Good! Snopes != a fact checker.
This is intentional. Click the "More information about this page" at the bottom of the article and you will be directed here, where they explain it: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/false-authority/
In a nutshell, Snopes wants you to stop assuming things that you read online are true because of who's telling you. This includes Snopes.
> Snopes.com has long been engaged in the battle against misinformation, an effort we could not sustain without support from our audience. Producing reliable fact-checking and thorough investigative reporting requires significant resources. We pay writers, editors, web developers, and other staff who work tirelessly to provide you with an invaluable service: evidence-based, contextualized analysis of facts. Help us keep Snopes.com strong. Make a direct contribution today. Learn More. Donate with PayPal
Seems a bit disingenuous to ask for money to fund the battle against misinformation on a page that almost entirely consists of misinformation.
Q: Were None of 154 Mass Shootings in 2018 Committed by a Black Man, Illegal Alien, or Woman?
A: Mixture.
The answer should be entirely false. If you measure by suspects, two-thirds of shooters in the 154 shootings were black men. If you measure by convictions, there were zero mass shootings in 2018. By any measure you choose, the claim is incorrect, and probably by a very wide margin.
Example 2: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/united-states-lower-death-...
Claim: Between 2009 and 2015, the United States had a lower mass shootings death rate than several European countries.
Rating: Mixture
The analysis is extremely muddled, and claims that the European shootings were "outliers" and therefore presumably should not be counted, rather than relying on the law of large numbers.
But they literally say exactly this. Do you immediately stop reading after just the one word next to the graphic? Do the rest of the words mean nothing?
Yes, it's still marked as "Mixture". This is an example of where a different slant is given than what the facts.
"According to Snopes, it's somewhat true that none of 154 mass shootings in 2018 where committed by a black man, illegal alien, or woman."
"According to Snopes, it's somewhat true that Jews and Americans did not die in the Holocaust."
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/gimmegrants-train-photo/
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ford-tariff-layoffs/
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/antifa-nazi-flags/
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/black-panthers-georgia-pic...
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/aretha-franklin-donald-tru...
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/was-law-separate-families-...
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tommy-robinson-arrest/
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/university-of-texas-mascul...
How is this a left-leaning opinion check?
2. They said that a satire story was not true, which, of course it isn't. They said it was satire, which it is.
3. Facebook automatically took action against the fact-checked site, the very agreement that Snopes is now pulling out of.
Which of those bullet points means that Snopes is bad?
The part labelling the following sentence a "claim":
"CNN invested in an industrial-sized washing machine to help their journalists and news anchors spin the news before publication."
The part where they instructed FB to stop allowing people to see this satire piece because it would spread misinformation.
The part where they knew their actions would go a long ways to potentially destroying the ad-based satire publication.
That's not fact checking.
> Although it should have been obvious that the Babylon Bee piece was just a spoof of the ongoing political brouhaha over alleged news media “bias” and “fake news,” some readers missed that aspect of the article and interpreted it literally. But the site’s footer gives away the Babylon Bee’s nature by describing it as “Your Trusted Source For Christian News Satire,” and the site has been responsible for a number of other (usually religious-themed) spoofs that have been mistaken for real news articles.
So, looking at your complaints again:
- The article _is_ false, it's just also satire, as Snopes points out.
- That is a claim. See above.
- Instructing FB on the truthfulness of media _was literally their job_.
- What are you talking about.
- Yes, they checked facts in this case.
And Snopes knew exactly what the consequences were on FB based on their “fact checking” work.
So a satire site making fun of how badly the mainstream news spins things got punished for “lying” because Snopes told Facebook they were lying.
If you read the original linked article, it is clear that they had to manually go in and select the articles that they believed were false and people shouldn’t be allowed to see anymore. They could have simply put up their article, without calling down FB’s wrath on the satire site, but they didn’t.
Are you saying you've never, ever seen anyone mistake an Onion piece for real news? I see it all the time, usually from uneducated people, racists, and new-age moonbats.
