8 ms·

> Marchionni is reevaluating decisions Mikkelson made years earlier to not allow Snopes stories to be archived on the Wayback Machine and is empowered to make a

by danso 5y ago

> Marchionni is reevaluating decisions Mikkelson made years earlier to not allow Snopes stories to be archived on the Wayback Machine and is empowered to make any changes necessary. Not the most immediate important thing, but hiding content from the Wayback Machine that is purported to be factual record is very problematic, to say the least

ramraj07 5y ago
I’m still struggling to understand why they’d want to block that. Edit: on re-reading I realize it’s so that they don’t get caught for this plagiarism since their modus operandi was plagiarize first rewrite slowly.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  So they can silently change stuff without the ability for someone to go back and look at what it used to say.
  - headmelted 5y ago
    Honestly I can almost imagine a way to arrive at this conclusion without it being shifty (although no idea what the case actually is here). If you're going to debunk an article about something like a lack of vaccine safety and need to retract a couple of sentences later, but the overall conclusion is the same, then the conspiracists will be right on you with a diff of the changes from the archive trying to piece together what it all means and who paid you off.
    - weimerica 5y ago
      Then one can update to provide a prominent note of clarification, rather than rewriting history. This deprives conspiracists of the ability to go "See, they rewrite history" while providing the full story, warts and all.
      - jaywalk 5y ago
        That's 100% standard practice for any reputable news organization.
        weimerica 5y ago
        Sadly, many an erstwhile reputable organization have devolved to engage in this practice.
    - jaywalk 5y ago
      Conspiracists (and many others) disregard Snopes out of hand, so I highly doubt that was part of their thinking.
    - NotChina 5y ago
      Putting the concern of those who may misinterpret the changes above the goal of the truth, is also known as deception. Encyclopedias stand the test of time with addendums, to facilitate corrections. Removing the transparency merely allows for cyclical references in the news.
    - SllX 5y ago
      You can print a retraction if you need to. Nothing wrong with fessing up and saying “we made a mistake, here’s the correction”, and reputable newspapers/news sites do this as a matter of course. Conspiracy nuts are going to do their own thing no matter what you do or say and if they’re determined enough, will have their own record, so you can only act in good faith for people who are willing to look at you and receive what you say in good faith.
      - velcii 5y ago
        >Nothing wrong with fessing up and saying “we made a mistake, here’s the correction” Sadly if you do retractions, you are not qualified for the name "fact checker". Because "facts" are not retractable. And fact-checkers are just the tip of the iceberg, and if you care to look, there are many things that are peddled as being "fact" when there is not enough credible evidence to say so.. For example the statement "Vaccines don't cause autism". Any one with two brain cells will know that this NOT a fact, simply because it does not say "Which vaccines". But that does not prevent people from saying that as a FACT. So it is not only them. It is you as well.
        SllX 5y ago
        You’ve touched on a basic problem with claiming to be a fact checker where it intersects with science, because “fact checking” is a journalistic tool decent for checking he said/she said BS, but science is an ongoing and continuous process that has its own form of review not assisted by the fact (fact check this!) that most science reporting is crap. That said, fact checks are typically written by journalists or institutions claiming to serve a journalist function; and so are fully governable by common journalist practices such as retractions. Retractions are nice because they acknowledge that there was a human error somewhere in the organization’s processes, memorialize the error but then correct the record with supplementary and reviewable matter. Doing this also provides a signal to readers that even though this particular institution filled with these imperfect humans made a mistake on the record, they sufficiently value their reputation to own the mistake and correct it on the record. Good faith and honesty can take you far.
    - corndoge 5y ago
      That is a good thing. I want to see those changes. Preventing people from seeing the change log of a page because "conspiracy theorists might use it" is dangerous thinking. Saying that it's okay to forego transparency because it could be used to bolster people who disagree with you is backwards. That's precisely why transparency should be retained - when you're the person disagreeing, it benefits you.
