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.

Comments

100k

[darkain]

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.

Re:100k

[edi_guy]

Facebook made over $6 billion in profit this past quarter alone. The fact that the threw $100k to Snopes shows that FB doesn't give a crap about trying to fix their fake news problems. Also shows that the average user (American) also doesn't give a crap.

What I find weird is that it is all advertising. Just money taken from the old print and TV medias, re-routed to Facebook. Does this advertising even work? So while old-school CPG manufacturers are paying tons of advertising to Facebook, and simultaneously being eaten alive by Amazon and non-brand items...at what point do they start cutting back on their advertising budgets?

Basic rules of misinformation spreading

[ZombieCatInABox]

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.

The wikipedia game.

[RyanFenton]

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

Obvious partisan Tactic:Co-opt the 'fact checkers'

[dfenstrate]

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?

Re:Obvious partisan Tactic:Co-opt the 'fact checke

[acrimonious howard]

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.'