[wl]

Snopes chose to target, among other things, a Babylon Bee article talking about how CNN bought industrial laundry equipment to spin their news. The only people who could possibly be confused that this is real news are toddlers who have not yet developed abstract thinking and would be confused by the whole thing anyway. It's a strong indication that Snopes is engaging in the culture war as an interested party. It's not a good look for a supposedly disinterested fact checker.

[TheHypnotist]

You make too many assumptions. The snopes article on this is two paragraphs long and puts little effort into debunking, as it needs little effort. But for whatever reason, people ask them to look into it. For other reasons, people like you seem to think this diminishes snopes. It doesn't.

[beerandt]

>But for whatever reason, people ask them to look into it.

Maybe because a false rating leads to being buried by Google and Facebook. That's a legitimate motive.

Asking for someone or something to be investigated isn't necessarily a de-facto innocence excuse.

[TheHypnotist]

I think poor satire is to blame for being buried, not snopes. When the lines are blurred between misinformation and satire, and a relatively unknown satire website with an obvious agenda produces articles that walk that line, maybe they have it coming because simply put, they aren't very good.

[dev_dull]

> Actual headline: "Did CNN Purchase an Industrial-Sized Washing Machine to Spin News"

What line does this walk? Things that are even physically possible and things that are not? I just can't believe Snopes dedicated cycles to debunking this.

Thankfully it got some press and they changed the label to "satire". I can't tell exactly when because the snopes link has been excluded from the way back machine (for whatever reason).

[beerandt]

Not necessarily. Some of it is bad, certainly.

But a lot just turns on being juxtaposed against a prerequisite belief that's not universal. If you don't share that belief, it won't be funny to you. That doesn't (necessarily) make it bad satire.

[TheHypnotist]

Sure, and I'm trying to be objective but I believe my assertion is universal. If your content is poor, your return is poor.

Perhaps the publication should look inward, not outward, and realize the lines between misinformation and satire are paper thin. Somehow, and perhaps its branding, The Onion manages to maintain humor and absurdity with very little room for interpreting it's content as anything but satire.

[beerandt]

But that's not a decision to be made by Snopes, based on a supposed fact-check.

There are plenty of people who don't find the onion, at all. It's not a justification for blacklisting them as fake news.

[dragonwriter]

> because a false rating leads to being buried by Google and Facebook

If Facebook and/or Google punish a satire site for having articles marked false by a fact-checker, that's a problem with Facebook and/or Google for responding improperly to fact-check of satire, not a problem with the fact-checker, which is doing exactly their job.

> Asking for someone or something to be investigated isn't necessarily a de-facto innocence excuse.

It is for a fact checker if what is produced is a honest and accurate fact check of the claims presented. It may not be for the questioner if they are trying to game a system where third parties do dumb things based on what fact checkers do, but that's a problem with the questioner and the third parties, not the fact checker.

[beerandt]

>not a problem with the fact-checker

If a fact checker can't (or chooses not to) distinguish satire from news, it very much is a problem with the fact checker, regardless of Facebook or Google's over-reliance on them (right or wrong).

At the time, (until ~Feb 2019) Snopes fact checkers for Facebook were separate from the sites traditional authors. They would have known exactly that what they were doing resulted in blacklisting.

[dragonwriter]

> If a fact checker can't (or chooses not to) distinguish satire from news, it very much is a problem with the fact checker

When Snopes does a fact-check of a claim whose original source is satire, they clearly identify both the source and the satirical nature, so whether or not one were to agree with your hypothetical, it doesn't seem applicable to the actual situation being discussed.

> At the time, (until ~Feb 2019) Snopes fact checkers for Facebook were separate from the sites traditional authors. They would have known exactly that what they were doing resulted in blacklisting.

That's perhaps an argument as to why Snopes should have refused to fact check for Facebook on ethical grounds but, having been employed to do so, it's not a reason they should not have fact checked all claims put before them.

