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I initially thought Snopes was a great idea, and in the early days it seemed quite handy. Now its only really minorly credible. My personal experience was fin

I initially thought Snopes was a great idea, and in the early days it seemed quite handy. Now its only really minorly credible. My personal experience was finding an article that talked about something I was directly involved in, and it was clearly wrong. I basically lost most trust in its ratings however it does seem to basically cover the issue in text. My main quibbles are with when the article covers something substantially and then says the rating only depends on less than 10% of the article.

teddyh 5y ago
> My personal experience was finding an article that talked about something I was directly involved in, and it was clearly wrong. Snopes can only go by what other sources have written, since they weren’t there. If you have direct personal experience, it’s certainly likely that your view will differ from the one reported by Snopes, for two reasons: Firstly, your view is by definition limited and personal, and is likely skewed one way or the other. But secondly, all journalists who write about something have similar incentives (i.e. to write an interesting ‘story’), and will therefore likely all choose a similar narrative based on a similar starting point. I should note that Wikipedia has the exact same problem, since Wikipedia must limit itself to secondary sources.
- TeeMassive 5y ago
  > Snopes can only go by what other sources have written Or they could do basic journalism: directly contact sources or seek access to first hand material and do cross-refence. It used to be the standard back in the days to have at least three independent sources before publishing a story.
  - teddyh 5y ago
    If they did that, they would have no references to back up their claims. This is why Wikipedia does what it does; they need to be able to reference every claim.
- meragrin_ 5y ago
  > Snopes can only go by what other sources have written, since they weren’t there. I have supplied information to correct articles. They were never updated. This information was easy to come by. One in particular involved timelines/history of bills in the US Congress which they were very wrong about. All you have to do is go to Congress's website and look up the history. The "fact checker" could not even bother to do this. They had a narrative to push and the were going to push it. Snopes is garbage for anything political.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - teddyh 5y ago
    OK, but that’s a bit vague. Do you have the links to the incorrect Snopes story and links to the articles with correct information?
evgen 5y ago
I hate to be the one to tell you, but just because you were 'directly involved' in something does not mean you know what was going on. Every day courts are filled with people who witness an event and present their own personal viewpoint upon the events; when the viewpoints differ it is not always because someone among them is being deceitful, sometimes two people can see the exact same set of events and walk away with completely different narratives.
- nitrogen 5y ago
  While it's true that perspective is limited and memory is fallible, it's a pretty disturbing trend in society that some feel the need to tear down personal experience, and use sites like Snopes to do it. Someone who lived through something probably won't know everything, but they'll certainly know more, especially about what they experienced, than someone who wasn't involved at all. This comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes... > Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. > In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
- bifrost 5y ago
  I was one of three people working on the project, the other two people on the project also agreed that Snopes was full of it. The one source they used was from a rehash of a blog post. They made no attempt to interview any of us.
TeeMassive 5y ago
Good on you for remembering their credibility, but most people suffer from Gell-Mann Amnesia: > “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. > In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.” https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
- parineum 5y ago
  I wasn't aware this effect had a name but it's what got me jaded on reading the news and how I always explain my feelings about it to people. Thanks for the link.

teddyh 5y ago

> My personal experience was finding an article that talked about something I was directly involved in, and it was clearly wrong. Snopes can only go by what other sources have written, since they weren’t there. If you have direct personal experience, it’s certainly likely that your view will differ from the one reported by Snopes, for two reasons: Firstly, your view is by definition limited and personal, and is likely skewed one way or the other. But secondly, all journalists who write about something have similar incentives (i.e. to write an interesting ‘story’), and will therefore likely all choose a similar narrative based on a similar starting point. I should note that Wikipedia has the exact same problem, since Wikipedia must limit itself to secondary sources.

TeeMassive 5y ago
> Snopes can only go by what other sources have written Or they could do basic journalism: directly contact sources or seek access to first hand material and do cross-refence. It used to be the standard back in the days to have at least three independent sources before publishing a story.
- teddyh 5y ago
  If they did that, they would have no references to back up their claims. This is why Wikipedia does what it does; they need to be able to reference every claim.
meragrin_ 5y ago
> Snopes can only go by what other sources have written, since they weren’t there. I have supplied information to correct articles. They were never updated. This information was easy to come by. One in particular involved timelines/history of bills in the US Congress which they were very wrong about. All you have to do is go to Congress's website and look up the history. The "fact checker" could not even bother to do this. They had a narrative to push and the were going to push it. Snopes is garbage for anything political.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- teddyh 5y ago
  OK, but that’s a bit vague. Do you have the links to the incorrect Snopes story and links to the articles with correct information?

evgen 5y ago

I hate to be the one to tell you, but just because you were 'directly involved' in something does not mean you know what was going on. Every day courts are filled with people who witness an event and present their own personal viewpoint upon the events; when the viewpoints differ it is not always because someone among them is being deceitful, sometimes two people can see the exact same set of events and walk away with completely different narratives.

nitrogen 5y ago
While it's true that perspective is limited and memory is fallible, it's a pretty disturbing trend in society that some feel the need to tear down personal experience, and use sites like Snopes to do it. Someone who lived through something probably won't know everything, but they'll certainly know more, especially about what they experienced, than someone who wasn't involved at all. This comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes... > Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. > In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
bifrost 5y ago
I was one of three people working on the project, the other two people on the project also agreed that Snopes was full of it. The one source they used was from a rehash of a blog post. They made no attempt to interview any of us.

TeeMassive 5y ago

Good on you for remembering their credibility, but most people suffer from Gell-Mann Amnesia: > “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. > In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.” https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

parineum 5y ago
I wasn't aware this effect had a name but it's what got me jaded on reading the news and how I always explain my feelings about it to people. Thanks for the link.