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Why is Mail Online going after the fact checkers?

41 points by CarolineW 10y ago

rokosbasilisk 10y ago
I would have agreed with this article until the forbes story broke. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-daily-mail-snopes-story-and-fact-checking-the-fact-checkers/#33d2e4cc1e02 http://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-dail... It makes snopes look worse run than a college newspaper. I also agree with the forbes article in that we need much much tranparency and openess from our fact checkers.
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  Oh please, this is a typical bullshit story from a site with famously loose editorial oversight itself. It was with incredible surprise therefore that I received David’s one-sentence response which read in its entirety “I'd be happy to speak with you, but I can only address some aspects in general because I'm precluded by the terms of a binding settlement agreement from discussing details of my divorce.” This absolutely astounded me. Here was the one of the world’s most respected fact checking organizations, soon to be an ultimate arbitrator of “truth” on Facebook, saying that it cannot respond to a fact checking request because of a secrecy agreement. In short, when someone attempted to fact check the fact checker, the response was the equivalent of “its secret.” It is impossible to understate how antithetical this is to the fact checking world, in which absolute openness and transparency are necessary prerequisites for trust. How can fact checking organizations like Snopes expect the public to place trust in them if when they themselves are called into question, their response is that they can’t respond. What's so astonishing about it? A divorce settlement in which the parties agree not to talk about each other in public isn't scandalous, and it's not like these people are on the public payroll; rather, they provide a service, have built a good brand from the overall high reliability of that service (notwithstanding a lack of total perfection), and the market has been largely satisfied with the quality of the offering. Divorces happen and they're sometimes bitter and contentious. So what? I don't really care how Snopes is run as long as it consistently provides a high quality of information, while being aware of variations in the quality of their output from time to time. I have certainly found it a more reliable source of information, on average, than the Daily Mail or indeed Forbes over a period going back to its founding.
  - Natsu 10y ago
    It's not the fact that there is a divorce settlement, but the contents thereof which are at issue. If this were entirely false (as I would have expected from the Daily Mail), they could've said as much. But there are quite a few things, like the allegations of criminal activity (e.g. embezzlement) going on at Snopes that reasonable people might have questions about with respect to their fact-checking operations.
    - anigbrowl 10y ago
      The fact that unfavorable information is out there doesn't obviate a contractual agreement not to discuss it in public per the settlement. Doing something that could cost you (as here) is the very foundation of contract. I neither know nor much care how their operation runs, and it's not my purpose to defend it. To be honest I've never especially liked the people who run it; their deconstructions of internet rumors are often snarky and shallow, and undermine their factual value with distracting tone issues - but that's how they choose to run their business. I'm just pointing to the fact of the site's general reliability as a fact-checking service over a long period.
      - Natsu 10y ago
        Right, I know they may be unable to discuss it even when it's public. I was saying if it were entirely made up (i.e. there is no such settlement to begin with), they could say as much.
  - Turing_Machine 10y ago
    Kalev Leetaru's c.v.: http://kalevleetaru.com/vita.pdf http://kalevleetaru.com/vita.pdf David Mikkelson's c.v.: ? (disclaimer: I know Kalev slightly)
- Natsu 10y ago
  There's a lawyer's saying that when the facts are against you, you pound on the table. The Guardian won't even repeat, let alone attempt to refute, anything published in the Daily Mail. Just let that sink in for a moment: the Guardian is unable to dispute the Daily Mail on a factual level on this one. Instead they talk about everything and anything else rather than discuss the actual subject matter in the reports. "Nothing to see here, move along!" But even a stopped clock can be right twice a day. And this would hardly be the first real news broken by a tabloid. We live in interesting times. I just hope they're not the "interesting times" from that fictitious Chinese curse.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > There's a lawyer's saying that when the facts are against you, you pound on the table. The usual saying is, "When the law is on your side, argue the law; when the facts are on your side, argue the law; when neither is on your side, pound the table."
    - Natsu 10y ago
      Yeah, that's the one. Thank you.
    - ternaryoperator 10y ago
