like John Oliver. Not surprising that the MSM were asleep at the wheel when it came to predicting the outcome, or that most of the country no longer trusts them. http://www.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass-media-sinks-new-low.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass-media...
Spellman 10y ago
I should also clarify that I'm not saying snopes is the end-all fact-checker. I would have been curious and explored any alternative, "non-liberal" fact-checker. My point is that this individual has written off all fact-checking as an entire discipline. They are the final arbiter of truth. That fundamentally prohibits discussion of almost anything, or at least makes it extraordinarily labor intensive. One might counter-argue, well, start with their beliefs and work outwards to illustrate contradictions and such. Very Kantian. Except that is 1) very labor intensive, and 2) doesn't cover all issues.
tropo 10y ago
Well, is there a fact-checker that doesn't claim Trump's very unenthusiastic acceptance of war with Iraq when asked by surprise on the Howard Stern show means that Trump is somehow lying when he says he didn't support the war? It's stuff like this, turning a single reluctant "I guess so" or "probably" or "it seems we should" into support, that make supposed fact-checkers suspect. Who will fact-check the fact checkers? The supposed fact-checkers were just another political weapon, tainted as could be. Fact checkers are like certificate authorities. Once you lose credibility, you might as well close shop. You're done.
- akhilcacharya 10y ago
  He said "I guess so" before the war started, and then started opposing it when others started opposing it. That's hardly the political courage he was attempting to convey here, especially when he says "I was against the Iraq war from the start"
  - NhanH 10y ago
    I haven't seen the video yet, so this is just my interpretation. Asking about Iraq war at the time was similar to asking "Should we try to stop ISIS?" now. I'd give 80% courage credits to whoever that dare saying "I'm not sure, I guess so". All in all, unless Trump had access to more information than the general populace, it doesn't matter whether he opposed or supported it. We decidedly didn't have enough info to make a sound judgement, and the conclusion we made - be it correct or not - would merely be a metaphorical coin toss.
pbhjpbhj 10y ago
>Congratulations. We've reached a point, for this individual, where "facts" as decided in the common forum are suspect and the only thing they trust is themselves (and whatever non-Mainstream Media they listen to). We have reached a point where the only truth is what they decide is the truth. // This is similar to the UK going in to the Brexit vote. Politicians that were promoting the break away from Europe were pushing hard the idea that "we don't need experts" and that listening to expert opinions was wrong (listening to experts like pro-Brexit economists who stated, in common with the anti-s, that Britain would be financially worse off leaving Europe). It's like the media managed to spin the idea that all people who have rigorously studied something are not to be trusted. The biggest wtf is that it worked, writing a big fat lie in big fat letters on a bus trumps (heh!) countless professors of economics telling the people it's a lie. The trap is to conclude that people are idiots, postmodernism is not really the reason either I feel. The reason IMO is that the media have become very very good at manipulating people's thought processes and feeding them a position with out resorting to having the person think through that position. Yay, we've won, the media can now make us all believe whatever they want. But don't panic all those rich politicians and business people are sure to use their powers for good ... /s
- emodendroket 10y ago
  Well, I mean, they ARE the same experts who told us deregulation of finance was a good idea.
emodendroket 10y ago
Snopes did put out a lot of articles this season where the claim of "false" seemed to hinge on some sort of hair-splitting rather than the core of the claim being inaccurate.
colordrops 10y ago
It's reasonable to not trust a media outlet until it's earned your trust. Until then, cross check with the source material, as more often than not, journalists spin and filter the information in their product. By the way, Snopes is not a common forum and is edited by a very small team. It is a single point of failure and is easily biased. No one entity should be the gatekeeper of truth.
TrumpVoter12345 10y ago
I too don't trust "any of them". I don't trust news sites or channels at all anymore, because there aren't any that even _pretend_ to be impartial. The biggest loser by far in this election cycle is the media, especially on the left side of the spectrum. No one will trust them again in the foreseeable future. As someone joked on Reddit: "If Donald Trump walked on water, healed cripples and turned water into wine, the headline would be: "Trump can't swim, takes jobs from doctors, and is a raging alcoholic". That's essentially how Trump's supporters perceived the media towards the end of the campaign, and in my opinion, very deservedly so. They're shameless shills, pure and simple. For the record: I don't consider Breitbart or Fox News to be a valid news source either.

