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Snopes Quits Fact-Checking Partnership With Facebook (cnbc.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Snopes, a fact-checking organization, announced on Friday its decision to end its partnership with Facebook, which has been ramping its efforts to curb misinformation on its services since the 2016 U.S. election. Facebook and Snopes had been working together since December 2016 to fact check content on the social network. The company in 2017 paid Snopes as much as $100,000 for the work, according to Snopes. "At this time we are evaluating the ramifications and costs of providing third-party fact-checking services, and we want to determine with certainty that our efforts to aid any particular platform are a net positive for our online community, publication, and staff," Snopes said in a statement.
Snopes said it has not closed the door on working with the company again, but it encouraged Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to meet "with fact-checkers as part of his recently announced series of public discussions" in 2019. The partnership is ending weeks after a report by The Guardian, in which multiple former Snopes employees criticized Facebook's efforts to stop fake content on its services.
Snopes said it has not closed the door on working with the company again, but it encouraged Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to meet "with fact-checkers as part of his recently announced series of public discussions" in 2019. The partnership is ending weeks after a report by The Guardian, in which multiple former Snopes employees criticized Facebook's efforts to stop fake content on its services.
There are no facts, but there are alternative facts. Believe me! I know!
Clashing ideologies, perhaps? Teh zuck's "facts" aren't quite Snopes' "facts"?
100k is a steal. That is the cost of one software engineer for one year. That's it. I'm sure that service required a team of people to operate on both sides.
I know I wouldn't take a job for just $100K a year.
What was Snopes doing getting in bed with a "doing fact-checking for all of Facebook" assignment for that little money?
Does anything posted online need to be factual? AFAIK, as long as it's not slanderous or inciting, you're allowed to post all the fake information you want.
Snopes is a partisan tool.
The first rule that those wishing to spread misinformation, fake news, etc, must follow is to first destroy the credibility of the fact checkers.
You see this all the time right here on slashdot. First destroy the credibility of all major news organizations hostile to your message. Call them "the ennemies of the people".
Then attack fact-checking organizations like Snopes. Attack their objectivity, attack their honesty. Make sure the people distrusts anyone trying to spread a message different than yours.
Finally, accuse everyone criticising your message of trying to "suppress opinions they disagree with" and attacking your "freedom of speech".
Optionnally: Do exactly what you accuse your opponents of doing, and downmod to hell anyone trying the shed light on your shady tactics and your propaganda methods, just like what's going to happen to this very post.
Snopes Refuses To Correct Nathan Phillips "Stolen Valor" Fact Check; Google, Facebook Promote Disinfo.
Snopes is basically run by a guy and his cat. The guy sits in his recliner all day and trolls his own site with biased opinions. And takes tons of money in from the Soros crowd. And then you have initiatives used where THESE are the people who are supposed to "vet" news merely because they have a popular website. Forget Netcraft! If Snopes confirms it, it MUST be true.
I suppose Americans' attention spans are so low these days that you don't even need a real Ministry of Truth. You just have to find a popular website that has a bias to begin with and then get the operators on your payroll. It's sad where things have gone.
How do you provide crucial public services in a marketplace that works largely by the relative absence of exactly those services that used to be considered crucial? In this case, basic rigor in critical thinking about events of the day.
You can harp on fundraising - like Wikipedia does, and NPR does on the regular - but then your role shifts over time to being an injured bird that sings for crumbs - an injured bird that is supposed to represent an entire set of crucial viewpoints against a market that now thinks that everything else is 'the other side' of a rather stupid division of argument.
But how do you change that equation? Even if you did, how would you change that equation that doesn't just dissolve into the same intentionally muddied negative values that politics is mired in?
These questions are often part of most skeptical minded communities over time - whether 'liberal' or 'conservative' minded - how to you fight that ghettoization of thought that comes with reducing the insanity of a system.
My preference would be to have it just be considered part of basic public education - then Snopes and the like can just be a normal source of continuing general education, which is really the proper role, regardless of your political preferences.
