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Snopes fact-checking the satire site Babylon Bee suggests to me that their days of being a valuable resource are over. Any reasonable people at Snopes apparentl

by wl 7y ago

Snopes fact-checking the satire site Babylon Bee suggests to me that their days of being a valuable resource are over. Any reasonable people at Snopes apparently no longer have any influence.

dev_dull 7y ago
I’m glad I’m not the only one wondering what was up with that. Also, snopes is not an innocent reference site. Their “debunking” of satire like Babylonbee can cause those sites to be deplatformed.
- michaelbuckbee 7y ago
  This seems less like Snopes being at issue than Facebook not understanding nuance.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - wl 7y ago
    Snopes chose to target, among other things, a Babylon Bee article talking about how CNN bought industrial laundry equipment to spin their news. The only people who could possibly be confused that this is real news are toddlers who have not yet developed abstract thinking and would be confused by the whole thing anyway. It's a strong indication that Snopes is engaging in the culture war as an interested party. It's not a good look for a supposedly disinterested fact checker.
    - pwinnski 7y ago
      > The only people who could possibly be confused that this is real news are toddlers Have you been away from the internet for the last couple of years? There is literally nothing on the internet so fantastical that it won't be posted to social media stripped of context and believed by somebody.
      - beerandt 7y ago
        So we're going deplatform all satire?
        dkonofalski 7y ago
        That's not what they're suggesting and you know it.
        beerandt 7y ago
        I do. But it's an impossible line to draw. How many people need to claim they believe satire is the truth for an article to be flagged?
        dkonofalski 7y ago
        No, it's not. Every single one of those articles stems from a post on their forum where it's been requested. They regularly pick them based on their popularity in the forum. As long as they're consistent with that, it's completely possible to address these specific instances.
        beerandt 7y ago
        >popularity in the forum This is not, in anyway, a reasonable filter for bias, let alone one for satire.
        dkonofalski 7y ago
        It's not a filter for bias and no one has claimed that it is. It's a filter for whether or not to address the content of a claim. Popularity is absolutely a reasonable filter for that and that seems to be what Snopes is using, regardless of politics, satire, or otherwise.
        pwinnski 7y ago
        Snopes doesn't de-platform anyone. Your beef is rightly with Google or Facebook. Snopes labels things that are false as false. This includes many or most satirical articles. Given the number of times I've told someone that a thing is false and had to provide a scopes link before they would even start to believe me, I'm very grateful for snopes. Facebook and Google can pound sand.
    - PhasmaFelis 7y ago
      Snopes also had to debunk an Onion article headlined "Mike Pence Disappointed God Has Never Asked Him To Kill One Of Own Children". It only looks like they're being partisan if you cherry-pick your articles.
      - beerandt 7y ago
        Articles like this do not make them neutral. They only make them look neutral. It's the equivalent of claiming to have a black friend as proof you're not racist.
        PhasmaFelis 7y ago
        > Articles like this do not make them neutral. They are only designed to make them look neutral. Are you asserting, then, that the stories about left-wing idiots are true, but the ones about right-wing idiots are false? I'm honestly curious. Are all of the linked Twitter accounts secret false-flag trolls?
        beerandt 7y ago
        Not at all... Just that there's a great deal of nuance that goes into many of these Snopes articles that is designed to flip the question so that it might be answered in a favorable way. Just covering an opposing viewpoint doesn't mean it's covered in a neutral way.
        dev_dull 7y ago
        Here's a "partisan" topic: "Have Democrats Tried to Impeach Every GOP President Since Ike?"[1] According to their site it's 5 out of 6 presidents, or roughly 80%. Their rating: mostly false. Looks mostly true to me. 1. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dems-impeach-gop-presidents/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dems-impeach-gop-president...
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      > The only people who could possibly be confused that this is real news are toddlers who have not yet developed abstract thinking and would be confused by the whole thing anyway. An actual Congressional representative fell for an Onion article titled "Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex". https://www.cbsnews.com/news/republican-congressman-falls-victim-to-old-onion-article/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/republican-congressman-falls-vi... > "I was kind of on the fence in the beginning," says the made-up person, Marcy Kolrath, in the article. "But after a couple of margaritas and a ride down the lazy river they've got circling the place, I got caught up in the vibe. By the time it was over, I almost wished I could've aborted twins and gotten to stay a little longer."
      - mnm1 7y ago
        Our congressmen are as dumb as toddlers. What else is new? The parent probably should have specified that no person with a brain could be fooled by such articles. That would have ruled out politicians like this congressman.