grzm 10y ago

This is something that concerns me a lot as well. How do we rebuild this?

makomk 10y ago
Well, for a start we'd need some form of fact checking that was actually about just the facts rather than political spin, and that's really hard to do once politics becomes involved. Even purely factual questions like whether someone said something or not become blurry. For example, take the child rape trial Hillary Clinton was a defence attorney for, in which she claimed that an unspecified person had told her the victim "is emotionally unstable with a tendency to seek out older men and to engage in fantasizing" and "has in the past made false accusations" to justify putting her through a nasty court-ordered psychiatric exam. Is this the same as Hillary herself making the claims? The original viral version and the victim saw it this way. Snopes argued that this was a lie because the document showed that other people had made the claims, neglecting to mention that the interpretation and wording was Hillary's and the existence and honesty of these other people rested entirely on her word. Neither of these is inherently more truthful than the other, it's a question of which spin is politically convenient. This is probably the most clear-cut example imaginable too, since it's about the contents of a court filing. Most of the world is a lot more factually unclear, visible only through a lens of conflicting evidence and multiple sources of information.
- grzm 10y ago
  A couple thoughts: - How do we get broad, bi/cross/multi-partisan support? - Is there any precedence for news articles having citations/eligible for peer-review (post-published, of course) similar to scientific papers?
tomjen3 10y ago
By meeting the other side, if at all possible in person but at least by video chat, show respect and genuinely care about their side. Either that or find a common enemy, such as Mexico (after the civil war).

linkregister 10y ago

I have personally seen people turn away from Fox News after an excess of anti-Trump coverage; though I guess by now Fox is prolific enough to reliably called Mainstream Media.

meric 10y ago

Read the wikileaks emails yourself. You've got eyes, you don't need to rely on New York Times editors to read it for you.

tdb7893 10y ago
Generally those fact checking sites will link to sources. It's much easier to find sources through them then to go digging through the emails manually.
Spellman 10y ago
Did and done. However, I fail to see why Wikileaks is considered a Fact-checker, or how this pertains to a belief that NO fact-checker is reliable. Are you claiming that Wikileaks is trustworthy and can replace a fact-checker, but isn't a fact-checker? Because that seems a bit circular and oxymoronic to me. Perhaps if you provided an alternative fact-checker source? The person in my original post has written off all fact-checking period.
- yarou 10y ago
  You missed the point and sentiment of his comment. Wikileaks is not the fact checker in this case, you are. You were being invited to look at the raw data and draw your own conclusions/truths from it, not somebody else's.
  - sushiwarrior 10y ago
    You are being invited to look at "raw data" which is actually filtered, has important information retained for collateral and insurance, and decides when to release things for "maximum impact". To consider this alternative somehow a totally unbiased and impossible to refute thing just because it was founded in the internet era is absurd. It is run by human beings, it is not simply a "upload files here and instantly distribute them" tool. They have their own inherent bias and it is dangerous to consider receiving information that detailed and classified to assume that nobody else dealing in classified information has anything to hide. Obviously people will look bad if you get to snoop through all their trash, but the neighbour was the one who actually let you snoop in their trash, and they won't let you look in their trash either.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

