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Never liked their liberal bias for many of the things they report where the truth of something cannot be ascertained. I won't be donating. edit: wow, didn't
by martin1975 9y ago
Never liked their liberal bias for many of the things they report where the truth of something cannot be ascertained. I won't be donating.
edit:
wow, didn't know there was this many snopes lovers on here. Got downvoted to hell. Funny thing is, Silicon Valley's leadership/VCs is extremely conservative, yet the people who work for them, namely lots of people who read HN aren't... weird.
- crummy 9y agoCan you post examples of this? Just curious.
- ihsw2 9y agoNot providing an example but Snopes is apparently biased in every single direction -- left, right, up, down, etc. http://www.snopes.com/info/notes/politics.asp http://www.snopes.com/info/notes/politics.asp
- Karunamon 9y agoYeah, there's no journalistic standards over there (and granted I don't think they ever claimed otherwise). Snopes tries to be a debunker, but for political matters, it'll just be debunking in favor of whoever wrote the particular article. Great for chain letters and virus alerts, but there are probably better places to find out the truth behind the latest political outrage circulating among your friends.
- dEnigma 9y agoThat's a hilarious read. Every site that strives to be neutral should keep a list like that.
- ytNumbers 9y agoI don't even know where to begin... But, I guess I've got time to mention just one... With the number of somewhat mysterious deaths now over 100, this article looks like they gave up trying to debunk all these deaths about ten years ago. I guess the body count has simply become too much for them to keep up with. http://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/bodycount.asp http://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/bodycount.asp
- burkaman 9y agoAny particular numbers on that page you think are wrong or biased? All of the examples I've looked at so far are fair.
- untog 9y agoSo to be clear, the one objection you can articulate after your earlier blanket statement is that they've stopped updating a list of crank conspiracy deaths after every one they investigated turned out to be false? Face it, you want this absurd Clinton conspiracy theory to be true, and you dislike Snopes because they consistently debunk it. That's not bias, that's presenting truth.
- spcelzrd 9y agoYou own a VHS copy of Loose Change, don't you?
- patorjk 9y ago> Claim: Bill Clinton has quietly done away with several dozen people who possessed incriminating evidence about him. > Rating: False I think you're mistaking your own bias for their's. They have 48 people on that list. Are you insisting that there need to be more deaths that need to be debunked in order for that claim to be rated as something other than False? Unless you have a really good argument for a particular name or names, you come off as someone who will never be satisfied.
- pcwalton 9y ago> With the number of somewhat mysterious deaths now over 100, this article looks like they gave up trying to debunk all these deaths about ten years ago. That's because the "Clinton Body Count" is an textbook example of a Gish Gallop [1], a bad-faith debating tactic in which charlatans spread nonsense by spewing forth so much of it that opponents have no hope of countering it all with facts. [1]: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop
- MartinCron 9y agoI had never heard of this before, thank you so much for connecting this to a name. Aha, you've only bothered to refute 48 of my 100 bullshit claims, clear evidence liberal bias!
- livejamie 9y agoTo save you time: No, he can't
- brightball 9y agoWasn't there some huge thing in the news about one of their political fact checkers being any actual liberal blogger? I seem to remember that from a couple of years back. EDIT: Why was the question worthy of a down vote?
- j_bond 9y agoKim LaCapria I think.
- GrinningFool 9y agoThere was a blog post that got traction anyway. But why is that relevant? I (and assume most people) are capable of assuming different modes of writing, including modes devoid of opinion; or with opinion carefully noted as such.
- brightball 9y agoParent just asked for an example and I remembered that. People who feel strongly enough about something to write legitimately leaning fluff pieces are not the personality type that I expect to be able to assume writing modes devoid of opinion, personally. I know very few people who aren't considered moderate/independent who I believe could pull that off. These are the same people who've been proven to disbelieve factual information when it contradicts their world view. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128490874 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1284908... That is the type of person that I would not trust in a "fact checker" position, especially one in which their version of events will be cited by others as "fact".
- sgift 9y agoLiberal bias?
- dhbarnett 9y agoIt's sort of like saying fake news. It's easier than changing your position when confronted with inconvenient facts.
- martin1975 9y agorocks are hard, water's wet... no one denies those facts. But if someone suggests that Seth Rich shot himself twice in the back of his head..... and Snopes calls it false, does that make Snopes left or right leaning? How is that quest for "value free facts" going for you?
- jaredsohn 9y agoI think the real point of snopes is that it includes a lot of the information you may want to consider when exploring the truth of something. Is it okay to disagree with Snopes? Sure, but you should indicate what facts it isn't taking into account or which inaccuracies are included in its write up. This lets you have a more substantive discussion than just believing the original claim or just dismissing Snopes as fake news.
- mrkrabo 9y agoIf they need money they can just ask the DNC ;P
- burkaman 9y agoI honestly don't think I've ever heard anyone accuse Snopes of bias. Are you confusing them with Politifact?