    - TheHypnotist 7y ago
      You make too many assumptions. The snopes article on this is two paragraphs long and puts little effort into debunking, as it needs little effort. But for whatever reason, people ask them to look into it. For other reasons, people like you seem to think this diminishes snopes. It doesn't.
      - beerandt 7y ago
        >But for whatever reason, people ask them to look into it. Maybe because a false rating leads to being buried by Google and Facebook. That's a legitimate motive. Asking for someone or something to be investigated isn't necessarily a de-facto innocence excuse.
        TheHypnotist 7y ago
        I think poor satire is to blame for being buried, not snopes. When the lines are blurred between misinformation and satire, and a relatively unknown satire website with an obvious agenda produces articles that walk that line, maybe they have it coming because simply put, they aren't very good.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        beerandt 7y ago
        Not necessarily. Some of it is bad, certainly. But a lot just turns on being juxtaposed against a prerequisite belief that's not universal. If you don't share that belief, it won't be funny to you. That doesn't (necessarily) make it bad satire.
        TheHypnotist 7y ago
        Sure, and I'm trying to be objective but I believe my assertion is universal. If your content is poor, your return is poor. Perhaps the publication should look inward, not outward, and realize the lines between misinformation and satire are paper thin. Somehow, and perhaps its branding, The Onion manages to maintain humor and absurdity with very little room for interpreting it's content as anything but satire.
    - DonHopkins 7y ago
      >The only people who could possibly be confused that this is real news are toddlers who have not yet developed abstract thinking and would be confused by the whole thing anyway. Or a geriatric toddler whose has long since lost his capacity for abstract thinking due to dementia, and would be easily confused by Rudolph Giuliani pedaling ridiculous conspiracy theories that stroke his ego about Russia having nothing to do with interference in the election, if you know who I mean.
- bitwize 7y ago
  This is by design. If "fake news" is the threat of the day, you need only paint your target with the "fake news" label and nukes will be launched against it. Babylon Bee leans conservative, and when those who cloak themselves in hard-left rhetoric are in the crosshairs of ridicule, they tend to retaliate hard, with whatever means they have to hand.
  - dkonofalski 7y ago
    This is not a matter of targeting as much as it's a matter of people falling for satire and not having the ability or resources to tell the difference. If it was really that easy to "launch nukes" against a site, then something like Snopes as a whole would be ineffective.
  - davvolun 7y ago
    > when those who cloak themselves in hard-left rhetoric are in the crosshairs of ridicule, they tend to retaliate hard, with whatever means they have to hand. That's complete nonsense, and not a partisan or "hard-left-only" reaction. The right also tries to de-platform the left, if you're trying to make "fake news" a partisan issue, you're contributing to the problem.
    - bitwize 7y ago
      But the left has home court advantage: the sympathetic ears of upper management at Facebook, Google, Twitter, and most of the major news outlets without "Fox" in their name.
      - davvolun 7y ago
        Have you been on Twitter in the last three years? Have you heard of 4Chan? That statement is disturbingly incorrect.
- PhasmaFelis 7y ago
  Here's all of Snopes' articles about the Babylon Bee: https://www.snopes.com/?s=babylon+bee https://www.snopes.com/?s=babylon+bee They're all things that someone actually thought was real. For example, they quote multiple Twitter users who apparently believed that U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar said "If Israel is so innocent, then why do they insist on being Jews?" https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/omar-if-israel-is-so-innocent/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/omar-if-israel-is-so-innoc... You'll find just as many debunkings of Onion articles, including left-wing satire like "Mike Pence Disappointed God Has Never Asked Him To Kill One Of Own Children". https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mike-pence-laments-no-sacrifice/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mike-pence-laments-no-sacr... It seems disingenuous to act like Snopes is targeting right-wingers specifically. There are gullible idiots everywhere on the political spectrum. Edit: Someone is downvote-brigading every post in this thread defending Snopes. I would honestly like to hear what you think is not factual about my comment.
  - TheHypnotist 7y ago
    You don't have to be left or right to fall for this sort of stuff. However, to assume the right is targeted does demonstrate a low opinion of the right.
sharpneli 7y ago
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/facebook-and-snopes-fact-checking-satire-is-the-dumbest-thing-ever https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/facebook-and-snopes-fact-... Yeah. It is hilarious. Now they do label it as satire but at that point it was straight faced ”No! CNN has not bought a washing machine”
- jsight 7y ago
  Unfortunately, for every case like this, it seems like there is another of satire about Pelosi spending billions on impeachment being treated as truth. I just saw that one the other day with lots of little angry reactions from people who didn't consider the source.