      - readthenotes1 5y ago
        Case in point: On Jan 6, NPR published an article with a 10AM headline and timestamp about the upcoming Trump rally. Later in the day, they changed the headline to be something like "Insurgents invade Capital building", but did not change the 10AM timestamp up top. One had to read the article to find the update timestamp. Newsmaxx, and thus many if its viewers looked at the headline and headline timestamp and trumpeted "how did they know?! It's a conspiracy!" I had to look into the wayback machine to see the original headline to show to a relative who'd bought the Newsmaxx narrative. I'm not sure they totally believed or even understood what I was telling them, but I am certain it raised some doubt. All of that would was unnecessary, if only NPR had done proper change management on its articles.
        slg 5y ago
        This is the exact same because "conspiracy theorists might use it" reasoning just flowing in the opposite direction. Conspiracy theorists with conspiracy theorize regardless of the level of transparency provided by journalist organizations.
        a_conservative 5y ago
        What!? NPR's website contains articles with false time stamps. Are you ok with this? Why does the conspiracy theorist angle matter at all? Knowing when an article was written is a useful piece of information that is being destroyed by these always evolving articles. It might not be full on Orwell yet, but these always-mutating-articles are opening the door to an Orwellian future. We need to be able to go back and look at the past unfiltered and unmodified.
  - NotChina 5y ago
    The MOT, may it always be right. But my MOT right, or wrong.
  - bigodbiel 5y ago
    Orwell never expected that Minitrue would come from private instead of government entities, but at this point I’m not even sure what is public and what is private anymore.
- rglover 5y ago
  Because they're a sham fact checking website and they don't want a paper trail.
  - dfee 5y ago
    How is this not a better established position? I see Snopes as pure, unadulterated bias. Honestly, I see all those fact checking websites the same way. Which is fine, though humorously this pairs nicely with another thread on HN this morning about HS critical thinking courses around journalism, quite well.
    - rglover 5y ago
      Because people believe what they want to believe. I'm being downvoted because what I said is hurting people's feelings and sensibilities, but it's the truth. The people who run it are, well...https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4042194/Facebook-fact-checker-arbitrate-fake-news-accused-defrauding-website-pay-prostitutes-staff-includes-escort-porn-star-Vice-Vixen-domme.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4042194/Facebook-fa....
      - jazzyjackson 5y ago
        Downvoting you for complaining about downvoting And also for linking the daily mail
        rglover 5y ago
        I'm not complaining, just pointing it out. Enjoy your passive aggression.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - qkqk 5y ago
      Really? So you think Trump was wearing his pants backwards at this rally? https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-wear-pants-backwards/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-wear-pants-backwards... Snopes says he wasn't, and shows evidence why. That's just "pure, unadulterated bias" though, right? His pants are on backwards? Otherwise "I see Snopes as pure, unadulterated bias" would be such a broad generalization it's meaningless!
- daenz 5y ago
  The arbiters of truth get their legitimacy by never being wrong. Nobody is never wrong but you can give that illusion by removing any instances of you being wrong from history.
- NotChina 5y ago
  So that their stated facts are not held to a consistent expectation.
- revolvingocelot 5y ago
  Ad revenue? A traditional news org might put up a paywall, but that presumably goes against Snopes' mandate of debunking nonsense for the masses. We here at HN tend to paste paywalled article links into archive.is. Sure, an adblocker does the job of depriving beneficiaries of ad revenue just as well, but this way there's at least a chance.
- slig 5y ago
  "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."
  - gruez 5y ago
    "We were always at war with eastasia"
- JohnTHaller 5y ago
  One possible scenario that's not evil: If they get something wrong and correct it, people that don't believe the correction can pass around links to the archive.org version before the correction. Not saying I agree with the decision or that's why they did it, just a possible reason.
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    The fact that we have had good version control for decades and the journalism industry has not adopted it tells you their motives. It's like a godsend to someone who views themselves as a journalist, the ability to always be able to demonstrate their integrity. It almost takes more effort to not adopt it.
  - gruez 5y ago
    Why is that a bad thing? It's clearly marked as an archive. I'm also not sure how that fixes the problem, considering that people could still pass around images, which are pretty much taken as seriously as the real site.
