Snopes Quits Fact-Checking Partnership With Facebook (cnbc.com) 120
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.
Trumpverse! (Score:2, Funny)
There are no facts, but there are alternative facts. Believe me! I know!
Fakenewsiverse! (Score:2, Insightful)
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
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Nutty fucking nonsense.
Opening line
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I would not rate this a troll.
I lost trust in a lot of news outlets (Snopes being one) after they continued their early narrative after the full video came out.
For the first time, I fully empathized with the Right's complaints about the "MSM".
The Right has no real and trustworthy news outlets, but the Left completely failed to hold its own standards in this case.
Bravo (Score:1, Flamebait)
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.
Re: So what's the problem? (Score:2, Insightful)
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, th
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A quick google search... https://www.realclearpolitics.... [realclearpolitics.com]
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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.
100k (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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100k is a steal. That is the cost of one software engineer for one year. That's it.
When you add in benefits, office space, utilities, and management overhead, that is the cost of one software engineer for 6 months.
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Either way, that much money for Facebook is literally nothing. They probably have dozens of people on staff doing absolutely nothing or doing bullshit "project management" jobs.
Re:100k (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
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Does this advertising even work?
Yes, it does. I don't think the old-school CPG manufacturers have really gotten into it yet, though. There's still a huge chunk of advertising money waiting to move to the internet.
paid Snopes as much as $100,000 (Score:2)
What was Snopes doing getting in bed with a "doing fact-checking for all of Facebook" assignment for that little money?
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What was Snopes doing getting in bed with a "doing fact-checking for all of Facebook" assignment for that little money?
There were not fact-checking "all of Facebook". Despite your scary quotes, neither the summary nor TFA says that.
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It also discounts your actual cost is 2 to 3x your salary. $100k is a $50k person for 1 year, keeping costs down.
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Re: Why (Score:1)
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.
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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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Now social media is going to be the publisher and reviewer of everyones comments
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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". Maki
Basic rules of misinformation spreading (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: Basic rules of misinformation spreading (Score:2, Insightful)
Just think, if media outlets stopped being misleading, and fact checking organizations acted in trustworthy ways, this line of attack would not work.
But we know that will never happen, so this line of assault will continue, and it will work.
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The grand parent poster tried to justify unfair attacks with victim blaming: "If the media was always right, no one would attack them".
And you are playing the same game: Unfair attacks are fair in reality, because the media is guilty. No. Unfair attacks are
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The "fact checking organization" in question is Snopes, and Snopes has a sterling reputation for reliability.
Look, the far right has hated Snopes for a long time, because it refused to play ball with the Birther conspiracy theories, as well as debunking some of the nuttier theories on Soros, ACORN, and what not. Plus they *really* don't like Of course they fa
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Snopes jumped its shark. Sorry to let you in on it.
They were fairly decent when they were debunking urban legends and email scams.
Then they decided to push opinions as fact. Thats it. They are ridding their previous glory. Sorry.
'Fake news' was quite the meme that boomeranged isn't it? A term that would let others dismiss whatever they wanted. Turns out most people only want to listen to their own echos.
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I've read the whole comment section and I'm still waiting to see a single genuine example of Snopes "pushing opinions as fact".
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After Covington and Buzzfeed "bombshell" refuted by Mueller (but Buzzfeed stands behind their fake news!) the phrase "the media is the enemy of the people" takes on whole new meaning. A Republican calling the media out for their crap behavior has been decades in the making because of the media's partisanship and bullshit reporting.
Media and their defenders like to say that "without free and open news a democracy cannot survive" which is true. But the thing with that kind of power requires responsibility. Ji
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And writing opinion pieces is not "activism", it's simply journalism. Even journalists have a right to speak their mind. In a journal. And no, you are not required to agree. That doesn't mean they are wrong and you are right. And even when you are right: journalists even have the right to be wrong about something. And they are still no "activists", but remain journalists.
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Reading your comment it sounds like you don't understand what a journalist is and what the responsibilities of that title bring. Opinion is not journalism. If I need to explain that difference then this discussion is pointless. I never claimed to be a journalist and therefore do not adhere to any standard of professionalism in my writing. Everyone knows that if they read my comments that they are getting penandpaper's opinion and basic rules of argument and logic apply. No one cares what I think and I do no
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'The people' will continue to willing consume the new media products of their alleged enemy despite access to more alternative news than has ever existed
I look forward to more layoffs from outlets acting in bad faith. Just as I look forward to seeing those outlets defended and propped up with ideological tech companies banning simple phrases like "learn to code". I also look forward to those companies that are partially defined as 'public spaces' be given the same treatment as the physical town square.
We live in a world where "pew news" is watched by more people than the NYT.
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You see this all the time right here on slashdot. ....... Call them "the enemies of the people".
I........don't see that on Slashdot often at all.
Obvious partisan Tactic:Co-opt the 'fact checkers' (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.'
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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?
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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 re
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I see you have already picked up a few troll mods. Slashdot would be better if the troll mod just set the moderator's mod point count to zero, and then deleted their account. I'd happily put up with a bit of actual trolling to stop the politically motivated mods trying to control the message.
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Judging by your upset it sounds like the left is losing the censorship -- thought control, really -- battle. Good.
The wikipedia game. (Score:4, Interesting)
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
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Snopes isn't a crucial service. It's just another political shitshow pushing its bias. Kind of what Wikipedia is turning into with it's facts-by-consensus model.
You can't promote "critical thinking" and then blindly swallow the interpretation of "truth" by a site like Snopes.
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Snopes isn't a crucial service. It's just another political shitshow pushing its bias. ...
Case in point of people poking their head out of their own echo chamber to attack the credibility of the source. There is NO INFORMATION that is credible but the right wing propaganda according to the right wing propaganda. This is so sad and tragic. Snopes is such a wonderful organization that does it's best -- and it is shit on by assholes who want to suck on the teat of tyranny.
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What if they notice the world usually can't be broken down into "my way" or "that's all wrong" within a 3-second soundbite? You might confuse their "Personal Truth" and make them hurt and upset.
Psst -- sometimes in anime, "Personal Truth" is the method used to magically change the world; you believe something hard enough that it actually becomes reality. I'm waiting with baited breath for the first actual magical wizard 20-somethings to appear.
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I so appreciate your line of thought here -- it is beautiful and next level:
but then your role shifts over time to being an injured bird that sings for crumbs
That's NPR. The idea of making Snopes part of public education is good and needed -- but that's what we used to have with the corporation for public broadcasting. And I do remember those "champions against government waste" -- the Republicans. Spending decades trying to get rid of it. We eventually learned about economics from some of the same wall str
Facebook HAS to outsource fact checking (Score:1)
Wow. (Score:1, Troll)
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