  - sharpneli 7y ago
    And by even considering cases like the washing machine Snopes destroys it’s own credibility and has none left when it would actually matter.
    - jsight 7y ago
      I guess they have never had credibility then, as they have always done that.
    - dkonofalski 7y ago
      >destroys it’s own credibility How so? If there are people out there who believe it enough to ask about it and post on their forums, then it's not as clear of satire as you're making it out to be and there's motivation for them to cover it.
      - sharpneli 7y ago
        About news being spun in a literal washing machine? Seriously? I hope I got this straight. There are actually people claiming that news are spun in a literal washing machine, and the amount of those is big enough to raise a concern (to be honest, even a single one is a concern). Do you have any sources for this? Absolutely incredible. I wonder what temperature and what detergent is used when spinning news in a washing machine.
jccalhoun 7y ago
I hadn't read about this but from the TYTimes article it seems to me that it looks like both sides escalated things and the Babylon Bee blaming Snopes for what Facebook does: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/03/us/snopes-babylon-bee.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/03/us/snopes-babylon-bee.htm...
chipotle_coyote 7y ago
Those who weren’t following us when we began back in the mid-1990s and have only more lately encountered our fact-checking efforts sometimes ask us why we address humorous and satirical articles at Snopes.com. And the plain answer to that question is, “Because people ask us about them.” https://www.snopes.com/notes/why-we-include-humor-and-satire-in-snopes-com/ https://www.snopes.com/notes/why-we-include-humor-and-satire... Articles from sites like Babylon Bee -- hell, even from The Onion, in more than one case -- get stripped of context, quoted, slapped on meme GIFs, and traded around by folks who don't know (or sometimes don't care) about the source. Another quote from the linked article: If Clickhole (an offshoot of the Onion humor/satire site) publishes a new article, and within a day 1,200 different people have queried us to ask if that article is “true,” then clearly Clickhole isn’t well known to those 1,200 people. They, and others like them, are the audience we’re attempting to reach and inform that Clickhole is a humor site — not, obviously, the many people who follow Clickhole and therefore know that the site’s material is not intended to be factual. In our current highly-politicized environment, there's a subset -- and not an insignificant one -- of the population which is very ready to believe the worst about "The Other Side". The web site The Conversation surveyed over 800 people to ask about the most shared fake political stories on social media during a two-week period, and The Babylon Bee came up in their results: "Members of both parties failed to recognize that The Babylon Bee is satire, but Republicans were considerably more likely to do so. Of the 23 falsehoods that came from The Bee, eight were confidently believed by at least 15% of Republican respondents." https://theconversation.com/too-many-people-think-satirical-news-is-real-121666 https://theconversation.com/too-many-people-think-satirical-... I'm not suggesting this is a sign that Republicans are more gullible, per se -- I'm suggesting it's a sign that when people are fed satire that plays into their biases and that satire is played with an Onion-style perfectly straight face, more people than you think believe it. That means there's going to be way more than you think who say, "Hey, is that true?"... and go to snopes.com to find out. Even, yes, if the quote is from The Babylon Bee.
- MockObject 7y ago
  If they were honest about this, Snopes would publish a single entry covering all the prominent satire sites by name, and "warning" people that they are satire. As opposed to whacking moles.
iron0013 7y ago
Eh, part of the reason why fact-checking "satire" sites became necessary is that some propaganda outlets have taken to using "it's just satire, bro" as an all-purpose cover applied to blatant lies that don't even try to be funny. The people behind "Q" and all the other extreme-right fantasy-world nonsense have a vested interest in keeping the line between serious racism/calls-to-violence/libel/etc and "just joeks" as fuzzy as possible. Alex Jones, for example, famously claims to be a satirist when it's convenient for him (e.g. when he's about to lose custody of his kids, or when he loses a lawsuit to the Sandy Hook parents that he slandered), but demands to be taken seriously on the same exact topics at other times.
- big_chungus 7y ago
  Except the Babylon Bee always writes satire and nothing but satire. It's not like they publish some serious stuff and fail to properly delineate factual vs. satirical reporting, they publish satire only and the "about us" section makes that clear. Your analogy attempts to demonstrate that the site is "playing both sides" and claiming to be factual and satirical, when that is clearly not the case.
  - iron0013 7y ago
    It seems to me like they write some things that are obviously satire, and some things that a reasonable person would have a hard time differentiating from non-satire. This is what I'd expect a propaganda outlet utilizing the strategy I described to do. Of course, we're not the first ones to be having this conversation. Here's Snopes themselves commenting on the phenomenon: https://www.snopes.com/news/2019/08/16/readers-think-satire-is-real/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2019/08/16/readers-think-satire-... and here it is being described in the mass media: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/03/us/snopes-babylon-bee.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/03/us/snopes-babylon-bee.htm...