      The quote appears to be from Carl Sandburg[1] The variant I've heard is: "When the facts are against you, argue the law; when the law is against you, argue the facts; if both the facts and the law are against you, get a new client." [1] http://able2know.org/topic/98689-1 http://able2know.org/topic/98689-1
  - DanBC 10y ago
    We don't need the Grauniad to refute stuff in the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail will print a full page front page, and then retract it in a tiny correction six months later on page 12. From New Statesman http://www.newstatesman.com/media/2013/12/man-who-hates-liberal-britain http://www.newstatesman.com/media/2013/12/man-who-hates-libe... > In the files of the Press Complaints Commission, you will find records of 687 complaints against the Mail which led either to a PCC adjudication or to a resolution negotiated, at least partially, after the PCC’s intervention. The number far exceeds that for any other British newspaper: the files show 394 complaints against the Sun, 221 against the Daily Telegraph, 115 against the Guardian. The complaints will serve as a charge sheet against the Mail and its editor. > This year, [2014] the Mail reported that disabled people are exempt from the bedroom tax; that asylum-seekers had “targeted” Scotland; that disabled babies were being euthanised under the Liverpool Care Pathway; that a Kenyan asylum-seeker had committed murders in his home country; that 878,000 recipients of Employment Support Allowance had stopped claiming “rather than face a fresh medical”; that a Portsmouth primary school had denied pupils water on the hottest day of the year because it was Ramadan; that wolves would soon return to Britain; that nearly half the electricity produced by windfarms was discarded. All these reports were false. Here's another example: A columnist accused a muslim family of being extremists. That was libel. She tweeted her apology at 2am. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/katie-hopkins-twitter-apology-muslim-family-extremism-links-mail-online-column-a7484436.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/katie-hopkins-twitt... I think the apology for incorrect claims should take as much space as the original claim. If you print a 92point headline on the front page that's libellous you should print the apology in 92 point on the front page. EDIT: And about libel in England. You need to be able to prove what you say is true. In the context of "false news" that doesn't seem to burdensome for newspapers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_defamation_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_defamation_law > Allowable defences are justification (i.e. the truth of the statement), fair comment (i.e., whether the statement was a view that a reasonable person could have held), and privilege (i.e., whether the statements were made in Parliament or in court, or whether they were fair reports of allegations in the public interest). An offer of amends is a barrier to litigation. A defamatory statement is presumed to be false, unless the defendant can prove its truth. Furthermore, to collect compensatory damages, a public official or public figure must prove actual malice (knowing falsity or reckless disregard for the truth). A private individual must only prove negligence (not exercising due care) to collect compensatory damages. In order to collect punitive damages, all individuals must prove actual malice.
- camtarn 10y ago
  It feels like Snopes outgrew its roots in urban-legend debunking, and decided to scale up to more real-time fact-checking - either because they saw a commercial opportunity, or just because they felt that they had a duty to do so. I was really surprised earlier this year when I realized they'd employed a staff - for so many years, Snopes was just Barbara and David Mikkelson. It's a pity if they did scale up for altruistic reasons, but in the process ended up out of their depth - fact-checking news stories in a highly controversial and partisan environment seems like an entirely different kettle of fish than unravelling easily-debunked urban legends.
  - cloakandswagger 10y ago
    I don't think they are naive or altruistic at all; that same partisan environment offers huge amounts of wealth if you consign with one faction or another. I'm sure being an Official Facebook Fact Checker is a job that pays quite well.
- justinlaster 10y ago
  You're going to give a Forbes article more credence than Snopes? I still haven't seen anyone point to a substantive example of why Snopes should not be trusted.
  - Turing_Machine 10y ago
    "I still haven't seen anyone point to a substantive example of why Snopes should not be trusted." You have it exactly backwards. I've never seen anyone give a good reason why Snopes should be trusted. The Mikkelsons were self-appointed "authorities" from the beginning, with zero actual expertise or credentials in most of the areas they opine upon. Edit: I should add that I view any organization that feels the need to use "truth", "fact", or similar in its name with an extremely jaundiced eye. It's reminiscent of Pravda and "Honest John's Used Cars". Organizations with actual earned credibility don't use names like that, as a rule.
    - justinlaster 10y ago
      > I've never seen anyone give a good reason why Snopes should be trusted. Their impressive library of detailed articles in where they factually report on myths and conspiracy theories?