> The part that says a satire article is "false."
it doesn't say that a satire article is "false", it says the "claim" is.
> The part labelling the following sentence a "claim":
> "CNN invested in an industrial-sized washing machine to help their journalists and news anchors spin the news before publication."
I'm confused here. Why is this an issue? They are going to fact check whether the claim is true or not. In this case, appears rather than prove CNN didn't, they're going with the "it's satire, people" approach. As is a vast majority of their content, it isn't about the site hosting the content so much as debunking the "claim" to include the initial purpose of debunking/confirming urban legends.
> The part where they instructed FB to stop allowing people to see this satire piece because it would spread misinformation.
They instructed Facebook? Seemed more like Snopes funnels FB data and FB does with it what it sees fit.
> The part where they knew their actions would go a long ways to potentially destroying the ad-based satire publication.
They provided data. Again, kind of on Facebook in this particular case.
> That's not fact checking.
I think they do a fine job fact checking. Where they probably overstepped was in thinking or at least agreeing to the prospect that their data was ready to be made sense of by a non-human user: I can go onto the linked article and can easily infer that CNN bought a washing machine to spin news is bogus and I can also get from it very obviously that the original post it comes from is a joke in the spirit of The Onion, Hard Times, or any other parody site.
And actually, back to the "false-by-means-of-satire": I don't think that'd work. Reason being is that I imagine it is the message "CNN buys washer to spin news" that is labeled as false. Whether someone linking to the original parody or if I created jsgosnews.cc and copied the original's content as a quote (with attribution. Actually, just kidding, because most of these "fake news" sites don't include original attribution as it'd probably expose themselves as bogus too easily) and linked to that. We know the original was stated in jest, but what if mine is claimed as if it was dead serious and that CNN really did this. How does the false, but satire work now?
Again, at least in my opinion, Snopes is doing it the right way. Maybe they need to rethink how (or even if they will ever again) be a fact checking data aggregation service, but I don't see a solution to allow it to truly be the be all, end all solution. So as such, I think they should just continue doing what they're doing.
Stories Snopes fact-checked from that 'Christian Satire Site': https://www.snopes.com/tag/babylon-bee/
At least half of them would be believed by those who trust the Federalist.
Secondly, partisan or not, the Federalist was not the one Snopes was unfairly attacking. They simply reported on the effects of the Snopes attack on a satire site.
Now, what Facebook did with that was not good, and I can see why Snopes would want to get out of such a system.
Tapping-on-the-bottom-with-near-painful-force is definitely not what people mean when they colloquially claim tapping on a soda can settles it down.
The actual claim on the site: Claim: Tapping the side of a soda can will prevent its contents from foaming over when you open it.
I don't think you're as vehemently committed to rigorous fact-checking as your little anecdote would have us believe.
My point is that the specificity of the OP is down to Snopes, and I can't change that. They don't even provide these details. Maybe the side-tapper was born in the year of the pig, and that matters. My issue is mainly that they wish to be perceived as the source of all truth - and seemingly have NO interest in being corrected. Snopes never publishes any statement limiting their results, asking for further input, etc etc. Their 'thing' is just publishing absolutes. Nobody else does this.
This feels like you're being unreasonably uncharitable.
Backing up a bit. I think most people who come across this topic want to know "I've got a shaken can - and I don't want to open it as it'll go everywhere. Is there anything I can do?"
My take is that "Yes there is" - and whilst that snopes article is out there, a lot of people think there isn't. Snopes is a little opaque and whilst there are many issues with peer-reviewed articles - their complete lack of desire to engage really annoys me. I don't expect them to be faultless - but maybe just having somewhere you could submit a comment, a video, something would be a move in the right direction.
that's not how this works...
It sounds like the reasons why you happily send "you're wrong because snopes" links are the reasons why you're unable to correct them and to me this sounds like the system is working correctly.