- davvolun 7y ago
  Sure, but, like porn and art, we can tell the difference between Info Wars and The Onion. A simple landing page on The Onion or Babylon Bee is all Snopes needs to do, whereas it's clear Info Wars has an agenda of spreading disinformation and it's useful combatting specific articles of theirs. Last I knew, Snopes isn't and cannot be run as a simple application of objective rules. You can follow guidelines, but debunking the type of Info Wars, or Trumpian, disinformation requires more mental effort than that. If it didn't, if it was the simple application of objective rules, there would be little value in the site.
dkonofalski 7y ago
>suggests to me that their days of being a valuable resource are over Why's that? You don't think there's value to debunking that kind of information if people think it's "real"?
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  Once the principled founders are gone it will just turn into an ad platform with the content curators squeezed to the breaking point for the sake of profit.
  - dkonofalski 7y ago
    >Once the principled founders are gone That depends on who they turn the reins over to. One of the founders is still in control of the site.
  - beerandt 7y ago
    Even before the split, they were outsourcing articles years ago. It's been a borderline content mill since at least 2015.
ineptech 7y ago
"Snopes fact-checked a right-wing parody site, therefore they're biased for the left" is a meme that gets mentioned weekly on any political argument/discussion forum. It sounds persuasive as long as you don't look to see whether they fact-check left-wing parody sites too.
- ineptech 7y ago
  I will take the reply-less downvotes to mean "I wish that weren't true." Feel free to search 'site:snopes.com "the onion"' if you like. Snopes and its staff may well be left-leaning (everything is left-leaning if you're right-leaning enough, and vice versa) but their tiff with the Babylon Bee is not evidence of it.
  - dkonofalski 7y ago
    Yes and, by the same logic, most of the people responding to your comment, despite its veracity, will be people that took issue with it and so they'll be right-leaning. I think you're 100% right that it's the "I wish it weren't true" crowd because, if it was, they would have reveled in assailing you with links to the contrary.
gadders 7y ago
There was also the recent example of the fact check "The Democratic party has tried to impeach every Republican president since Dwight D. Eisenhower." Even though the Democrats have tried to impeach 5 out of 6 presidents, this was labelled as "Mostly False".
- vuln 7y ago
  Link to article https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dems-impeach-gop-presidents/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dems-impeach-gop-president...
- dkonofalski 7y ago
  Your criticism here seems intellectually dishonest to me. The claim is mostly false. Democrats != The Democratic Party. Based on that, the handful of Democrats that attempted to file articles without the support of the rest of the party don't really support the claim that "The Democratic party has tried to impeach" and, as mentioned in the article, one of those was a bipartisan attempt but still counts. That means that, at best, 2 of the 6 examples count as "The Democratic party" and, at worst, 3 of the 6 if you count Nixon.
  - gadders 7y ago
    If you read the article, the original claim was "Democrats" have tried to impeach every republican president since Eisenhower. It was Snopes that changed it to "The Democratic Party".
    - dkonofalski 7y ago
      Even without that change, the claim is false, though. The claim says that Democrats have attempted to impeach every Republican President. That's false. Additionally, by the criteria you're suggesting, I would wonder then, by extension, if Republicans have attempted to impeach every Democratic President if the only criteria is that some Republican filed for it as opposed to it being a party decision.
logfromblammo 7y ago
A simple comparison between Babylon Bee and The Onion suggests to me that an overwhelming majority of comedy writers lean liberal. In any case, it would surely suffice to replace the red X or green check with a comedy mask icon captioned "Satire". Then they can explain the joke, and deconstruct the comedic theory behind it. This is very important, because for a lot of that Babylon Bee stuff, I have no clue why anyone would think it's funny. ":) Satire "This was published by JokeyMcFakenews, a known purveyor of satirical articles. The text is templated from an inside-joke format known as a 'copypasta', but substituting Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin for the male duck in the original, reproduced here for context: [quote block]. "The humor arises from callback to the already-familiar humor of the inside joke, combined with Mnuchin being an actual Bond villain instead of common waterfowl, and presumably having a far more sinister attitude towards bread crumbs."
- dkonofalski 7y ago
  >surely suffice to replace the red X or green check with a comedy mask icon captioned "Satire". Literally the only good comment on this entire thread related to BabylonBee. People fell for it and requests were made to debunk it. It doesn't have to be determined as true or false since it's not intended to be taken seriously.