      - Turing_Machine 10y ago
        "Factual reporting" according to whom?
        justinlaster 10y ago
        According to the epistemological principle of not being proved wrong while containing a reasonable amount of evidence to indicate that their report is in all probability true. Why are you asking such a vague, open-ended question?
        Turing_Machine 10y ago
disposablezero 10y ago
File under "Why do SJWs go after Thunderf00t?" Money, ego, memetic dominance, etc.
alex- 10y ago
I guess a publication like the mail has two big reasons to feel threatened by a rise of fact checking sites. 1. It inhibits their ability to embellish stories and thus could effect revenue. 2. If you need to goto some trust worthy organisation to fact check. Why do you need to visit the publisher first?
- deleted 10y ago
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- ternaryoperator 10y ago
  It's part of the "fake news" nihilism. You attack everything and anything that can limit the scope of the deceit you're creating.
deleted 10y ago
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ikeboy 10y ago
It's poor form for the guardian to not link the original article, at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4042194/Facebook-fact-checker-arbitrate-fake-news-accused-defrauding-website-pay-prostitutes-staff-includes-escort-porn-star-Vice-Vixen-domme.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4042194/Facebook-fac... The guardian article is a hit piece, and a poorly written one at that. It gives very little information and a lot of vague or indirect criticism. (Makes you think how much more effective hit pieces can be when the writer actually has something to work with: even this will probably convince a lot of people that critiques of snopes are invalid.) On priors I'd expect there to be issues with the mail article, but the guardian doesn't tell me what they are.
- camtarn 10y ago
  [edit] I completely misread the comment above as asking Hacker News to link to the original source article, not for the Guardian to have linked it. My bad, and I agree with the parent. For any other reputable news source I'd totally agree - but in this case, it's poor form to give the Daily Mail your ad revenue. This is not any regular newspaper: it is a mouthpiece for an organised hate campaign aimed at stirring up political tensions against immigrants, the disabled and out of work, and other 'undesirables' - which just also happens to be really good at writing social-media-friendly celebrity stories.
  - ikeboy 10y ago
    If you're writing a journalistic article and you're criticising something, you better have a very good reason for not linking it. They barely summarised it. The reasons you gave don't rise to that level. If the other critique I made—that they don't actually mention anything wrong with the mail article— wouldn't be the case, it wouldn't be as bad. But the fact that they didn't make any substantive critiques of the article and didn't link it makes it a hit piece.
    - camtarn 10y ago
      I apologise - I totally misread your comment, and thought it was a request for Hacker News to have linked to the Daily Mail article. Yes, I agree that the Guardian should have linked to it.
crucini 10y ago
Applying the idea of "fact checking" to politically charged topics inherently raises problems. Snopes was a good site to find out if there were really alligators in the sewers. The Forbes article cited by rokosbasilisk here seems to demand a high standard of quality from fact checkers - but who is to pay for it? Now, The Guardian chose some headlines to illustrate this story with. Presumably the Guardian considers them good examples of "fake news". One of them is about the Clintons "stealing $200K worth of furniture" etc. Politifact has a surprisingly detailed page on this allegation. The result is, typically, gray. It wasn't $200K (suspiciously round number); closer to $190K. And the Clintons paid for or returned the "stolen" items; which either makes them "not stolen" or "stolen and returned". But the whole claim of "theft" rests on the items' designation as national property, which may not have been clear at the time. Given that this headline is an example of what the media (including Facebook) wants to shield the masses from - what then do they want the masses to hear? Is it (a) nothing, (b) inoculation/discrediting by labelling the meme as "fake news"; (c) a less sensationalized headlines?
- skrowl 10y ago
  Some political activists have no choice but to yell "Fake News!" to rationalize censorship now, because they basically used "Racist!" to censor views they didn't like so much that the word no longer has meaning. It makes you wonder what will come next. The funny (or sad) part is that silencing dissenting opinions via means like this is the very definition of fascism, but the people so quick to yell "fake news!" now are the same ones who were calling their friends fascist on social media 2 months ago just for supporting a different presidential candidate than they were.
  - otalp 10y ago