Ryan Fenton
In the overall scheme of things, hiring a dozen people to fact-check isn't a big deal for Facebook. And in a hypothetical world where determination of fact and truth are not a political exercise, this would have been done. In the real world, Facebook needs to be able to point a finger elsewhere when the 'fact checkers' screw up. And by 'screw up', I mean anything from making a legitimate mistake, to doing exactly what they were told to do by Facebook. The optics on a bad fact-checking call can be expensive.
Buttery males! And Obama!11
Project the mantra of the deconstructionist left onto the right, and complain about it.
Always cry out in pain when you hit someone I guess.
Snopes got raped. Minimum ask towards fb should be $2.5m/month, based on their scale. Proves that Snopes is just another group of stupid fuckers who think they're smart because they have the internet.
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
Cool story bro, how about you link to even one example of a lie they told to protect Hillary Clinton. I'll wait
Why don't you verify it on snopes.com? Is snopes partisan: false
In all seriousness they've been biased for quite a while and you just never noticed. Now its on us to google it for you? Do you need an APA cited paper on how CNN shills for Dems and Fox for republicans?
Want a real mind bender? Read some reddit the donald and then DU. Its basically the same conspiracy theories with the names switched around.
Since you're too lazy to oogle it yourself, how about the one where Snopes Lies About the Glorious State of California’s Plan To Teach 5-Year-Olds Transgenderism?
Don't let 'em give you any of that flank steak bullshit. You know what I mean? Try the London Broil.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Snopes was founded by a husband-wife team operating out of their home in California. They have a very left-wing bias and agenda, and should NEVER be used as a "fact checking" authority by anyone with any intelligence.
The first rule that those wishing to spread misinformation, fake news, etc, must follow is to first destroy the credibility of the fact checkers.
You see this all the time right here on slashdot. First destroy the credibility of all major news organizations hostile to your message. Call them "the ennemies of the people".
Then attack fact-checking organizations like Snopes. Attack their objectivity, attack their honesty. Make sure the people distrusts anyone trying to spread a message different than yours.
Finally, accuse everyone criticising your message of trying to "suppress opinions they disagree with" and attacking your "freedom of speech".
Optionnally: Do exactly what you accuse your opponents of doing, and downmod to hell anyone trying the shed light on your shady tactics and your propaganda methods, just like what's going to happen to this very post.
Your position requires that we trust fact-checkers simply because they say they're fact-checkers. This seems like an odd position to take, because trust in any sort of media organization must be built and then re-earned each day. If the fact-checkers aren't reporting facts, but are simply another brand of partisan operatives, then they don't deserve to be thought of as unbiased seekers of the truth.
And really, if you are a partisan operative, wouldn't you seek to exploit fact checkers to your benefit, if you could?
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
The "fake news" problem completely discredits the supposed basis for democracy.
If the average person cannot discern fact from fiction, on what basis is it reasonable to allow him any choice in how government is run?
Important to note that (((those))) who bleat about democracy are the same ones propagating fake news.
The first rule that those wishing to spread misinformation, fake news, etc, must follow is to first destroy the credibility of the fact checkers.
Your position requires that we trust fact-checkers simply because they say they're fact-checkers.
ZombieCat said no such thing. Maybe I understand it more clearly since I see this all the time and feel the same. You don't trust a source because it tells you to trust it. Claiming to be a fact-checking organization is just the first step. You can tell a lot by how much verifiable detail is in a report. You can then look some or all of it up. You can compare it to other sources, use logic like extraordinary claims and Occam's razor, and over time, you understand which sources are more reliable. The comparison is often so easy it's mind-boggling that people actually trust Fox, and distrust Snopes, "just because it claims to be fact-checking organization"?! That's not a reason to trust an org without any other reasoning, but it's definitely not a reason to explicitly distrust it. Especially compared to outlets started by the guy that invented the "tabloid". I've never met someone who both trusted Fox, and was curious enough to occasionally look up sources and do further research. After a bit of arguing, they usually admit 'ok, fine, I don't actually really care about the facts, I just have a gut feeling about this.'
