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Snopes pulls out of its fact-checking partnership with Facebook
- sarcasmatwork 8y agoGood! Snopes != a fact checker. https://outline.com/EcMCbp https://outline.com/EcMCbp
- Zecar 8y agoYeah not even close, they're notoriously biased. EDIT: Actually I don't even think biased is a fair characterization, "maliciously hell bent on being a font of propaganda with the intent that the ends justify the means" is probably a more accurate way to put it.
- Pharmakon 8y agoCould you link to some relevant examples?
- Zecar 8y agoAbsolutely. Last time I looked they refused to update their fact check about Nathan Phillips false claims of Vietnam service.
- eli 8y agoWhat part is wrong?
- Zecar 8y agoThe part where he is on video claiming to be a Vietnam vet.
- int_19h 8y agoHere's the takeaway on that page now: "It’s difficult to determine at this point whether Phillips has deliberately misrepresented the nature of his service, whether he has been so vague and ambiguous in many of his descriptions (unintentionally or otherwise) that misinterpretations have entered his narrative, or whether he has tried to be accurate but may have just occasionally slipped up in his many, many hours of conversation and sometimes neglected to include the qualifiers about his service that he has used in many other videos and press interviews. Nonetheless, at times it has certainly sounded as though Phillips was trying to foster the impression that he had both served during the Vietnam War and had been deployed to Vietnam at some point during his service, even if he didn’t literally say so." Which part of it is inaccurate?
- Zecar 8y ago> Which part of it is inaccurate? ?? I don't know, perhaps the part where the guy is literally on video claiming to be a vietnam vet? You folks are utterly baffling. But go ahead and downvote. https://twitter.com/kerpen/status/1088285433673515009 https://twitter.com/kerpen/status/1088285433673515009
- int_19h 8y agoThe issue at hand wasn't whether he ever misrepresented himself like that, but whether he did so in the context of this particular event - i.e. when he was being interviewed. I'm not aware of any video evidence of that, nor did any outlets referenced the video you linked to as their basis for the claims that he's a Vietnam vet. The reason why they did so is because he told them that he is a "Vietnam era vet", which is misleading (as Snopes rightly points out), but not outright false.
- Pharmakon 8y agoWhat problem do you find there? I also hope that your response to a request for support in favor of a very strong claim isn’t to vaguely reference a single example. The fact that the example seems nonexistent makes it a bit worse, but not by much.
- Zecar 8y agoThe part where he is on video claiming to be a Vietnam vet.
- gpvos 8y agoCan you give some examples?
- 51lver 8y agoYour bias is showing.
- deogeo 8y agoExamples of false or misleading fact-checks by Snopes would be far more persuasive. That article only calls into question the neutrality of the people behind Snopes, but for all I know they could still put their biases behind them when at work.
- jtbayly 8y agoHere you go: http://thefederalist.com/2018/03/02/facebook-apologizes-for-threatening-to-censor-the-babylon-bee/ http://thefederalist.com/2018/03/02/facebook-apologizes-for-...
- fwip 8y ago1. It's the federalist, so okay. Here's the link to the "misleading" Snopes story in question: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cnn-washing-machine/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cnn-washing-machine/ 2. They said that a satire story was not true, which, of course it isn't. They said it was satire, which it is. 3. Facebook automatically took action against the fact-checked site, the very agreement that Snopes is now pulling out of. Which of those bullet points means that Snopes is bad?
- jtbayly 8y agoThe part that says a satire article is "false." The part labelling the following sentence a "claim": "CNN invested in an industrial-sized washing machine to help their journalists and news anchors spin the news before publication." The part where they instructed FB to stop allowing people to see this satire piece because it would spread misinformation. The part where they knew their actions would go a long ways to potentially destroying the ad-based satire publication. That's not fact checking.
- elxx 8y agoI don't see how this is on Snopes at all. Facebook users (and even some news organizations) fall for The Onion articles all the time and report them as fact. Snopes debunks them - that's their job, that's what they have always done. Facebook failed to accommodate for satirical publications when they introduced their "fake news" flagging. This is entirely their fault.
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- godman_8 8y agoGreat...this is bringing the crazies out of hiding. Wether or not you disagree with facts, Snopes and others provide their reasoning and sources. If you don't like the truth, at least look at why they draw the conclusions. However, if the crazies actually did that, they most likely wouldn't be crazies anymore, and yet here we are. Note: I ended up having to replace a word with "crazies" because the real snowflakes couldn't handle it.