by wl 7y ago

Snopes fact-checking the satire site Babylon Bee suggests to me that their days of being a valuable resource are over. Any reasonable people at Snopes apparently no longer have any influence.

dev_dull 7y ago

I’m glad I’m not the only one wondering what was up with that. Also, snopes is not an innocent reference site. Their “debunking” of satire like Babylonbee can cause those sites to be deplatformed.

michaelbuckbee 7y ago
This seems less like Snopes being at issue than Facebook not understanding nuance.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- wl 7y ago
  Snopes chose to target, among other things, a Babylon Bee article talking about how CNN bought industrial laundry equipment to spin their news. The only people who could possibly be confused that this is real news are toddlers who have not yet developed abstract thinking and would be confused by the whole thing anyway. It's a strong indication that Snopes is engaging in the culture war as an interested party. It's not a good look for a supposedly disinterested fact checker.
  - pwinnski 7y ago
    > The only people who could possibly be confused that this is real news are toddlers Have you been away from the internet for the last couple of years? There is literally nothing on the internet so fantastical that it won't be posted to social media stripped of context and believed by somebody.
    - beerandt 7y ago
      So we're going deplatform all satire?
      - dkonofalski 7y ago
        That's not what they're suggesting and you know it.
        beerandt 7y ago
        I do. But it's an impossible line to draw. How many people need to claim they believe satire is the truth for an article to be flagged?
        dkonofalski 7y ago
        No, it's not. Every single one of those articles stems from a post on their forum where it's been requested. They regularly pick them based on their popularity in the forum. As long as they're consistent with that, it's completely possible to address these specific instances.
        beerandt 7y ago
        >popularity in the forum This is not, in anyway, a reasonable filter for bias, let alone one for satire.
        dkonofalski 7y ago
        It's not a filter for bias and no one has claimed that it is. It's a filter for whether or not to address the content of a claim. Popularity is absolutely a reasonable filter for that and that seems to be what Snopes is using, regardless of politics, satire, or otherwise.
      - pwinnski 7y ago
        Snopes doesn't de-platform anyone. Your beef is rightly with Google or Facebook. Snopes labels things that are false as false. This includes many or most satirical articles. Given the number of times I've told someone that a thing is false and had to provide a scopes link before they would even start to believe me, I'm very grateful for snopes. Facebook and Google can pound sand.
  - PhasmaFelis 7y ago
    Snopes also had to debunk an Onion article headlined "Mike Pence Disappointed God Has Never Asked Him To Kill One Of Own Children". It only looks like they're being partisan if you cherry-pick your articles.
    - beerandt 7y ago
      Articles like this do not make them neutral. They only make them look neutral. It's the equivalent of claiming to have a black friend as proof you're not racist.
      - PhasmaFelis 7y ago
        > Articles like this do not make them neutral. They are only designed to make them look neutral. Are you asserting, then, that the stories about left-wing idiots are true, but the ones about right-wing idiots are false? I'm honestly curious. Are all of the linked Twitter accounts secret false-flag trolls?
        beerandt 7y ago
        Not at all... Just that there's a great deal of nuance that goes into many of these Snopes articles that is designed to flip the question so that it might be answered in a favorable way. Just covering an opposing viewpoint doesn't mean it's covered in a neutral way.
      - dev_dull 7y ago
        Here's a "partisan" topic: "Have Democrats Tried to Impeach Every GOP President Since Ike?"[1] According to their site it's 5 out of 6 presidents, or roughly 80%. Their rating: mostly false. Looks mostly true to me. 1. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dems-impeach-gop-presidents/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dems-impeach-gop-president...
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    > The only people who could possibly be confused that this is real news are toddlers who have not yet developed abstract thinking and would be confused by the whole thing anyway. An actual Congressional representative fell for an Onion article titled "Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex". https://www.cbsnews.com/news/republican-congressman-falls-victim-to-old-onion-article/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/republican-congressman-falls-vi... > "I was kind of on the fence in the beginning," says the made-up person, Marcy Kolrath, in the article. "But after a couple of margaritas and a ride down the lazy river they've got circling the place, I got caught up in the vibe. By the time it was over, I almost wished I could've aborted twins and gotten to stay a little longer."
    - mnm1 7y ago