...facts & the truth were getting in the way of FB's profits. Let's face it, the important truth is just too boring to sell advertising over. FB is just like those celebrity gossip mags you see at supermarket checkouts. Now, let's turn our attention to the complete & utter irrelevant nonsense our leaders, tycoons, & celebrities been spouting today?
You forget information is power. Any fact-checking organization will be targeted by those who seek power.
Your position requires that we trust fact-checkers simply because they say they're fact-checkers.
ZombieCat said no such thing. (Then you say a bunch of things that basically agree with what I said, only you like snopes, you don't like fox)
I said his position requires 'x', not that he said 'x'.
Beyond that, you do not address the idea that partisan operatives and people in power would seek to use 'fact-checkers' to their own ends. That's an important consideration, is it not?
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
When they hired an established SJW by the name of Kim LaCapria. She used misandrist slurs like "male tears" in her twats... er... "tweets", and published several articles touting biased far-left ideology. You can run an unbiased "fact-checking" site with biased researchers. Several of her articles on Snopes correctly site the facts of the subject, but then completely ignore them to make the "true" or "false" determination fit her political agenda.
The person above has died from old age. May god bless his soul for actually waiting for a repubtard to show a citation on their Lies.
Beyond that, you do not address the idea that partisan operatives and people in power would seek to use 'fact-checkers' to their own ends. That's an important consideration, is it not?
Yes, you're right - I can agree it's an important consideration. Just how important depends on what we're talking about, I'll keep rambling below.
I said his position requires 'x', not that he said 'x'.
I still disagree with the requirement, but maybe we're both reading more into his words. The implication is that he, and I, have seen "way too much" chat online about people distrusting snopes. I have seen almost no evidence of a reason not to trust them. In fact, I don't know of a single org that claims to be fact-checking, that seems dishonest. I've only really used fact-check.org, politifact, open secrets, and snopes. But they all seem completely up-and-up, and I would really doubt that any substantial percentage of their work could be tainted by partisan operatives. At this point, it would take a very large amount of quality evidence to make me really question them. Don't get me wrong, it'd be interesting. But in an age where so many people are incurious as I described, combined with the number of people I feel might be intelligent, but overly ready to believe in conspiracy theories, I'd call it irresponsible to publicly call for the questioning of the fact-checking orgs. In other words, sure, you're right in theory, stuff happens every once in a while. But 99% of the time, people should trust those fact-checking orgs over what the latest Facebook post is making them feel.
If we respond to every thread about fact-checking orgs with reminders to question them, then we are just doing the job of the people that want everyone to question them. "Plant doubt" And those people are exactly the kind of partisan operatives you describe.
While I don't disagree with you, I have a different take.
I heard a news story within the last two days, about a Politifact founder. He was promoting his real-time, AI powered fact checker. The idea is to fact-check political speeches as they are happening.
Not for the first time I found myself wondering: Is this really the fight we should be fighting? Is this the battlefield of choice?
It's pretty clear that in the current political dynamic, one side cares about facts and another side does not care. One side proudly and virtuously brings to the table a list of indisputable facts, many of which undermine the current US President.
And what do that US President's supporters say? So what. What do they do? Shrug their shoulders and carry on. "Lib-tards. TDS. MAGA. Feels and not Facts."
So I ask, who are these fact checking services for? They are for the political Left. Why are they valuable? They prove that the Right are hypocrites and lie. Don't we know this already? Yes we do.
It seems to me that fact checking services are rather like looking up the spelling of a word in the dictionary. We already know the word, we just need a course correction on spelling it. It's pretty rare to discover that the word we wanted was not the right word at all. Therefore while fact checking has some use, in reality the value of these services is tactical and rather low.
Change will come due to some other force than fact checking. Fact checking only allows for internal consistency and accuracy among the Left. It isn't going to shift the Right and it may be rather unimportant in shifting non-aligned voters.