234dd57d2c8db 10y ago

Have you done any research at all on snopes? I just spent 5 minutes on google and found that one of snope's main "fact-checkers" is Kim Lacapria. She used to write for a blog called "The Inquisitor", a site known for posting bad news stories, similar to the right-wing Alex Jones programme. They have published fake quotes and stories without doing research: http://www.inquisitr.com/670091/retraction-and-apology-to-roger-moore/ http://www.inquisitr.com/670091/retraction-and-apology-to-ro... http://www.rawstory.com/2015/07/story-about-costco-pulling-dinosaur-cake-was-hoax-by-insquisitr-contributor/ http://www.rawstory.com/2015/07/story-about-costco-pulling-d... As for Kim, she describes herself as "...an openly left-leaning individual myself", if you ctrl+f for those words here: http://www.inquisitr.com/402558/scandal-envy-behind-petraeus-drama-allegations-obama-ignored-benghazi/ http://www.inquisitr.com/402558/scandal-envy-behind-petraeus... As you can see, journalistic integrity is lacking from both sides of the political spectrum. Please do not get all high-and-mighty and think you're better than everyone else, because you would be falling into the same trap you mock others for. I hope in the future you will examine sources with a more objective view and keep an open mind, and not just believe whatever someone wants you to believe so they can make a quick buck off of your ignorance.

alexc05 10y ago
In fairness, I should mention that by "auto snopes" I mean "implement an auto-debunker" or even just "auto fair balance" which automatically adds "the other side" to anything linked on facebook. I have no hat in the ring with respect to which side publishes the truth, I just think that if something is FALSE facebook could alter their UI to immediately debunk something. Like the other quote of Trump saying "I'd run as a republican because they're the dumbest" could have a big "FALSE - he never said that" right underneath. People who thought it was funny could still post it until their hearts were content - but nobody would be FOOLED
- 234dd57d2c8db 10y ago
  Thanks for clarifying that! I don't have any skin in this game either, and I agree it might be helpful to have an auto-bias feature, but it needs to be completely transparent and open so we can fact-check the fact-check checkers ourselves :) Someone must fact-check the fact checkers, and facebook should do their best to ensure this is possible with any system they decide to implement.

gregpardo 10y ago

The problem these 'fact' checkers have become leftist doctrines... You just point to snopes or politifact and that is end of discussion? That's not how the world works. Wikileaks is a far more credible source than either of these. People need to do their own research if they want to form conclusions not just little to prepackaged conclusions.

nkassis 10y ago
I would argue that wikileaks on it's own can also be very misleading. Reading emails out of context and without knowing if they've been altered is probably not the best way to get a full picture. The value add of media looking at them is they can also go and get other sources to add context or to corroborate what they are reading in the wikileaks releases. Sources which aren't available to everyone. It's also easy to be fooled into seeing things as nefarious which are in the end benign when given context.
- EvilTerran 10y ago
  Give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, and I would find something in them to have him hanged. ... and now Wikileaks has invited the whole internet to come play Richelieu with them, only with ten thousand times the ammunition the Cardinal (apocryphally) asked for. The online mob has been accusing (eg) Podesta and his correspondents of all kinds of insane things - from corruption & arms dealing to satanism & child abduction - based on the flimsiest of cherry-picked quotes, even when the context (beyond the leaks, within them, even in the very same email sometimes) showed without doubt that their claims were obvious bunk. And Assange merrily fed into that: drawing spurious connections on his twitter feed; linking/retweeting the fever dreams of naked partisans; and dragging out a single dump into an episodic drip-fed spectacle, all the better to whip his fans into an inquisitorial vigilante frenzy. "wikileaks on it's own can also be very misleading"? I can't argue with that - except perhaps to say it's far too charitable.
  - jerkstate 10y ago
    There's a lot of stuff in wikileaks that merits investigation but the MSM never did their job. Just wholesale dismissal from comedianchors like John Oliver. Not surprising that the MSM were asleep at the wheel when it came to predicting the outcome, or that most of the country no longer trusts them. http://www.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass-media-sinks-new-low.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass-media...

