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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 whate

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.
      - beerandt 7y ago
        But that's not a decision to be made by Snopes, based on a supposed fact-check. There are plenty of people who don't find the onion, at all. It's not a justification for blacklisting them as fake news.
        dkonofalski 7y ago
        >blacklisting them as fake news The Onion is, literally, fake news regardless of whether one finds them funny or not. The question is whether people think it's true not whether they think it's funny and that's the only decision being made by a fact-check.
        beerandt 7y ago
        So is Babylon Bee. Yet different standards were and are being applied.
        dkonofalski 7y ago
        Different standards were not applied. Where are you getting that from? Forum users posted the article from BB asking for it to be debunked. They haven't posted a request for articles from the Onion and that's likely because the Onion is well-known enough for people to know it's satire. You guys are reaching so hard here.
  - dev_dull 7y ago
    > Actual headline: "Did CNN Purchase an Industrial-Sized Washing Machine to Spin News" What line does this walk? Things that are even physically possible and things that are not? I just can't believe Snopes dedicated cycles to debunking this. Thankfully it got some press and they changed the label to "satire". I can't tell exactly when because the snopes link has been excluded from the way back machine (for whatever reason).
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > because a false rating leads to being buried by Google and Facebook If Facebook and/or Google punish a satire site for having articles marked false by a fact-checker, that's a problem with Facebook and/or Google for responding improperly to fact-check of satire, not a problem with the fact-checker, which is doing exactly their job. > Asking for someone or something to be investigated isn't necessarily a de-facto innocence excuse. It is for a fact checker if what is produced is a honest and accurate fact check of the claims presented. It may not be for the questioner if they are trying to game a system where third parties do dumb things based on what fact checkers do, but that's a problem with the questioner and the third parties, not the fact checker.
  - beerandt 7y ago
    >not a problem with the fact-checker If a fact checker can't (or chooses not to) distinguish satire from news, it very much is a problem with the fact checker, regardless of Facebook or Google's over-reliance on them (right or wrong). At the time, (until ~Feb 2019) Snopes fact checkers for Facebook were separate from the sites traditional authors. They would have known exactly that what they were doing resulted in blacklisting.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      > If a fact checker can't (or chooses not to) distinguish satire from news, it very much is a problem with the fact checker When Snopes does a fact-check of a claim whose original source is satire, they clearly identify both the source and the satirical nature, so whether or not one were to agree with your hypothetical, it doesn't seem applicable to the actual situation being discussed. > At the time, (until ~Feb 2019) Snopes fact checkers for Facebook were separate from the sites traditional authors. They would have known exactly that what they were doing resulted in blacklisting. That's perhaps an argument as to why Snopes should have refused to fact check for Facebook on ethical grounds but, having been employed to do so, it's not a reason they should not have fact checked all claims put before them. Though social feed including reshares of satirical sources as news is an increasingly important source of “news”, so I’m not sure there's a problem here besides Facebook lacking sufficient AI to distinguish when a story (whether in original presentation or resharing which can alter context and reach less-familiar audiences) is likely to read as news vs. satire by the recipient and only apply any penalty from negative fact check results in the context where it would otherwise be seen as news. This isn't the pre-web (or even pre-social-media) environment where a publication reaches mainly people familiar with it's nature and actively seeking it out, and that's particularly true when the venue is specifically Facebook.

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.
    - beerandt 7y ago
      But that's not a decision to be made by Snopes, based on a supposed fact-check. There are plenty of people who don't find the onion, at all. It's not a justification for blacklisting them as fake news.
      - dkonofalski 7y ago
        >blacklisting them as fake news The Onion is, literally, fake news regardless of whether one finds them funny or not. The question is whether people think it's true not whether they think it's funny and that's the only decision being made by a fact-check.
        beerandt 7y ago
        So is Babylon Bee. Yet different standards were and are being applied.
        dkonofalski 7y ago
        Different standards were not applied. Where are you getting that from? Forum users posted the article from BB asking for it to be debunked. They haven't posted a request for articles from the Onion and that's likely because the Onion is well-known enough for people to know it's satire. You guys are reaching so hard here.
- dev_dull 7y ago
  > Actual headline: "Did CNN Purchase an Industrial-Sized Washing Machine to Spin News" What line does this walk? Things that are even physically possible and things that are not? I just can't believe Snopes dedicated cycles to debunking this. Thankfully it got some press and they changed the label to "satire". I can't tell exactly when because the snopes link has been excluded from the way back machine (for whatever reason).
dragonwriter 7y ago
> because a false rating leads to being buried by Google and Facebook If Facebook and/or Google punish a satire site for having articles marked false by a fact-checker, that's a problem with Facebook and/or Google for responding improperly to fact-check of satire, not a problem with the fact-checker, which is doing exactly their job. > Asking for someone or something to be investigated isn't necessarily a de-facto innocence excuse. It is for a fact checker if what is produced is a honest and accurate fact check of the claims presented. It may not be for the questioner if they are trying to game a system where third parties do dumb things based on what fact checkers do, but that's a problem with the questioner and the third parties, not the fact checker.
- beerandt 7y ago
  >not a problem with the fact-checker If a fact checker can't (or chooses not to) distinguish satire from news, it very much is a problem with the fact checker, regardless of Facebook or Google's over-reliance on them (right or wrong). At the time, (until ~Feb 2019) Snopes fact checkers for Facebook were separate from the sites traditional authors. They would have known exactly that what they were doing resulted in blacklisting.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > If a fact checker can't (or chooses not to) distinguish satire from news, it very much is a problem with the fact checker When Snopes does a fact-check of a claim whose original source is satire, they clearly identify both the source and the satirical nature, so whether or not one were to agree with your hypothetical, it doesn't seem applicable to the actual situation being discussed. > At the time, (until ~Feb 2019) Snopes fact checkers for Facebook were separate from the sites traditional authors. They would have known exactly that what they were doing resulted in blacklisting. That's perhaps an argument as to why Snopes should have refused to fact check for Facebook on ethical grounds but, having been employed to do so, it's not a reason they should not have fact checked all claims put before them. Though social feed including reshares of satirical sources as news is an increasingly important source of “news”, so I’m not sure there's a problem here besides Facebook lacking sufficient AI to distinguish when a story (whether in original presentation or resharing which can alter context and reach less-familiar audiences) is likely to read as news vs. satire by the recipient and only apply any penalty from negative fact check results in the context where it would otherwise be seen as news. This isn't the pre-web (or even pre-social-media) environment where a publication reaches mainly people familiar with it's nature and actively seeking it out, and that's particularly true when the venue is specifically Facebook.