    It is less a question of censorship and more a question of removing egregiously bad "news" that is explicitly written to collect views. If you believe flagging false headlines like “Michelle Obama DEMANDS Americans PAY UP To Give Her Mom A Cushy $160k Pension” is fascism, and that advocating war-crimes and bringing back libel laws like Trump did is not, I don't know what to say. There is a whole industry set up to profit from making fake news that they know is false: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/in-macedonias-fake-news-hub-teen-shows-ap-how-its-done/2016/12/02/98bce38e-b88d-11e6-939c-91749443c5e5_story.html?utm_term=.f80a4c745b5a https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/in-macedonias-fa... If you think any attempt to reduce profiteering by knowingly generating fake news that gets millions of shares is fascism, I'm not sure what isn't. I'm not sure if there has been any 'transition' from accusations of racism to fake news. The "birther" controversy, especially the way it treated by places like Brietbart was both racist and fake, I doubt that you dispute that. Trump retweeting Stormfront infographics that claim ridiculous stuff like 90% of white murder victims were killed by black people is both racist and fake. This is hardly a "liberal" or globalist position, even Fox news called out Trump on that. Regardless of political orientation, objective facts do exist. I don't believe in censorship, but I think if a site wants to flag a post saying "reasons why the moon landing is a globalist conspiracy" as false, I'm not going to cry that it's literally fascism.
kaleidic 10y ago
I learnt from Popper that the facts are theory - laden and from Feynman that science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. This whole attempt to control the discourse is doomed. There's no such thing as objectivity - ones understanding of the world is shaped by one's experiences and who one is, and that's true for institutions too. Character matters for an editorial institution, as does form. Snopes built its reputation one way, and became something quite different. And yet they have been granted a role of high influence by Facebook and thus it's in the spirit of good journalism to look into the extent to which they deserve this influence, and the character of the people involved does matter. One could say that the Mail also isn't a globalist paper and so that naturally sets their perspective against Snopes.
- deleted 10y ago
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- otalp 10y ago
  >There's no such thing as objectivity Obama being born in Kenya is objectively false. Podesta running a child-trafficking ring in pizza places around Chicago is objectively false. Moon landing and flat earth conspiracies are objectively false. Thinking that Global warming is a hoax created by China is objectively false. I hate to bring up the cliché of "post-truth" but when you say things like "there is no such thing as objectivity" it is difficult not to do so. I'm not directing this at you in particular, but it's a common line of argument. Say Snopes write that the claim that Global Warming is a hoax is false, or that Obama isn't a secret Islamic radical. When they dispute something that many people believe in, the argument from a depressingly high number of people is not to scrutinise the facts that Snopes used and come up with flaws in their reasoning. It is to vaguely accuse them of being "globalist", say that their argument is not valid because their founder did something, and that there is no objective truth. Reality is complex, but the problem arises when people use this complexity to mean that any belief they hold, however unsubstantiated, cannot be falsified because everyone has an (((agenda))), which is defined as holding any view, on any subject, slightly different from their own. Sure, I think Snopes should be looked into, like any institution with influence. But I am far more interested in journalism that extensively rebuts many of their arguments- and they have made a lot of arguments, rather than providing fodder for the inevitable future ad-hominem rebuttals.
rplst8 10y ago
How does the saying go? The victors write the history books - the rest is just fake news.
bmpafa 10y ago
I regularly read Breitbart and Alex Jones (the ideological yangs to my yin), and they are apoplectic about this push towards fact checking. It's unsettling how readily their audience accepts their claims that snopes et al are liberal rags. I've done some due diligence in the past on snopes, and afaik any bias is well within the margin of error from zero. The narrative is that fact checking is a "globalist"-orchestrated move to suppress what they call the "independent media" in favor of the "MSM" (mainstream media). I argue that whenever someone spends more time defaming their critics than defending their stances and claims, readers ought to run away. But following these news sources, it seems like most readers are completely trapped in an unfalsifiable narrative. It's really disheartening to think that our current best weapon against this sort of charlatinism is screening content thru fact-checkers. But I do think these platforms are obligated here, and indeed long overdue. Tom Friedman makes a compelling argument about platforms' responsibilities here: 'Facebook et al want the NYT readership, the NYT page views, but none of the NYT overhead that comes with being accountable for the information they share. And that's bullshit.'