      Our congressmen are as dumb as toddlers. What else is new? The parent probably should have specified that no person with a brain could be fooled by such articles. That would have ruled out politicians like this congressman.
  - TheHypnotist 7y ago
    You make too many assumptions. The snopes article on this is two paragraphs long and puts little effort into debunking, as it needs little effort. But for whatever reason, people ask them to look into it. For other reasons, people like you seem to think this diminishes snopes. It doesn't.
    - beerandt 7y ago
      >But for whatever reason, people ask them to look into it. Maybe because a false rating leads to being buried by Google and Facebook. That's a legitimate motive. Asking for someone or something to be investigated isn't necessarily a de-facto innocence excuse.
      - TheHypnotist 7y ago
        I think poor satire is to blame for being buried, not snopes. When the lines are blurred between misinformation and satire, and a relatively unknown satire website with an obvious agenda produces articles that walk that line, maybe they have it coming because simply put, they aren't very good.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        beerandt 7y ago
        Not necessarily. Some of it is bad, certainly. But a lot just turns on being juxtaposed against a prerequisite belief that's not universal. If you don't share that belief, it won't be funny to you. That doesn't (necessarily) make it bad satire.
        TheHypnotist 7y ago
        Sure, and I'm trying to be objective but I believe my assertion is universal. If your content is poor, your return is poor. Perhaps the publication should look inward, not outward, and realize the lines between misinformation and satire are paper thin. Somehow, and perhaps its branding, The Onion manages to maintain humor and absurdity with very little room for interpreting it's content as anything but satire.
  - DonHopkins 7y ago
    >The only people who could possibly be confused that this is real news are toddlers who have not yet developed abstract thinking and would be confused by the whole thing anyway. Or a geriatric toddler whose has long since lost his capacity for abstract thinking due to dementia, and would be easily confused by Rudolph Giuliani pedaling ridiculous conspiracy theories that stroke his ego about Russia having nothing to do with interference in the election, if you know who I mean.
bitwize 7y ago
This is by design. If "fake news" is the threat of the day, you need only paint your target with the "fake news" label and nukes will be launched against it. Babylon Bee leans conservative, and when those who cloak themselves in hard-left rhetoric are in the crosshairs of ridicule, they tend to retaliate hard, with whatever means they have to hand.
- dkonofalski 7y ago
  This is not a matter of targeting as much as it's a matter of people falling for satire and not having the ability or resources to tell the difference. If it was really that easy to "launch nukes" against a site, then something like Snopes as a whole would be ineffective.
- davvolun 7y ago
  > when those who cloak themselves in hard-left rhetoric are in the crosshairs of ridicule, they tend to retaliate hard, with whatever means they have to hand. That's complete nonsense, and not a partisan or "hard-left-only" reaction. The right also tries to de-platform the left, if you're trying to make "fake news" a partisan issue, you're contributing to the problem.
  - bitwize 7y ago
    But the left has home court advantage: the sympathetic ears of upper management at Facebook, Google, Twitter, and most of the major news outlets without "Fox" in their name.
    - davvolun 7y ago
      Have you been on Twitter in the last three years? Have you heard of 4Chan? That statement is disturbingly incorrect.
PhasmaFelis 7y ago
Here's all of Snopes' articles about the Babylon Bee: https://www.snopes.com/?s=babylon+bee https://www.snopes.com/?s=babylon+bee They're all things that someone actually thought was real. For example, they quote multiple Twitter users who apparently believed that U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar said "If Israel is so innocent, then why do they insist on being Jews?" https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/omar-if-israel-is-so-innocent/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/omar-if-israel-is-so-innoc... You'll find just as many debunkings of Onion articles, including left-wing satire like "Mike Pence Disappointed God Has Never Asked Him To Kill One Of Own Children". https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mike-pence-laments-no-sacrifice/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mike-pence-laments-no-sacr... It seems disingenuous to act like Snopes is targeting right-wingers specifically. There are gullible idiots everywhere on the political spectrum. Edit: Someone is downvote-brigading every post in this thread defending Snopes. I would honestly like to hear what you think is not factual about my comment.
- TheHypnotist 7y ago
  You don't have to be left or right to fall for this sort of stuff. However, to assume the right is targeted does demonstrate a low opinion of the right.