- wolrah 9y agoLots of people do it, usually after someone posts a Snopes article proving that the thing the complainer posted is BS.
- patorjk 9y agoLike others have stated, I'd like some examples of this. I was first introduced to Snopes by a conservative coworker of mine. From everything I've seen of the site, they're pretty good at trying to be neutral.
- rfrank 9y ago1. Fact-Checking Snopes: Website’s Political ‘Fact-Checker’ Is Just A Failed Liberal Blogger: http://dailycaller.com/2016/06/17/fact-checking-snopes-websites-political-fact-checker-is-just-a-failed-liberal-blogger/ http://dailycaller.com/2016/06/17/fact-checking-snopes-websi... 2. Snopes, Which Will Be Fact-Checking For Facebook, Employs Leftists Almost Exclusively: http://dailycaller.com/2016/12/16/snopes-facebooks-new-fact-checker-employs-leftists-almost-exclusively/ http://dailycaller.com/2016/12/16/snopes-facebooks-new-fact-... 3. The Daily Mail Snopes Story And Fact Checking The Fact Checkers: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-daily-mail-snopes-story-and-fact-checking-the-fact-checkers/#7e010910227f https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-dai... 4. Who’s Checking the Fact Checkers?: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/peter-roff/2013/05/28/study-finds-fact-checkers-biased-against-republicans https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/peter-roff/2013/05/28/s... Oh HN, downvoting what was asked for. This is why nobody likes talking to you about politics and you think your minority opinions are the majority. >One person in Silicon Valley even asked me to sign a confidentiality agreement before she would talk to me, as she worried she’d lose her job if people at her company knew she was a strong Trump supporter. - What I Heard From Trump Supporters, sama. > The fact that, as the Lichter study shows, "A majority of Democratic statements (54 percent) were rated as mostly or entirely true, compared to only 18 percent of Republican statements," probably has more to do with how the statements were picked and the subjective bias of the fact checker involved than anything remotely empirical. Likewise, the fact that "a majority of Republican statements (52 percent) were rated as mostly or entirely false, compared to only 24 percent of Democratic statements" probably has more to do with spinning stories than it does with evaluating statements.
- Pxtl 9y agoWait, you're complaining about the bias of a site and your first two references are tucker carlson's site?
- accountyaccount 9y agoThere's a lot of stupidity on both ends of the political spectrum, but the nature of conservatism seems more prone to conspiracy generation because it's essentially a bunch of political viewpoints that culminate to: government is bad. Just look at a list of popular conspiracy theories, if you start to label each one... there are generally common threads of anti-government rhetoric. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conspiracy_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conspiracy_theories Everything from chemtrails to roswell and the moon landing hinge on "the government is trying to fool you" rhetoric. There are plenty of dangerously bad liberal-leaning conspiracy theories (liberals and conservatives share fault for anti-vax), but it seems fairly obvious that conservative-based theories outpace them in volume.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> the nature of conservatism seems more prone to conspiracy generation True, but probably not for the reason you describe. Anxiety is a prominent undertone in conservative psychology [1]. That is the nexus conservatism shares with conspiracy theories. (Note that "liberal" and "conservative@ don't neatly map to modern political parties in almost any democracy.) [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/calling-truce-political-wars/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/calling-truce-pol...
- martin1975 9y agoyeah, as opposed to liberal trash that makes every corporation that hires nearly 100 million Americans evil... I get your point. Perhaps its something about "truth assessment" websites that gives me the heebie-jeebies.
- taway7241111 9y ago>the nature of conservatism seems more prone to conspiracy generation because it's essentially a bunch of political viewpoints that culminate to: government is bad. As opposed to a bunch of viewpoints that essentially culminate into "white people are bad" "men are bad" "rich people are bad" "businesses are bad" "religion is bad" and lately "free speech is bad". You talking about a group that has completely whipped itself into the following frenzies over the past several months: 0) Russia has secret blackmail information that includes Donald Trump urinating on underage prostitutes. 1) Donald Trump is an actual Nazi Fascist and the future of the world is in danger. You should flee the country. 2) Donald Trump is secretly a Russian Spy. 3) JILL STEIN is secretly a Russian Spy. These aren't fringe conspiracy theories. These are mainstream things being pumped on shows like Rachel Maddow's. EVERYON has their loonies, and there are just as many on both sides of the spectrum. Othering conservatives helps no-one, and IMHO is the type of thing that caused DJT (who is a joke) to be elected.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- beat 9y agoFacts have a known liberal bias. - Rob Corddry
- pyroinferno 9y ago>He is known for his work as a correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart The irony
- frou_dh 9y agoRight up until Bob insists he's a woman and then a fact is hatespeech?
- sctb 9y agoThe guidelines ask us to not complain about downvotes, and it's especially important that we don't make generalizations about the community at the same time. It's mere provocation and doesn't help us towards the kind of thoughtful discussion we're after here.