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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!
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?
Because important decisions are made without fact checking and research.
We don't have intelligent discussions on social media, we have popularity contests. NPR summarized it with an episode about PewDiePie. Commercial interests (advertisers, etc.) want factual, reliable, and/or Politically Correct content. Consumers want outlandish and entertaining, without concern for others. Responsible decision making requires spending time sorting out the above influences and finding the boring truth.
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.
Nobody is saying that you should be put in prison or fined for merely sharing fake news or inept satire.
But on the other hand, nobody who says or spreads patent nonsense on the Internet should be "allowed" to be immune from fact checking.
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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 is not a fact checking service, it's a small site which investigates urban legends. Their results can vary quite a bit, they seem to be best at tracking down origins of stories. But any time they tackle something which needs a deep and careful analysis their conclusions start to suffer... especially when it the answer is more nuanced than a simple "true" or "false." Anything touching politics starts to show subtle bias and their backing "proof" is often one sided or woefully inadequate.
Put simply, they need to stick to what they're good at... tracking gossip. And stop trying to pretend they're experts at analyzing facts and complex situations.
A quick google search... https://www.realclearpolitics....
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
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.
To further expand on your comment, you can lie with facts. Lies by omission are the prime example. Omitting facts that disprove your narrative is telling lies.
When your goal is to push a narrative or ideology and facts become secondary then it doesn't matter which facts you cherry pick to support your ideological narrative.
Science has a mechanism to try and deal with that basic human behavior. Journalism does not. There is no self correcting mechanism in journalism to address the faults of "fake news". Making fine print corrections is not acting in good faith. If journalism had integrity they would work with exuberant fervor to ensure that their mistake is understood by everyone to be a mistake. They need to ensure that the Big Lie dies. Instead, we see too many journalists hiding behind the Big Lie to protect their narrative.
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.'
It would be the work done by the account doing the publishing. Social media was a utility connecting people and their comments, links. :)
Now social media is going to be the publisher and reviewer of everyones comments
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Nutty fucking nonsense.
Opening line
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Beware of simply googling this kind of thing, it tends to send you to dubious claims like the one you linked to. If you read the actual Snopes article it refers to then you can see that the RealClearPolitics description of it is misleading at best.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
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.