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- athenot 8y agoOddly, it seems that Facebook needs Snopes more than Snopes needed Facebook.
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- IronWolve 8y agoWhen hyperbole, exaggeration, rounding, jokes are called false and lies, its not a fact checker its a political tool.
- elefanten 8y agoWhen hyperbole, exaggeration, rounding and jokes are repackaged, decontextualized and repeated as sober truth, they become false / lies. Do you have examples of Snopes going out of their way to label hyperbole, etc. as lies in a rhetorical / dishonest manner? Or do you have examples of them clarifying what's hyperbole vs reality? I ask because people usually produce examples of the latter.
- Mirioron 8y agoThis is an example of snopes not doing their job well: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nathan-phillips-vietnam-veteran/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nathan-phillips-vietnam-ve... Snopes claimed that Phillips hadn't claimed that he was a Vietnam veteran until the 24th of January, when a Twitter post became popular with that information. Apparently these clips were found on Phillips' Facebook page. You would expect a fact-checking website to check facts. At least check their Facebook page. This isn't a perfect example of what you're asking for examples of, but it is a very recent one, where relying on snopes would've kept you misinformed.
- eridius 8y agoI just actually looked at what you cited and you're mischaracterizing it. The video was found on the page NativeYouthAlliance, not Nathan Phillips's personal page. It's also something like a year old, and a quick skim shows that this page posts a lot of videos. I for one do not expect Snopes to watch every single video posted to the facebook page of a youth alliance on the off chance that Phillips will say something relevant in it. I don't know what the page said originally, but it looks like this facebook video didn't even give them cause to update their "Unproven" rating or the "What's True" and "What's False" sections of this rating. In fact, if anything it demonstrates that Snopes reacts to new information coming to light exactly as you'd expect them to: they update their article accordingly and in a timely fashion.
- zaksoup 8y agoit is wild to me how many people are in this thread saying "Snopes is partisan" or "Snopes is biased" or "Snopes is not a real fact checker" and who are also entirely unable to provide any actual evidence. A link to an article on the Federalist (laughably partisan) is not "evidence" any more than pointing out that they have fact-checked satirical sites is. https://reddit.com/r/atetheonion https://reddit.com/r/atetheonion is a thing for a reason, and in every post about Satire Snopes goes out of their way to highlight that they are responding to Satire. Your own biases are showing and it's kind of a bad look.
- makomk 8y agoI was going to point out a really astounding Snopes fuck-up where they took a proposed EPA rule placing heavy new restrictions on asbestos, wrongly claimed that the EPA were actually removing restrictions on asbestos usage and opening up the floodgates to new usage, and then had the gall to claim that the EPA were the dishonest ones for pointing out their screw-up. Unfortunately, explaining this would require linking to the original version of their article, and since Snopes block the Wayback Machine and Archive.is seems to be having issues right now I can't do that.
- ShamelessC 8y agoSo what you're saying is snopes owned up to mistake and removed the article? Sounds ethical to me. I'm not saying you're wrong but I'd love to hear your side of it.
- makomk 8y agoNope, what I'm saying is that after the EPA contacted them to point out that they'd got the factual basis for their fact check horribly wrong they pretended they'd never based it on that, kept the same conclusion through a new and absurd argument, and wrote a blog post insisting the EPA were the dishonest ones for claiming they ever got it wrong. That's why I need the original version of the article - to compare their original error to how they presented it afterwards. The article is: "Is the EPA Allowing for the Approval of New Asbestos-Containing Products?" The original basis for their "Mostly True" conclusion http://archive.is/w834Y http://archive.is/w834Y is this: "The first, more generally, is that the EPA could have used the currently unfolding overhaul of the TSCA — which began at the end of the Obama administration and has continued along a very different path under Trump — to ban any new uses of asbestos, something that had been the case at the end of the last administration. Instead, they are explicitly allowing new uses, but with the caveat that the EPA first evaluate possible potential new uses based on “risk evaluation, select studies, and use the best available science.” They link to this previous ban on "the use of asbestos in products that have not historically contained asbestos": https://archive.is/3F4CC https://archive.is/3F4CC which has been in place since 1989. In reality, the proposed EPA rule specifically says that this ban remains in place. The SNUR approval process replaces the free-for-all on unbanned asbestos products, not the existing ban. (The "at the end of the last administration" bit