41 points by CarolineW 10y ago

I would have agreed with this article until the forbes story broke. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-daily-mail-snopes-story-and-fact-checking-the-fact-checkers/#33d2e4cc1e02 http://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-dail... It makes snopes look worse run than a college newspaper. I also agree with the forbes article in that we need much much tranparency and openess from our fact checkers.

anigbrowl 10y ago
Oh please, this is a typical bullshit story from a site with famously loose editorial oversight itself. It was with incredible surprise therefore that I received David’s one-sentence response which read in its entirety “I'd be happy to speak with you, but I can only address some aspects in general because I'm precluded by the terms of a binding settlement agreement from discussing details of my divorce.” This absolutely astounded me. Here was the one of the world’s most respected fact checking organizations, soon to be an ultimate arbitrator of “truth” on Facebook, saying that it cannot respond to a fact checking request because of a secrecy agreement. In short, when someone attempted to fact check the fact checker, the response was the equivalent of “its secret.” It is impossible to understate how antithetical this is to the fact checking world, in which absolute openness and transparency are necessary prerequisites for trust. How can fact checking organizations like Snopes expect the public to place trust in them if when they themselves are called into question, their response is that they can’t respond. What's so astonishing about it? A divorce settlement in which the parties agree not to talk about each other in public isn't scandalous, and it's not like these people are on the public payroll; rather, they provide a service, have built a good brand from the overall high reliability of that service (notwithstanding a lack of total perfection), and the market has been largely satisfied with the quality of the offering. Divorces happen and they're sometimes bitter and contentious. So what? I don't really care how Snopes is run as long as it consistently provides a high quality of information, while being aware of variations in the quality of their output from time to time. I have certainly found it a more reliable source of information, on average, than the Daily Mail or indeed Forbes over a period going back to its founding.
- Natsu 10y ago
  It's not the fact that there is a divorce settlement, but the contents thereof which are at issue. If this were entirely false (as I would have expected from the Daily Mail), they could've said as much. But there are quite a few things, like the allegations of criminal activity (e.g. embezzlement) going on at Snopes that reasonable people might have questions about with respect to their fact-checking operations.
  - anigbrowl 10y ago
    The fact that unfavorable information is out there doesn't obviate a contractual agreement not to discuss it in public per the settlement. Doing something that could cost you (as here) is the very foundation of contract. I neither know nor much care how their operation runs, and it's not my purpose to defend it. To be honest I've never especially liked the people who run it; their deconstructions of internet rumors are often snarky and shallow, and undermine their factual value with distracting tone issues - but that's how they choose to run their business. I'm just pointing to the fact of the site's general reliability as a fact-checking service over a long period.
    - Natsu 10y ago
      Right, I know they may be unable to discuss it even when it's public. I was saying if it were entirely made up (i.e. there is no such settlement to begin with), they could say as much.
- Turing_Machine 10y ago
  Kalev Leetaru's c.v.: http://kalevleetaru.com/vita.pdf http://kalevleetaru.com/vita.pdf David Mikkelson's c.v.: ? (disclaimer: I know Kalev slightly)
Natsu 10y ago
There's a lawyer's saying that when the facts are against you, you pound on the table. The Guardian won't even repeat, let alone attempt to refute, anything published in the Daily Mail. Just let that sink in for a moment: the Guardian is unable to dispute the Daily Mail on a factual level on this one. Instead they talk about everything and anything else rather than discuss the actual subject matter in the reports. "Nothing to see here, move along!" But even a stopped clock can be right twice a day. And this would hardly be the first real news broken by a tabloid. We live in interesting times. I just hope they're not the "interesting times" from that fictitious Chinese curse.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > There's a lawyer's saying that when the facts are against you, you pound on the table. The usual saying is, "When the law is on your side, argue the law; when the facts are on your side, argue the law; when neither is on your side, pound the table."
  - Natsu 10y ago
    Yeah, that's the one. Thank you.
  - ternaryoperator 10y ago
    The quote appears to be from Carl Sandburg[1] The variant I've heard is: "When the facts are against you, argue the law; when the law is against you, argue the facts; if both the facts and the law are against you, get a new client." [1] http://able2know.org/topic/98689-1 http://able2know.org/topic/98689-1
- DanBC 10y ago