Though social feed including reshares of satirical sources as news is an increasingly important source of “news”, so I’m not sure there's a problem here besides Facebook lacking sufficient AI to distinguish when a story (whether in original presentation or resharing which can alter context and reach less-familiar audiences) is likely to read as news vs. satire by the recipient and only apply any penalty from negative fact check results in the context where it would otherwise be seen as news. This isn't the pre-web (or even pre-social-media) environment where a publication reaches mainly people familiar with it's nature and actively seeking it out, and that's particularly true when the venue is specifically Facebook.

[pwinnski]

> The only people who could possibly be confused that this is real news are toddlers

Have you been away from the internet for the last couple of years? There is literally nothing on the internet so fantastical that it won't be posted to social media stripped of context and believed by somebody.

[beerandt]

So we're going deplatform all satire?

[pwinnski]

Snopes doesn't de-platform anyone. Your beef is rightly with Google or Facebook.

Snopes labels things that are false as false. This includes many or most satirical articles. Given the number of times I've told someone that a thing is false and had to provide a scopes link before they would even start to believe me, I'm very grateful for snopes.

Facebook and Google can pound sand.

[beerandt]

I have plenty of issues with them too. But that doesn't exonerate Snopes for twisting claims in misleading ways, whether satire or not.

I used to rely on them, too. That's part of the reason that it pisses me off so much... It used to be a great resource.

Now I use it more to see how a political claim is going to spun, than to check whether it's true.

[dkonofalski]

That's not what they're suggesting and you know it.

[beerandt]

I do. But it's an impossible line to draw. How many people need to claim they believe satire is the truth for an article to be flagged?

[dkonofalski]

No, it's not. Every single one of those articles stems from a post on their forum where it's been requested. They regularly pick them based on their popularity in the forum. As long as they're consistent with that, it's completely possible to address these specific instances.

[beerandt]

>popularity in the forum

This is not, in anyway, a reasonable filter for bias, let alone one for satire.

[ceejayoz]

> The only people who could possibly be confused that this is real news are toddlers who have not yet developed abstract thinking and would be confused by the whole thing anyway.

An actual Congressional representative fell for an Onion article titled "Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex".

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/republican-congressman-falls-vi...

> "I was kind of on the fence in the beginning," says the made-up person, Marcy Kolrath, in the article. "But after a couple of margaritas and a ride down the lazy river they've got circling the place, I got caught up in the vibe. By the time it was over, I almost wished I could've aborted twins and gotten to stay a little longer."

[mnm1]

Our congressmen are as dumb as toddlers. What else is new? The parent probably should have specified that no person with a brain could be fooled by such articles. That would have ruled out politicians like this congressman.

[DonHopkins]

>The only people who could possibly be confused that this is real news are toddlers who have not yet developed abstract thinking and would be confused by the whole thing anyway.

Or a geriatric toddler whose has long since lost his capacity for abstract thinking due to dementia, and would be easily confused by Rudolph Giuliani pedaling ridiculous conspiracy theories that stroke his ego about Russia having nothing to do with interference in the election, if you know who I mean.

[PhasmaFelis]

Snopes also had to debunk an Onion article headlined "Mike Pence Disappointed God Has Never Asked Him To Kill One Of Own Children".

It only looks like they're being partisan if you cherry-pick your articles.

[beerandt]

Articles like this do not make them neutral. They only make them look neutral.

It's the equivalent of claiming to have a black friend as proof you're not racist.

[dev_dull]

Here's a "partisan" topic: "Have Democrats Tried to Impeach Every GOP President Since Ike?"[1]

According to their site it's 5 out of 6 presidents, or roughly 80%. Their rating: mostly false. Looks mostly true to me.

1. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dems-impeach-gop-president...

[PhasmaFelis]

> Articles like this do not make them neutral. They are only designed to make them look neutral.

Are you asserting, then, that the stories about left-wing idiots are true, but the ones about right-wing idiots are false? I'm honestly curious. Are all of the linked Twitter accounts secret false-flag trolls?

[beerandt]

Not at all... Just that there's a great deal of nuance that goes into many of these Snopes articles that is designed to flip the question so that it might be answered in a favorable way.

Just covering an opposing viewpoint doesn't mean it's covered in a neutral way.