    - JohnTHaller 5y ago
      I didn't say it was. I was just guessing at a possible reason they might have done it. I've seen anti-vax folks pass around archive.org links as well as pictures of stuff that was taken down/corrected before.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  >plagiarize first rewrite slowly Obviously publishing work that isn't your own is wrong, but "plagiarize then rewrite" is a very effective method of developing a creative skill. There is a question about when the transformation really becomes "yours". An example: Radiohead - "Creep" was a tranformation for The Hollies "The Air that I Breathe", Radiohead later went to sue Lana Del Rey for "Get Free" which seemingly was built with one of the two as a starting point. The moral question is... when is copying actually ok? How much do you have to transform something until you don't "owe" the result to someone else... or more fundamentally, to what extent should any of us be able to own intellectual property? There are some valid arguments towards "none at all". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaXFc4Zb78s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaXFc4Zb78s
  - ryantgtg 5y ago
    I’ve heard from authors that typing someone else’s entire novel helped them to understand the craft (and then they went on to write their own books, not based on the novels they typed). And of course musicians learn other songs before they write their own. But, copy/pasting an article, and then tweaking a few words to make it more unique, doesn’t seem like a great process for learning the journalism craft. At least not on the same level as the two examples I brought up.
  - gmadsen 5y ago
    to the non expert ear, Get Free sounds much much more similar to Creep, than Creep does to "The Air that I Breathe"
  - bitwize 5y ago
    If the "groove", "feel", or chord progression of such a song is identical or substantially similar to the song you copied from, you could still be liable for copyright infringement per Williams v. Bridgeport Music (the "Blurred Lines" case). Before you complain, note well that among black musicians the groove is the song, the melody being something of an afterthought -- the exact opposite of what prevails in the white concept of music and, in particular, historical understanding of copyright law. Black musicians have been trying to get acknowledgement of ownership of their grooves for decades. In general, it's not a good idea to use someone else's song as a starting point. In most cases, the original composer is going to be able to establish some form of "substantial similarity" to make you liable for infringement; it will take radical transformation to avoid this.
- ArthurChive 5y ago
  Archive links are used to bypass paywalls and direct traffic away from the site. (The moderator of this site encourages it [1], and archive links for most paywalled articles are in the comments.) This could be a legitimate reason they were doing it (nefarious ones are easily imagined as well). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
- pandaman 5y ago
  I wanted to post their original article on the corona virus and masks in the replies here and went to the wayback machine to find it and just learned they excluded themselves from the service. So I can see why they'd block that.

by danso 5y ago

ramraj07 5y ago

I’m still struggling to understand why they’d want to block that. Edit: on re-reading I realize it’s so that they don’t get caught for this plagiarism since their modus operandi was plagiarize first rewrite slowly.

jaywalk 5y ago
So they can silently change stuff without the ability for someone to go back and look at what it used to say.
- headmelted 5y ago
  Honestly I can almost imagine a way to arrive at this conclusion without it being shifty (although no idea what the case actually is here). If you're going to debunk an article about something like a lack of vaccine safety and need to retract a couple of sentences later, but the overall conclusion is the same, then the conspiracists will be right on you with a diff of the changes from the archive trying to piece together what it all means and who paid you off.
  - weimerica 5y ago
    Then one can update to provide a prominent note of clarification, rather than rewriting history. This deprives conspiracists of the ability to go "See, they rewrite history" while providing the full story, warts and all.
    - jaywalk 5y ago
      That's 100% standard practice for any reputable news organization.
      - weimerica 5y ago
        Sadly, many an erstwhile reputable organization have devolved to engage in this practice.
  - jaywalk 5y ago
    Conspiracists (and many others) disregard Snopes out of hand, so I highly doubt that was part of their thinking.
  - NotChina 5y ago
    Putting the concern of those who may misinterpret the changes above the goal of the truth, is also known as deception. Encyclopedias stand the test of time with addendums, to facilitate corrections. Removing the transparency merely allows for cyclical references in the news.
  - SllX 5y ago
    You can print a retraction if you need to. Nothing wrong with fessing up and saying “we made a mistake, here’s the correction”, and reputable newspapers/news sites do this as a matter of course. Conspiracy nuts are going to do their own thing no matter what you do or say and if they’re determined enough, will have their own record, so you can only act in good faith for people who are willing to look at you and receive what you say in good faith.
