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Almost all these “fact checkers” exposed themselves on the lab leak theory which they had to redact after 1.5 years. Relying on any of them as a source of “truth” is asking for trouble. They are more of a narrative check.

https://www.snopes.com/news/2021/06/02/covid-19-why-the-lab-...

Snopes didn't, they reference a medical journal article from 1.5 years ago as evidence. Which presumably you agree with...oops! [1]

Back on topic: why didn't they omit those references and reasoning regarding the Capitol?!

spiderice 1771 days ago

> why didn't they omit those references and reasoning regarding the Capitol?!

Your argument seems to be: Because Snopes didn't omit references in this one case, they don't omit references ever.

I've got no dog in this fight, but please, the logical fallacies are hurting my brain.

mavhc 1771 days ago

The lack of evidence is your evidence?

spiderice 1771 days ago

What do you mean "your evidence"? I'm making no claims as to whether or not Snopes omits references. I'm merely pointing out that "My Grandma smokes and she's 100 years old" is not evidence that smoking doesn't kill.

> the logical fallacies are hurting my brain

Like your "they don't omit references ever" straw man?

"This one case" meaning one of the most significant and contested events of the US election? Surely their far-left agenda would prevent them from publishing this?

This isn't "Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer" level of insignificance.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/aoc-capitol-attack/

Since you are referring to the Capitol, here's one example of their bias:

They rate "Did AOC Exaggerate the Danger She Was in During Capitol Riot?" as FALSE.

They also included a puff piece editorialization in it:

> "AOC was targeted with another round of bad-faith smears after giving an emotional, firsthand account of her experiences during the Capitol riot."

"So the claim that they investigate is:

"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez exaggerated the danger she was in during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, in that she "wasn't even in the Capitol building" when the rioting occurred."

Instead of rating it mostly true, or a mixture, they rate it mostly false, and then state:

"What's True: Ocasio-Cortez wasn't in the main Capitol building where the House and Senate Chambers are located."

Included in their "fact check" are the following politically-biased statements (emphasis added):

"It took less than 48 hours for the right-wing disinformation machine to contrive a way to minimize what Ocasio-Cortez said she had experienced."

"In a circus of cyberbullying that began on Feb. 3, 2021, conservative news outlets and social media conspiracy trolls latched on to the misleading claim that Ocasio-Cortez “wasn’t in the Capitol building” and therefore was not in harm’s way, as she had described in the Instagram video."

To its credit, Snopes' main argument is that AOC never claimed she was in the Capitol building, which is an important point, but one example of "mostly-false right-wing disinformation" is a Red State headline, “AOC Wasn’t Even in the Capitol Building During Her ‘Near Death’ Experience.” Obviously, that headline is mostly true, arguably entirely true.

-----

Here is another example, coming from the beginning of the Trump Admin. Here is their page on a comparison of the Obama and Trump inauguration crowds which was a popular talking point of late night TV show hosts:

https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/01/20/obamas-inauguration-c...

It includes this well-known blurry picture comparison (a meme, no less), and you can't even tell if it is a reliable comparison, as you can't even tell if either presidents are on stage yet:

https://www.snopes.com/tachyon/2017/01/a17.jpg

Now compare that to this:

Obama crowd, with Obama on stage:

https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/president-barack-obama-...

Trump crowd, with Trump on stage:

https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/president-donald-trump-...

Another angle matching similar to Obama's angle:

https://www.usmessageboard.com/proxy.php?image=http%3A%2F%2F...

It's very easy to tell that Snopes used pictures of the crowd from different times to sell their narrative.

Multiple people had contacted Snopes a few times to point out the problems with their fact check, including links to these pictures. They never replied nor updated their narrative, despite it being a hot topic in the press for quite a while.

Truth and facts are becoming harder to come by these days. When you have to fact check the fact checkers, things are pretty bad.

And social media companies will use "fact checks" like these to make censorship decisions, so they aren't simply "alternative viewpoints" on the internet; they have real-world First Amendment implications."

These are examples I easily found by using duckduckgo. Google will hide these.

Not replying further as this discussion has turned into a snarky flame war which is frowned upon.

unanswered 1771 days ago

That was not the original lab leak article. The original article called it definitely false and racist.

Right, you can tell by the publication date (it's in the URL), why I say "they reference a medical journal article from 1.5 years ago as evidence."

What you said is not true, and their position hasn't shifted (they're critical of those that did). https://www.snopes.com/news/2021/07/16/lab-leak-evidence/

unanswered 1771 days ago

You're still linking the retconned article. In the original it is as I said.

This new article is also extremely disingenuous. It argues "there's no evidence Wuhan isolated RaTG13". Well no shit, since the best evidence is that RaTG13 is completely made up, never existed in reality, and never existed on paper until early 2020. For snopes to take that evidence and turn it around and say it's evidence for the Wuhan Institute being totally reliable and trustworthy is perverse.

That is false, and I linked to a new, different article, not a "retconned" one. They didn't change their stance, they criticize those that do, and reference a medical journal article from 1.5 years ago as evidence.

As you said, you agree with the evidence they cite...

kmeisthax 1771 days ago

The problem with fact checkers is that they're being brought into a different problem domain than what their practice is designed to combat. Social media companies more or less deputized them to be sources of truth; which carries bigger implications (albeit not as bad as people make it out to be) than just giving your opinion about a particular bit of information.

When Snopes says "the lab leak theory isn't real", they're basing it off of scientific research carried out early in the pandemic which claimed that the virus didn't look engineered. That is, effectively, an expert opinion - something close to truth but still subject to change should new information come to light. It's entirely reasonable for a fact checker to rely on that information at that time, as well as change their opinion in response to new information.

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/lab-leak-theory...

The bigger problem is that it wan't even an expert opinion. It was actually a political opinion coming from the mouths of experts. Here's my proof:

Many of the scientists have now admitted that they refrained from publicly acknowledging the evidence that the virus may have been engineered in the Wuhan lab. Alina Chan was one of those experts who says this now:

"... it was scarier to be associated with Trump and to become a tool for racists, so people didn't want to publicly call for an investigation into lab origins."

It never occurred to these "scientists" that claiming the virus came from bats because they eat bats in China is the more "xenophobic" thing and not the possible lab leak caused due to poor handling by "scientists".

https://www.foxnews.com/media/realclearpolitics-fact-checker...

farp 1771 days ago

Parent comment is just a rehashing of a Fox News article. Seeing this more often on HN.

Good lord. I barely made a short 3 sentence long observational comment. What does it have to do with fox? You are basically doing an hominem attack.

And for what it's worth, no, I haven't followed corporate media (including cnn, msnbc, fox, nytimes, washington post etc). I pay for independent journalists on substack and locals instead.

Also the link which you provided is referring to RealClearPolitics being the real source, not fox. fox is doing an opinion piece on what RealClearPolitics reported. Exact same stuff which other left leaning sources do.

farp 1771 days ago

> You are basically doing an hominem attack.

Were you trying to spell "ad hominem?"

> fox is doing an opinion piece on what RealClearPolitics reported

Right, which is the argument I said you regurgitated. It's such a cliché even Fox News already moved on to new talking points.