  We don't need the Grauniad to refute stuff in the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail will print a full page front page, and then retract it in a tiny correction six months later on page 12. From New Statesman http://www.newstatesman.com/media/2013/12/man-who-hates-liberal-britain http://www.newstatesman.com/media/2013/12/man-who-hates-libe... > In the files of the Press Complaints Commission, you will find records of 687 complaints against the Mail which led either to a PCC adjudication or to a resolution negotiated, at least partially, after the PCC’s intervention. The number far exceeds that for any other British newspaper: the files show 394 complaints against the Sun, 221 against the Daily Telegraph, 115 against the Guardian. The complaints will serve as a charge sheet against the Mail and its editor. > This year, [2014] the Mail reported that disabled people are exempt from the bedroom tax; that asylum-seekers had “targeted” Scotland; that disabled babies were being euthanised under the Liverpool Care Pathway; that a Kenyan asylum-seeker had committed murders in his home country; that 878,000 recipients of Employment Support Allowance had stopped claiming “rather than face a fresh medical”; that a Portsmouth primary school had denied pupils water on the hottest day of the year because it was Ramadan; that wolves would soon return to Britain; that nearly half the electricity produced by windfarms was discarded. All these reports were false. Here's another example: A columnist accused a muslim family of being extremists. That was libel. She tweeted her apology at 2am. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/katie-hopkins-twitter-apology-muslim-family-extremism-links-mail-online-column-a7484436.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/katie-hopkins-twitt... I think the apology for incorrect claims should take as much space as the original claim. If you print a 92point headline on the front page that's libellous you should print the apology in 92 point on the front page. EDIT: And about libel in England. You need to be able to prove what you say is true. In the context of "false news" that doesn't seem to burdensome for newspapers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_defamation_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_defamation_law > Allowable defences are justification (i.e. the truth of the statement), fair comment (i.e., whether the statement was a view that a reasonable person could have held), and privilege (i.e., whether the statements were made in Parliament or in court, or whether they were fair reports of allegations in the public interest). An offer of amends is a barrier to litigation. A defamatory statement is presumed to be false, unless the defendant can prove its truth. Furthermore, to collect compensatory damages, a public official or public figure must prove actual malice (knowing falsity or reckless disregard for the truth). A private individual must only prove negligence (not exercising due care) to collect compensatory damages. In order to collect punitive damages, all individuals must prove actual malice.
camtarn 10y ago
It feels like Snopes outgrew its roots in urban-legend debunking, and decided to scale up to more real-time fact-checking - either because they saw a commercial opportunity, or just because they felt that they had a duty to do so. I was really surprised earlier this year when I realized they'd employed a staff - for so many years, Snopes was just Barbara and David Mikkelson. It's a pity if they did scale up for altruistic reasons, but in the process ended up out of their depth - fact-checking news stories in a highly controversial and partisan environment seems like an entirely different kettle of fish than unravelling easily-debunked urban legends.
- cloakandswagger 10y ago
  I don't think they are naive or altruistic at all; that same partisan environment offers huge amounts of wealth if you consign with one faction or another. I'm sure being an Official Facebook Fact Checker is a job that pays quite well.
justinlaster 10y ago
You're going to give a Forbes article more credence than Snopes? I still haven't seen anyone point to a substantive example of why Snopes should not be trusted.
- Turing_Machine 10y ago
  "I still haven't seen anyone point to a substantive example of why Snopes should not be trusted." You have it exactly backwards. I've never seen anyone give a good reason why Snopes should be trusted. The Mikkelsons were self-appointed "authorities" from the beginning, with zero actual expertise or credentials in most of the areas they opine upon. Edit: I should add that I view any organization that feels the need to use "truth", "fact", or similar in its name with an extremely jaundiced eye. It's reminiscent of Pravda and "Honest John's Used Cars". Organizations with actual earned credibility don't use names like that, as a rule.
  - justinlaster 10y ago
    > I've never seen anyone give a good reason why Snopes should be trusted. Their impressive library of detailed articles in where they factually report on myths and conspiracy theories?
    - Turing_Machine 10y ago
      "Factual reporting" according to whom?
      - justinlaster 10y ago
        According to the epistemological principle of not being proved wrong while containing a reasonable amount of evidence to indicate that their report is in all probability true. Why are you asking such a vague, open-ended question?
        Turing_Machine 10y ago