    - velcii 5y ago
      >Nothing wrong with fessing up and saying “we made a mistake, here’s the correction” Sadly if you do retractions, you are not qualified for the name "fact checker". Because "facts" are not retractable. And fact-checkers are just the tip of the iceberg, and if you care to look, there are many things that are peddled as being "fact" when there is not enough credible evidence to say so.. For example the statement "Vaccines don't cause autism". Any one with two brain cells will know that this NOT a fact, simply because it does not say "Which vaccines". But that does not prevent people from saying that as a FACT. So it is not only them. It is you as well.
      - SllX 5y ago
        You’ve touched on a basic problem with claiming to be a fact checker where it intersects with science, because “fact checking” is a journalistic tool decent for checking he said/she said BS, but science is an ongoing and continuous process that has its own form of review not assisted by the fact (fact check this!) that most science reporting is crap. That said, fact checks are typically written by journalists or institutions claiming to serve a journalist function; and so are fully governable by common journalist practices such as retractions. Retractions are nice because they acknowledge that there was a human error somewhere in the organization’s processes, memorialize the error but then correct the record with supplementary and reviewable matter. Doing this also provides a signal to readers that even though this particular institution filled with these imperfect humans made a mistake on the record, they sufficiently value their reputation to own the mistake and correct it on the record. Good faith and honesty can take you far.
  - corndoge 5y ago
    That is a good thing. I want to see those changes. Preventing people from seeing the change log of a page because "conspiracy theorists might use it" is dangerous thinking. Saying that it's okay to forego transparency because it could be used to bolster people who disagree with you is backwards. That's precisely why transparency should be retained - when you're the person disagreeing, it benefits you.
    - readthenotes1 5y ago
      Case in point: On Jan 6, NPR published an article with a 10AM headline and timestamp about the upcoming Trump rally. Later in the day, they changed the headline to be something like "Insurgents invade Capital building", but did not change the 10AM timestamp up top. One had to read the article to find the update timestamp. Newsmaxx, and thus many if its viewers looked at the headline and headline timestamp and trumpeted "how did they know?! It's a conspiracy!" I had to look into the wayback machine to see the original headline to show to a relative who'd bought the Newsmaxx narrative. I'm not sure they totally believed or even understood what I was telling them, but I am certain it raised some doubt. All of that would was unnecessary, if only NPR had done proper change management on its articles.
      - slg 5y ago
        This is the exact same because "conspiracy theorists might use it" reasoning just flowing in the opposite direction. Conspiracy theorists with conspiracy theorize regardless of the level of transparency provided by journalist organizations.
        a_conservative 5y ago
        What!? NPR's website contains articles with false time stamps. Are you ok with this? Why does the conspiracy theorist angle matter at all? Knowing when an article was written is a useful piece of information that is being destroyed by these always evolving articles. It might not be full on Orwell yet, but these always-mutating-articles are opening the door to an Orwellian future. We need to be able to go back and look at the past unfiltered and unmodified.
- NotChina 5y ago
  The MOT, may it always be right. But my MOT right, or wrong.
- bigodbiel 5y ago
  Orwell never expected that Minitrue would come from private instead of government entities, but at this point I’m not even sure what is public and what is private anymore.
rglover 5y ago
Because they're a sham fact checking website and they don't want a paper trail.
- dfee 5y ago
  How is this not a better established position? I see Snopes as pure, unadulterated bias. Honestly, I see all those fact checking websites the same way. Which is fine, though humorously this pairs nicely with another thread on HN this morning about HS critical thinking courses around journalism, quite well.
  - rglover 5y ago
    Because people believe what they want to believe. I'm being downvoted because what I said is hurting people's feelings and sensibilities, but it's the truth. The people who run it are, well...https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4042194/Facebook-fact-checker-arbitrate-fake-news-accused-defrauding-website-pay-prostitutes-staff-includes-escort-porn-star-Vice-Vixen-domme.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4042194/Facebook-fa....