sharpneli 7y ago

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/facebook-and-snopes-fact-checking-satire-is-the-dumbest-thing-ever https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/facebook-and-snopes-fact-... Yeah. It is hilarious. Now they do label it as satire but at that point it was straight faced ”No! CNN has not bought a washing machine”

jsight 7y ago
Unfortunately, for every case like this, it seems like there is another of satire about Pelosi spending billions on impeachment being treated as truth. I just saw that one the other day with lots of little angry reactions from people who didn't consider the source.
- sharpneli 7y ago
  And by even considering cases like the washing machine Snopes destroys it’s own credibility and has none left when it would actually matter.
  - jsight 7y ago
    I guess they have never had credibility then, as they have always done that.
  - dkonofalski 7y ago
    >destroys it’s own credibility How so? If there are people out there who believe it enough to ask about it and post on their forums, then it's not as clear of satire as you're making it out to be and there's motivation for them to cover it.
    - sharpneli 7y ago
      About news being spun in a literal washing machine? Seriously? I hope I got this straight. There are actually people claiming that news are spun in a literal washing machine, and the amount of those is big enough to raise a concern (to be honest, even a single one is a concern). Do you have any sources for this? Absolutely incredible. I wonder what temperature and what detergent is used when spinning news in a washing machine.

jccalhoun 7y ago

I hadn't read about this but from the TYTimes article it seems to me that it looks like both sides escalated things and the Babylon Bee blaming Snopes for what Facebook does: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/03/us/snopes-babylon-bee.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/03/us/snopes-babylon-bee.htm...

chipotle_coyote 7y ago

Those who weren’t following us when we began back in the mid-1990s and have only more lately encountered our fact-checking efforts sometimes ask us why we address humorous and satirical articles at Snopes.com. And the plain answer to that question is, “Because people ask us about them.” https://www.snopes.com/notes/why-we-include-humor-and-satire-in-snopes-com/ https://www.snopes.com/notes/why-we-include-humor-and-satire... Articles from sites like Babylon Bee -- hell, even from The Onion, in more than one case -- get stripped of context, quoted, slapped on meme GIFs, and traded around by folks who don't know (or sometimes don't care) about the source. Another quote from the linked article: If Clickhole (an offshoot of the Onion humor/satire site) publishes a new article, and within a day 1,200 different people have queried us to ask if that article is “true,” then clearly Clickhole isn’t well known to those 1,200 people. They, and others like them, are the audience we’re attempting to reach and inform that Clickhole is a humor site — not, obviously, the many people who follow Clickhole and therefore know that the site’s material is not intended to be factual. In our current highly-politicized environment, there's a subset -- and not an insignificant one -- of the population which is very ready to believe the worst about "The Other Side". The web site The Conversation surveyed over 800 people to ask about the most shared fake political stories on social media during a two-week period, and The Babylon Bee came up in their results: "Members of both parties failed to recognize that The Babylon Bee is satire, but Republicans were considerably more likely to do so. Of the 23 falsehoods that came from The Bee, eight were confidently believed by at least 15% of Republican respondents." https://theconversation.com/too-many-people-think-satirical-news-is-real-121666 https://theconversation.com/too-many-people-think-satirical-... I'm not suggesting this is a sign that Republicans are more gullible, per se -- I'm suggesting it's a sign that when people are fed satire that plays into their biases and that satire is played with an Onion-style perfectly straight face, more people than you think believe it. That means there's going to be way more than you think who say, "Hey, is that true?"... and go to snopes.com to find out. Even, yes, if the quote is from The Babylon Bee.

MockObject 7y ago
If they were honest about this, Snopes would publish a single entry covering all the prominent satire sites by name, and "warning" people that they are satire. As opposed to whacking moles.

iron0013 7y ago

Eh, part of the reason why fact-checking "satire" sites became necessary is that some propaganda outlets have taken to using "it's just satire, bro" as an all-purpose cover applied to blatant lies that don't even try to be funny. The people behind "Q" and all the other extreme-right fantasy-world nonsense have a vested interest in keeping the line between serious racism/calls-to-violence/libel/etc and "just joeks" as fuzzy as possible. Alex Jones, for example, famously claims to be a satirist when it's convenient for him (e.g. when he's about to lose custody of his kids, or when he loses a lawsuit to the Sandy Hook parents that he slandered), but demands to be taken seriously on the same exact topics at other times.