disposablezero 10y ago

File under "Why do SJWs go after Thunderf00t?" Money, ego, memetic dominance, etc.

alex- 10y ago

I guess a publication like the mail has two big reasons to feel threatened by a rise of fact checking sites. 1. It inhibits their ability to embellish stories and thus could effect revenue. 2. If you need to goto some trust worthy organisation to fact check. Why do you need to visit the publisher first?

deleted 10y ago
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ternaryoperator 10y ago
It's part of the "fake news" nihilism. You attack everything and anything that can limit the scope of the deceit you're creating.

deleted 10y ago

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ikeboy 10y ago

It's poor form for the guardian to not link the original article, at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4042194/Facebook-fact-checker-arbitrate-fake-news-accused-defrauding-website-pay-prostitutes-staff-includes-escort-porn-star-Vice-Vixen-domme.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4042194/Facebook-fac... The guardian article is a hit piece, and a poorly written one at that. It gives very little information and a lot of vague or indirect criticism. (Makes you think how much more effective hit pieces can be when the writer actually has something to work with: even this will probably convince a lot of people that critiques of snopes are invalid.) On priors I'd expect there to be issues with the mail article, but the guardian doesn't tell me what they are.

camtarn 10y ago
[edit] I completely misread the comment above as asking Hacker News to link to the original source article, not for the Guardian to have linked it. My bad, and I agree with the parent. For any other reputable news source I'd totally agree - but in this case, it's poor form to give the Daily Mail your ad revenue. This is not any regular newspaper: it is a mouthpiece for an organised hate campaign aimed at stirring up political tensions against immigrants, the disabled and out of work, and other 'undesirables' - which just also happens to be really good at writing social-media-friendly celebrity stories.
- ikeboy 10y ago
  If you're writing a journalistic article and you're criticising something, you better have a very good reason for not linking it. They barely summarised it. The reasons you gave don't rise to that level. If the other critique I made—that they don't actually mention anything wrong with the mail article— wouldn't be the case, it wouldn't be as bad. But the fact that they didn't make any substantive critiques of the article and didn't link it makes it a hit piece.
  - camtarn 10y ago
    I apologise - I totally misread your comment, and thought it was a request for Hacker News to have linked to the Daily Mail article. Yes, I agree that the Guardian should have linked to it.

crucini 10y ago

Applying the idea of "fact checking" to politically charged topics inherently raises problems. Snopes was a good site to find out if there were really alligators in the sewers. The Forbes article cited by rokosbasilisk here seems to demand a high standard of quality from fact checkers - but who is to pay for it? Now, The Guardian chose some headlines to illustrate this story with. Presumably the Guardian considers them good examples of "fake news". One of them is about the Clintons "stealing $200K worth of furniture" etc. Politifact has a surprisingly detailed page on this allegation. The result is, typically, gray. It wasn't $200K (suspiciously round number); closer to $190K. And the Clintons paid for or returned the "stolen" items; which either makes them "not stolen" or "stolen and returned". But the whole claim of "theft" rests on the items' designation as national property, which may not have been clear at the time. Given that this headline is an example of what the media (including Facebook) wants to shield the masses from - what then do they want the masses to hear? Is it (a) nothing, (b) inoculation/discrediting by labelling the meme as "fake news"; (c) a less sensationalized headlines?