    - jazzyjackson 5y ago
      Downvoting you for complaining about downvoting And also for linking the daily mail
      - rglover 5y ago
        I'm not complaining, just pointing it out. Enjoy your passive aggression.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - qkqk 5y ago
    Really? So you think Trump was wearing his pants backwards at this rally? https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-wear-pants-backwards/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-wear-pants-backwards... Snopes says he wasn't, and shows evidence why. That's just "pure, unadulterated bias" though, right? His pants are on backwards? Otherwise "I see Snopes as pure, unadulterated bias" would be such a broad generalization it's meaningless!
daenz 5y ago
The arbiters of truth get their legitimacy by never being wrong. Nobody is never wrong but you can give that illusion by removing any instances of you being wrong from history.
NotChina 5y ago
So that their stated facts are not held to a consistent expectation.
revolvingocelot 5y ago
Ad revenue? A traditional news org might put up a paywall, but that presumably goes against Snopes' mandate of debunking nonsense for the masses. We here at HN tend to paste paywalled article links into archive.is. Sure, an adblocker does the job of depriving beneficiaries of ad revenue just as well, but this way there's at least a chance.
slig 5y ago
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."
- gruez 5y ago
  "We were always at war with eastasia"
JohnTHaller 5y ago
One possible scenario that's not evil: If they get something wrong and correct it, people that don't believe the correction can pass around links to the archive.org version before the correction. Not saying I agree with the decision or that's why they did it, just a possible reason.
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  The fact that we have had good version control for decades and the journalism industry has not adopted it tells you their motives. It's like a godsend to someone who views themselves as a journalist, the ability to always be able to demonstrate their integrity. It almost takes more effort to not adopt it.
- gruez 5y ago
  Why is that a bad thing? It's clearly marked as an archive. I'm also not sure how that fixes the problem, considering that people could still pass around images, which are pretty much taken as seriously as the real site.
  - JohnTHaller 5y ago
    I didn't say it was. I was just guessing at a possible reason they might have done it. I've seen anti-vax folks pass around archive.org links as well as pictures of stuff that was taken down/corrected before.
colechristensen 5y ago
>plagiarize first rewrite slowly Obviously publishing work that isn't your own is wrong, but "plagiarize then rewrite" is a very effective method of developing a creative skill. There is a question about when the transformation really becomes "yours". An example: Radiohead - "Creep" was a tranformation for The Hollies "The Air that I Breathe", Radiohead later went to sue Lana Del Rey for "Get Free" which seemingly was built with one of the two as a starting point. The moral question is... when is copying actually ok? How much do you have to transform something until you don't "owe" the result to someone else... or more fundamentally, to what extent should any of us be able to own intellectual property? There are some valid arguments towards "none at all". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaXFc4Zb78s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaXFc4Zb78s
- ryantgtg 5y ago
  I’ve heard from authors that typing someone else’s entire novel helped them to understand the craft (and then they went on to write their own books, not based on the novels they typed). And of course musicians learn other songs before they write their own. But, copy/pasting an article, and then tweaking a few words to make it more unique, doesn’t seem like a great process for learning the journalism craft. At least not on the same level as the two examples I brought up.
- gmadsen 5y ago
  to the non expert ear, Get Free sounds much much more similar to Creep, than Creep does to "The Air that I Breathe"
- bitwize 5y ago
  If the "groove", "feel", or chord progression of such a song is identical or substantially similar to the song you copied from, you could still be liable for copyright infringement per Williams v. Bridgeport Music (the "Blurred Lines" case). Before you complain, note well that among black musicians the groove is the song, the melody being something of an afterthought -- the exact opposite of what prevails in the white concept of music and, in particular, historical understanding of copyright law. Black musicians have been trying to get acknowledgement of ownership of their grooves for decades. In general, it's not a good idea to use someone else's song as a starting point. In most cases, the original composer is going to be able to establish some form of "substantial similarity" to make you liable for infringement; it will take radical transformation to avoid this.
ArthurChive 5y ago
Archive links are used to bypass paywalls and direct traffic away from the site. (The moderator of this site encourages it [1], and archive links for most paywalled articles are in the comments.) This could be a legitimate reason they were doing it (nefarious ones are easily imagined as well). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
pandaman 5y ago
I wanted to post their original article on the corona virus and masks in the replies here and went to the wayback machine to find it and just learned they excluded themselves from the service. So I can see why they'd block that.