big_chungus 7y ago
Except the Babylon Bee always writes satire and nothing but satire. It's not like they publish some serious stuff and fail to properly delineate factual vs. satirical reporting, they publish satire only and the "about us" section makes that clear. Your analogy attempts to demonstrate that the site is "playing both sides" and claiming to be factual and satirical, when that is clearly not the case.
- iron0013 7y ago
  It seems to me like they write some things that are obviously satire, and some things that a reasonable person would have a hard time differentiating from non-satire. This is what I'd expect a propaganda outlet utilizing the strategy I described to do. Of course, we're not the first ones to be having this conversation. Here's Snopes themselves commenting on the phenomenon: https://www.snopes.com/news/2019/08/16/readers-think-satire-is-real/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2019/08/16/readers-think-satire-... and here it is being described in the mass media: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/03/us/snopes-babylon-bee.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/03/us/snopes-babylon-bee.htm...
davvolun 7y ago
Sure, but, like porn and art, we can tell the difference between Info Wars and The Onion. A simple landing page on The Onion or Babylon Bee is all Snopes needs to do, whereas it's clear Info Wars has an agenda of spreading disinformation and it's useful combatting specific articles of theirs. Last I knew, Snopes isn't and cannot be run as a simple application of objective rules. You can follow guidelines, but debunking the type of Info Wars, or Trumpian, disinformation requires more mental effort than that. If it didn't, if it was the simple application of objective rules, there would be little value in the site.

dkonofalski 7y ago

>suggests to me that their days of being a valuable resource are over Why's that? You don't think there's value to debunking that kind of information if people think it's "real"?

kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
Once the principled founders are gone it will just turn into an ad platform with the content curators squeezed to the breaking point for the sake of profit.
- dkonofalski 7y ago
  >Once the principled founders are gone That depends on who they turn the reins over to. One of the founders is still in control of the site.
- beerandt 7y ago
  Even before the split, they were outsourcing articles years ago. It's been a borderline content mill since at least 2015.

ineptech 7y ago

"Snopes fact-checked a right-wing parody site, therefore they're biased for the left" is a meme that gets mentioned weekly on any political argument/discussion forum. It sounds persuasive as long as you don't look to see whether they fact-check left-wing parody sites too.

ineptech 7y ago
I will take the reply-less downvotes to mean "I wish that weren't true." Feel free to search 'site:snopes.com "the onion"' if you like. Snopes and its staff may well be left-leaning (everything is left-leaning if you're right-leaning enough, and vice versa) but their tiff with the Babylon Bee is not evidence of it.
- dkonofalski 7y ago
  Yes and, by the same logic, most of the people responding to your comment, despite its veracity, will be people that took issue with it and so they'll be right-leaning. I think you're 100% right that it's the "I wish it weren't true" crowd because, if it was, they would have reveled in assailing you with links to the contrary.

gadders 7y ago

There was also the recent example of the fact check "The Democratic party has tried to impeach every Republican president since Dwight D. Eisenhower." Even though the Democrats have tried to impeach 5 out of 6 presidents, this was labelled as "Mostly False".

vuln 7y ago
Link to article https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dems-impeach-gop-presidents/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dems-impeach-gop-president...
dkonofalski 7y ago
Your criticism here seems intellectually dishonest to me. The claim is mostly false. Democrats != The Democratic Party. Based on that, the handful of Democrats that attempted to file articles without the support of the rest of the party don't really support the claim that "The Democratic party has tried to impeach" and, as mentioned in the article, one of those was a bipartisan attempt but still counts. That means that, at best, 2 of the 6 examples count as "The Democratic party" and, at worst, 3 of the 6 if you count Nixon.
- gadders 7y ago
  If you read the article, the original claim was "Democrats" have tried to impeach every republican president since Eisenhower. It was Snopes that changed it to "The Democratic Party".
  - dkonofalski 7y ago
    Even without that change, the claim is false, though. The claim says that Democrats have attempted to impeach every Republican President. That's false. Additionally, by the criteria you're suggesting, I would wonder then, by extension, if Republicans have attempted to impeach every Democratic President if the only criteria is that some Republican filed for it as opposed to it being a party decision.

logfromblammo 7y ago

A simple comparison between Babylon Bee and The Onion suggests to me that an overwhelming majority of comedy writers lean liberal. In any case, it would surely suffice to replace the red X or green check with a comedy mask icon captioned "Satire". Then they can explain the joke, and deconstruct the comedic theory behind it. This is very important, because for a lot of that Babylon Bee stuff, I have no clue why anyone would think it's funny. ":) Satire "This was published by JokeyMcFakenews, a known purveyor of satirical articles. The text is templated from an inside-joke format known as a 'copypasta', but substituting Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin for the male duck in the original, reproduced here for context: [quote block]. "The humor arises from callback to the already-familiar humor of the inside joke, combined with Mnuchin being an actual Bond villain instead of common waterfowl, and presumably having a far more sinister attitude towards bread crumbs."

dkonofalski 7y ago
>surely suffice to replace the red X or green check with a comedy mask icon captioned "Satire". Literally the only good comment on this entire thread related to BabylonBee. People fell for it and requests were made to debunk it. It doesn't have to be determined as true or false since it's not intended to be taken seriously.