skrowl 10y ago
Some political activists have no choice but to yell "Fake News!" to rationalize censorship now, because they basically used "Racist!" to censor views they didn't like so much that the word no longer has meaning. It makes you wonder what will come next. The funny (or sad) part is that silencing dissenting opinions via means like this is the very definition of fascism, but the people so quick to yell "fake news!" now are the same ones who were calling their friends fascist on social media 2 months ago just for supporting a different presidential candidate than they were.
- otalp 10y ago
  It is less a question of censorship and more a question of removing egregiously bad "news" that is explicitly written to collect views. If you believe flagging false headlines like “Michelle Obama DEMANDS Americans PAY UP To Give Her Mom A Cushy $160k Pension” is fascism, and that advocating war-crimes and bringing back libel laws like Trump did is not, I don't know what to say. There is a whole industry set up to profit from making fake news that they know is false: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/in-macedonias-fake-news-hub-teen-shows-ap-how-its-done/2016/12/02/98bce38e-b88d-11e6-939c-91749443c5e5_story.html?utm_term=.f80a4c745b5a https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/in-macedonias-fa... If you think any attempt to reduce profiteering by knowingly generating fake news that gets millions of shares is fascism, I'm not sure what isn't. I'm not sure if there has been any 'transition' from accusations of racism to fake news. The "birther" controversy, especially the way it treated by places like Brietbart was both racist and fake, I doubt that you dispute that. Trump retweeting Stormfront infographics that claim ridiculous stuff like 90% of white murder victims were killed by black people is both racist and fake. This is hardly a "liberal" or globalist position, even Fox news called out Trump on that. Regardless of political orientation, objective facts do exist. I don't believe in censorship, but I think if a site wants to flag a post saying "reasons why the moon landing is a globalist conspiracy" as false, I'm not going to cry that it's literally fascism.

kaleidic 10y ago

I learnt from Popper that the facts are theory - laden and from Feynman that science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. This whole attempt to control the discourse is doomed. There's no such thing as objectivity - ones understanding of the world is shaped by one's experiences and who one is, and that's true for institutions too. Character matters for an editorial institution, as does form. Snopes built its reputation one way, and became something quite different. And yet they have been granted a role of high influence by Facebook and thus it's in the spirit of good journalism to look into the extent to which they deserve this influence, and the character of the people involved does matter. One could say that the Mail also isn't a globalist paper and so that naturally sets their perspective against Snopes.

deleted 10y ago
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otalp 10y ago
>There's no such thing as objectivity Obama being born in Kenya is objectively false. Podesta running a child-trafficking ring in pizza places around Chicago is objectively false. Moon landing and flat earth conspiracies are objectively false. Thinking that Global warming is a hoax created by China is objectively false. I hate to bring up the cliché of "post-truth" but when you say things like "there is no such thing as objectivity" it is difficult not to do so. I'm not directing this at you in particular, but it's a common line of argument. Say Snopes write that the claim that Global Warming is a hoax is false, or that Obama isn't a secret Islamic radical. When they dispute something that many people believe in, the argument from a depressingly high number of people is not to scrutinise the facts that Snopes used and come up with flaws in their reasoning. It is to vaguely accuse them of being "globalist", say that their argument is not valid because their founder did something, and that there is no objective truth. Reality is complex, but the problem arises when people use this complexity to mean that any belief they hold, however unsubstantiated, cannot be falsified because everyone has an (((agenda))), which is defined as holding any view, on any subject, slightly different from their own. Sure, I think Snopes should be looked into, like any institution with influence. But I am far more interested in journalism that extensively rebuts many of their arguments- and they have made a lot of arguments, rather than providing fodder for the inevitable future ad-hominem rebuttals.

rplst8 10y ago

How does the saying go? The victors write the history books - the rest is just fake news.

bmpafa 10y ago

I regularly read Breitbart and Alex Jones (the ideological yangs to my yin), and they are apoplectic about this push towards fact checking. It's unsettling how readily their audience accepts their claims that snopes et al are liberal rags. I've done some due diligence in the past on snopes, and afaik any bias is well within the margin of error from zero. The narrative is that fact checking is a "globalist"-orchestrated move to suppress what they call the "independent media" in favor of the "MSM" (mainstream media). I argue that whenever someone spends more time defaming their critics than defending their stances and claims, readers ought to run away. But following these news sources, it seems like most readers are completely trapped in an unfalsifiable narrative. It's really disheartening to think that our current best weapon against this sort of charlatinism is screening content thru fact-checkers. But I do think these platforms are obligated here, and indeed long overdue. Tom Friedman makes a compelling argument about platforms' responsibilities here: 'Facebook et al want the NYT readership, the NYT page views, but none of the NYT overhead that comes with being accountable for the information they share. And that's bullshit.'