is also gratuitous politicization, the ban's three decades old.) Now here's how they describe the original version of their fact check in the blog post at https://www.snopes.com/news/2018/09/01/epa-suggested-change-rating-asbestos-story-heres-declined/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2018/09/01/epa-suggested-change-... which tries to make the EPA look like the dishonest ones: "On 11 June 2018, Snopes.com published a fact check titled “Is the EPA Allowing for the Approval of New Asbestos-Containing Products?” In that article, we rated the claim that “the Environmental Protection Agency will allow new asbestos products to enter the market” as “mostly true,” based on the fact that the EPA had proposed a new rule for asbestos that would (at first) block some currently unregulated but inactive uses of asbestos while (later) providing a framework for those unregulated uses’ formal approval should they pass a safety review." This is a broadly accurate description of the proposed rule, but as we've seen it's not what the original article said. They then go on to make it look like the EPA is playing dirty tricks with the definition of "new uses" by "defining this term in a legal sense, based on a 1991 court ruling, as “asbestos products that were not being manufactured, processed or imported” as of 12 July 1989". In reality, the EPA were pointing out Snopes' own dishonest conflation of the narrow legal sense in which "new uses" were banned previously with the kinds of usage covered by the Significant New Use Rule. Next, they justify keeping the original conclusion based on this argument: "Both of these objections, which we have addressed in an update to our original post, present an incomplete view of the controversy. Instead, they mask the fact that the proposed legislation allows a pathway for certain old (and inactive) uses of asbestos to return to the market with the EPA’s blessing. The EPA, via the publication of two documents, laid out a process that allows for uses of asbestos that have been effectively dead (thanks to litigation and health risks that their use carries), to be granted official approval using a safety review that does not allow scientists to consider a considerable bulk of information demonstrating asbestos’ cancer risk." This is really tendentious. The new rule is (intentionally) terrible for anyone who wants to manufacture or import asbestos products covered by it. They have to contact the EPA 90 days in advance and essentially prove that their proposed use is safe. If the EPA drags their feet on responding or decides there's not enough evidence, they can't go ahead. The EPA have indicated that it's unlikely anything would meet this standard. Even if a company got past this they'd still get sued by private litigants. Finally, the part about excluding information from safety assessments is based on this which looks totally wrong: "The second problem, more specifically, concerns the way in which the EPA has proposed to evaluate that risk. In May 2018, the EPA published a document known as the “Problem Formulation of the Risk Evaluation for Asbestos,” which establishes the scientific approach the EPA will take in evaluating these new uses. Significantly, their approach will not include information from existing, or “legacy” uses of asbestos, despite the significant body of work around health risks stemming from those uses" The EPA document in question https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2018-06/documents/asbestos_problem_formulation_05-31-18.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2018-06/documents... just says that they're only assessing the risks of asbestos uses that are currently ongoing. It says absolutely nothing about excluding evidence from historic uses of asbestos in general; they just won't publish any conclusions about their safety. It also means that this is totally irrelevant to the SNUR which is entirely about those historical uses. (Which makes trying to continue those uses an even dicier proposition. The SNUR means companies have to wait for the EPA to complete their risk assessment and hope it somehow turns out positive.)
- 0x262d 8y agofact checking has always been a silly, hopeless attempt to find a technocratic solution to fundamentally political problems.
- fitpolar 8y agoIt's a hopeless quest until AI reaches a certain level of objective interpretation. Regarding humans, most people who are capable of researching truth without any bias, don't have a voice. Human history is riddled with partisan extremists presenting biased information as neutral and factual. Snopes is no exception.
- deogeo 8y agoDo you trust whoever trained or is controlling the AI?
- fitpolar 8y agoAt this point nothing is trustworthy. But I have more faith that AI is going to do a better job in future than humans ever have. We may be 100 years away from that though, or 1000 years. Who knows?
- 52-6F-62 8y agoAnd then this AI is the sole bearer of all ultimate, unarguable truth regardless. Like a god you mean?
- fitpolar 8y agoIs that your interpretation? Mine is the opposite: "At this point nothing is trustworthy". Just saying that humans have an extremely poor track record at compromising information for political gain. Anything would be better at this point, you can't get any worse.
