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I would prefer that people stop taking the word of Snopes about anything. They have zero qualifications, credentials, or expertise to pass judgment on any of th

I would prefer that people stop taking the word of Snopes about anything. They have zero qualifications, credentials, or expertise to pass judgment on any of the subjects they opine upon. It's a real mystery how they managed to get so many people to consider them infallible. "Snopes said (whatever)" has exactly as much credibility as "Some random guy said (whatever)", i.e., none whatsoever. Edit: in response to some of the comments below, there's a lengthy discussion of some of the problems with Snopes here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-daily-mail-snopes-story-and-fact-checking-the-fact-checkers/#2024e828227f https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-dai...

mikeash 9y ago
They always explain their sources and reasoning, so you can easily check for yourself.
- jdminhbg 9y ago
  They didn't exactly source their claim that "some readers took the story seriously."
  - eridius 9y ago
    I think the source for that is the fact that some readers reported the story to Facebook. The whole reason Snopes even fact-checked it is because they were asked to.
    - jdminhbg 9y ago
      I think that's backwards. Facebook is using Snopes as a source for detecting fake news, so once this showed up on Snopes as "False," FB flagged it as fake.
      - eridius 9y ago
        From the article: > What more likely happened is that some trigger-happy activists who don't appreciate Christian and conservative satire reported The Babylon Bee to Facebook, setting off an investigation by Snopes. Obviously not a definitive answer as to what happened, but it seems plausible. Surely Snopes doesn't proactively fact-check every single article posted to Facebook, they wouldn't have the manpower to do that. It makes sense that they'd fact-check only after people report the story to Facebook.
        jdminhbg 9y ago
        Aha, I missed that, thanks. So it looks like it's a two-way street for reporting/flagging. Could've been either one, but I think your explanation makes more sense.
        jsgo 9y ago
        And it'd be my guess that they probably source some of their topics to research based on search results where users abandoned w/o clicking a result. Though I don't know that to be a fact as I don't work for them/speak with anyone from their team/etc., so I wouldn't try to leverage it in an article I'd write if I were a writer. Someone else mentioned that along with the true, false, undetermined (or is maybe distinct? I can't remember), and true/false flags, maybe they should just bite the bullet and add a "satire" flag. Essentially you're saying, yes, it is false, however it isn't meant to be taken seriously. Then Facebook can either do nothing or flag it as satire which I don't know the correct path here: for me, most of the fun of satire is not being presented "it is satire" up front and then picking it up pretty early on. Then again, not flagging it as satire would then leave it open for people to assume that it is legitimate as it wasn't flagged as fake. So unfortunate that fun can't be had anymore because some are generally intent on deceiving.
  - mikeash 9y ago
    That isn’t exactly the relevant question when talking about their reliability.
  - jsgo 9y ago
    perhaps they're storing search results where a user didn't click on anything (ie they didn't find the answer to what they were looking for) so they then investigated what the query "cnn industrial washer" or whatever was about and then fact checked it? Metrics are a pretty normal thing to capture.
macintux 9y ago
Do you have some examples of Snopes providing bad information? They're certainly not flawless, but it's a useful resource, and most of the people I've seen dismiss them out of hand seem to have a political interest in them being wrong.
- Sophira 9y ago
  In one case they deliberately provided a whole category of false information in an attempt to spread awareness of False Authority Syndrome.[0] They wanted to make the same point that the comment you replied to is making! [0] https://www.snopes.com/lost/false.asp https://www.snopes.com/lost/false.asp
Sophira 9y ago
Even Snopes themselves have tried to tell people this.[0] They created a category called "The Repository of Lost Legends" composed entirely of false, made-up myths and called them "true", to show people what False Authority Syndrome was. People believed them anyway. [0] https://www.snopes.com/lost/false.asp https://www.snopes.com/lost/false.asp
macintux 9y ago
If Snopes didn’t provide references for their fact checks, that Forbes commentary would be alarming. As it is, it reads like a hit piece. Are they biased? I’m sure. Everyone is.
- smsm42 9y ago
  Not everyone gets to kick somebody off Facebook because they didn't like them, though. Snopes has been awarded this privilege, for some reason.
  - macintux 9y ago
    So now we're going to blame Snopes for Facebook's failings?
    - smsm42 9y ago
      No, we're going to blame them both for raising the level of informational entropy - Snopes for producing the noise like "fact check" of satire and Facebook for anointing the noise-machine of Snopes as the ultimate arbiter of truth.
smsm42 9y ago
Well, at least they are smart enough to know a satire site when it says "this is a satire site". Apparently, some people are not below admitting they are in desperate need of such service. Not smart enough of course to not confuse factual "true/false" ratings with noting that this is a satire, which can not be true or false since it is not a statement of fact (it's like rating Little Red Riding Hood story "false" because obviously wolves can't talk) - but this may be their premium service offering or something?
jsgo 9y ago
Personally, because there are so many sketchy things on Facebook, this is what I tend to do: 1) go to snopes, search for the article 2) read the article, specifically using the links to their sources and reviewing those. 3) if still unsure, do some more searching. 4) if after steps 1 and 2 it can be deemed that, yeah, whatever was posted to Facebook was a crock, then I'll share a link to the Snopes article and in the case where there's a video being sourced, link to said video and pertinent timestamps. So yeah. Used right, Snopes is a good resource. If you (not you you, you generally) just blindly take the word of anything regardless of the source, well, that's interesting.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
marshray 9y ago
Poster on HN says Snopes has exactly as much credibility as some random guy. Got it.