Spellman 10y ago

I should also clarify that I'm not saying snopes is the end-all fact-checker. I would have been curious and explored any alternative, "non-liberal" fact-checker. My point is that this individual has written off all fact-checking as an entire discipline. They are the final arbiter of truth. That fundamentally prohibits discussion of almost anything, or at least makes it extraordinarily labor intensive. One might counter-argue, well, start with their beliefs and work outwards to illustrate contradictions and such. Very Kantian. Except that is 1) very labor intensive, and 2) doesn't cover all issues.

tropo 10y ago

Well, is there a fact-checker that doesn't claim Trump's very unenthusiastic acceptance of war with Iraq when asked by surprise on the Howard Stern show means that Trump is somehow lying when he says he didn't support the war? It's stuff like this, turning a single reluctant "I guess so" or "probably" or "it seems we should" into support, that make supposed fact-checkers suspect. Who will fact-check the fact checkers? The supposed fact-checkers were just another political weapon, tainted as could be. Fact checkers are like certificate authorities. Once you lose credibility, you might as well close shop. You're done.

akhilcacharya 10y ago
He said "I guess so" before the war started, and then started opposing it when others started opposing it. That's hardly the political courage he was attempting to convey here, especially when he says "I was against the Iraq war from the start"
- NhanH 10y ago
  I haven't seen the video yet, so this is just my interpretation. Asking about Iraq war at the time was similar to asking "Should we try to stop ISIS?" now. I'd give 80% courage credits to whoever that dare saying "I'm not sure, I guess so". All in all, unless Trump had access to more information than the general populace, it doesn't matter whether he opposed or supported it. We decidedly didn't have enough info to make a sound judgement, and the conclusion we made - be it correct or not - would merely be a metaphorical coin toss.

pbhjpbhj 10y ago

>Congratulations. We've reached a point, for this individual, where "facts" as decided in the common forum are suspect and the only thing they trust is themselves (and whatever non-Mainstream Media they listen to). We have reached a point where the only truth is what they decide is the truth. // This is similar to the UK going in to the Brexit vote. Politicians that were promoting the break away from Europe were pushing hard the idea that "we don't need experts" and that listening to expert opinions was wrong (listening to experts like pro-Brexit economists who stated, in common with the anti-s, that Britain would be financially worse off leaving Europe). It's like the media managed to spin the idea that all people who have rigorously studied something are not to be trusted. The biggest wtf is that it worked, writing a big fat lie in big fat letters on a bus trumps (heh!) countless professors of economics telling the people it's a lie. The trap is to conclude that people are idiots, postmodernism is not really the reason either I feel. The reason IMO is that the media have become very very good at manipulating people's thought processes and feeding them a position with out resorting to having the person think through that position. Yay, we've won, the media can now make us all believe whatever they want. But don't panic all those rich politicians and business people are sure to use their powers for good ... /s

emodendroket 10y ago
Well, I mean, they ARE the same experts who told us deregulation of finance was a good idea.

emodendroket 10y ago

Snopes did put out a lot of articles this season where the claim of "false" seemed to hinge on some sort of hair-splitting rather than the core of the claim being inaccurate.

colordrops 10y ago

It's reasonable to not trust a media outlet until it's earned your trust. Until then, cross check with the source material, as more often than not, journalists spin and filter the information in their product. By the way, Snopes is not a common forum and is edited by a very small team. It is a single point of failure and is easily biased. No one entity should be the gatekeeper of truth.

TrumpVoter12345 10y ago

I too don't trust "any of them". I don't trust news sites or channels at all anymore, because there aren't any that even _pretend_ to be impartial. The biggest loser by far in this election cycle is the media, especially on the left side of the spectrum. No one will trust them again in the foreseeable future. As someone joked on Reddit: "If Donald Trump walked on water, healed cripples and turned water into wine, the headline would be: "Trump can't swim, takes jobs from doctors, and is a raging alcoholic". That's essentially how Trump's supporters perceived the media towards the end of the campaign, and in my opinion, very deservedly so. They're shameless shills, pure and simple. For the record: I don't consider Breitbart or Fox News to be a valid news source either.