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- Fauntleroy 8y agoI can't believe the massive number of HN users here who are willingly throwing critical thinking under the bus just because of political bias. It's maddening that people are making the jump from "Snopes posted something possibly incorrect about soda cans" and "Snopes one time fact checked shitty satire" directly to "Snopes is untrustworthy". Everything is imperfect, even fact checking groups. If you're going to throw them under the bus for these tiny errors, I sure hope you've already incinerated every computing device you own, because boy do you have some things to learn about them.
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- ijb03qv7 8y agoThe problem with a website like Snopes is that, if you want to claim to be an unbiased gatekeeper of the truth, you better be perfect. Since humans are imperfect, a site like Snopes can not exist.
- fitpolar 8y agoI don't know why this would get downvoted. Seems reasonable, whether it's Snopes or anyone. Similar to Apple claiming "it just works", you better make sure it works. Or Google proclaiming "don't be evil". Etc.
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago> Similar to Apple claiming "it just works", you better make sure it works. My Mac got a kernel panic yesterday. My response was not to swear off Apple products forever.
- fitpolar 8y ago> My Mac got a kernel panic yesterday. My response is not to swear off Apple products forever. Yet your response is to downvote everything you disagree with? Not swearing off Apple products forever is your personal choice. Personally I agree with that. But I know plenty of people who DO choose to swear off Apple products when something doesn't work. That's also their choice, and I don't have a problem with that.
- ransford 8y agoWas the $100K mentioned in this article the total amount Facebook gave Snopes? Because that's, like, one new-grad signing bonus.
- quadrangle 8y agoFor a particularly high-demand technical engineering position maybe. For other things… well, Facebook pays folks in the Philippines something like $2/hour to get PTSD while screening posts for the worst content the worst humans are able to generate (beheadings for example). Where would you expect fact-checking to fit in?
- abtinf 8y agoRealClearPolitics has an interesting guide to the different fact-check providers. In particular, it calls out the difference between fact-checks and opinion-checks. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/fact_check_review/ https://www.realclearpolitics.com/fact_check_review/
- jamesku 8y agoGood! Snopes is a cancer rewiring the brains of youth as to what impartial fact checking actually should be. Snopes passing off as factual is exactly the same as Fox's previous rhetoric of being "fair and balanced", just on the other side of the political spectrum. There are a few examples already in this thread on Snopes bias with inaccurate inclusions. But historians know that you are just as biased in what you choose to omit, as much as what you choose to include. An example would be the way they paint Antifa in a positive light. Why is there nothing on the recent arrests of Antifa members for beating up an innocent Jewish bystander, and 2 Mexican-American marines while yelling racial slurs? https://www.snopes.com/?s=anitfa+marines https://www.snopes.com/?s=anitfa+marines https://www.snopes.com/?s=did+anitfa+beat+up+marines%3F https://www.snopes.com/?s=did+anitfa+beat+up+marines%3F https://www.snopes.com/?s=did+antifa+beat+up+a+jew%3F https://www.snopes.com/?s=did+antifa+beat+up+a+jew%3F
- jamesku 8y agoLots of racists on here downvoting a comment calling out white males racially attacking Mexicans. Arrests have been made, this is all reported: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6648081/Antifa-Washington-DC-boss-charged-ethnic-intimidation-mob-attacked-two-Marines.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6648081/Antifa-Wash...
- Steko 8y agoI think you've mistaken Snopes, a fact checker, for a news website although they have a small section for news. The reason they don't have a fact check entry on this item might just be because liberals aren't widely spinning conspiracy theories that this Antifa person is framed/innocent.
- nitwit005 8y agoIf Facebook was only willing to devote $100,000 to it, it seems like they basically spent the minimum amount possible so that they could claim they were doing something. The expense doesn't remotely match up to the scale of the problem.
- rhizome 8y ago...or the value of the work.
- incongruity 8y agoThat’s not really a new MO for them - remember, this is a site that uses unpaid content creators to attract other unpaid content creators and then sells access to us and knowledge about us to businesses and political interests among others. Figuring out how to pay very little and suck out a lot of value is what their business is built on.
- rhizome 8y agoThe mere definition of profit does not excuse Snopes' having got a bad deal.
- SEJeff 8y agoValuable to whom? Those false narratives gets lots of likes, shares, and comments. It almost seems that facebook is financially motivated to encourage things that are viral. These things make them more money.
- irascible 8y ago100g.. couch change for fb to exploit fact checkers and name drop snopes in congress. What a fucking joke. Try 100 million, next time you short sighted money grubbers. I swear fb should be dismantled for this pathetic investment alone. You think this is a fucking game zuck?