mikeash 9y ago

They always explain their sources and reasoning, so you can easily check for yourself.

jdminhbg 9y ago
They didn't exactly source their claim that "some readers took the story seriously."
- eridius 9y ago
  I think the source for that is the fact that some readers reported the story to Facebook. The whole reason Snopes even fact-checked it is because they were asked to.
  - jdminhbg 9y ago
    I think that's backwards. Facebook is using Snopes as a source for detecting fake news, so once this showed up on Snopes as "False," FB flagged it as fake.
    - eridius 9y ago
      From the article: > What more likely happened is that some trigger-happy activists who don't appreciate Christian and conservative satire reported The Babylon Bee to Facebook, setting off an investigation by Snopes. Obviously not a definitive answer as to what happened, but it seems plausible. Surely Snopes doesn't proactively fact-check every single article posted to Facebook, they wouldn't have the manpower to do that. It makes sense that they'd fact-check only after people report the story to Facebook.
      - jdminhbg 9y ago
        Aha, I missed that, thanks. So it looks like it's a two-way street for reporting/flagging. Could've been either one, but I think your explanation makes more sense.
      - jsgo 9y ago
        And it'd be my guess that they probably source some of their topics to research based on search results where users abandoned w/o clicking a result. Though I don't know that to be a fact as I don't work for them/speak with anyone from their team/etc., so I wouldn't try to leverage it in an article I'd write if I were a writer. Someone else mentioned that along with the true, false, undetermined (or is maybe distinct? I can't remember), and true/false flags, maybe they should just bite the bullet and add a "satire" flag. Essentially you're saying, yes, it is false, however it isn't meant to be taken seriously. Then Facebook can either do nothing or flag it as satire which I don't know the correct path here: for me, most of the fun of satire is not being presented "it is satire" up front and then picking it up pretty early on. Then again, not flagging it as satire would then leave it open for people to assume that it is legitimate as it wasn't flagged as fake. So unfortunate that fun can't be had anymore because some are generally intent on deceiving.
- mikeash 9y ago
  That isn’t exactly the relevant question when talking about their reliability.
- jsgo 9y ago
  perhaps they're storing search results where a user didn't click on anything (ie they didn't find the answer to what they were looking for) so they then investigated what the query "cnn industrial washer" or whatever was about and then fact checked it? Metrics are a pretty normal thing to capture.

macintux 9y ago

Do you have some examples of Snopes providing bad information? They're certainly not flawless, but it's a useful resource, and most of the people I've seen dismiss them out of hand seem to have a political interest in them being wrong.

Sophira 9y ago
In one case they deliberately provided a whole category of false information in an attempt to spread awareness of False Authority Syndrome.[0] They wanted to make the same point that the comment you replied to is making! [0] https://www.snopes.com/lost/false.asp https://www.snopes.com/lost/false.asp

Sophira 9y ago

Even Snopes themselves have tried to tell people this.[0] They created a category called "The Repository of Lost Legends" composed entirely of false, made-up myths and called them "true", to show people what False Authority Syndrome was. People believed them anyway. [0] https://www.snopes.com/lost/false.asp https://www.snopes.com/lost/false.asp

macintux 9y ago

If Snopes didn’t provide references for their fact checks, that Forbes commentary would be alarming. As it is, it reads like a hit piece. Are they biased? I’m sure. Everyone is.

smsm42 9y ago
Not everyone gets to kick somebody off Facebook because they didn't like them, though. Snopes has been awarded this privilege, for some reason.
- macintux 9y ago
  So now we're going to blame Snopes for Facebook's failings?
  - smsm42 9y ago
    No, we're going to blame them both for raising the level of informational entropy - Snopes for producing the noise like "fact check" of satire and Facebook for anointing the noise-machine of Snopes as the ultimate arbiter of truth.

smsm42 9y ago

Well, at least they are smart enough to know a satire site when it says "this is a satire site". Apparently, some people are not below admitting they are in desperate need of such service. Not smart enough of course to not confuse factual "true/false" ratings with noting that this is a satire, which can not be true or false since it is not a statement of fact (it's like rating Little Red Riding Hood story "false" because obviously wolves can't talk) - but this may be their premium service offering or something?

jsgo 9y ago

Personally, because there are so many sketchy things on Facebook, this is what I tend to do: 1) go to snopes, search for the article 2) read the article, specifically using the links to their sources and reviewing those. 3) if still unsure, do some more searching. 4) if after steps 1 and 2 it can be deemed that, yeah, whatever was posted to Facebook was a crock, then I'll share a link to the Snopes article and in the case where there's a video being sourced, link to said video and pertinent timestamps. So yeah. Used right, Snopes is a good resource. If you (not you you, you generally) just blindly take the word of anything regardless of the source, well, that's interesting.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

marshray 9y ago

Poster on HN says Snopes has exactly as much credibility as some random guy. Got it.