Comment by chipotle_coyote | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chipotle_coyote | Hacker News Reader

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chipotle_coyote

Those who weren’t following us when we began back in the mid-1990s and have only more lately encountered our fact-checking efforts sometimes ask us why we address humorous and satirical articles at Snopes.com. And the plain answer to that question is, “Because people ask us about them.”

https://www.snopes.com/notes/why-we-include-humor-and-satire...

Articles from sites like Babylon Bee -- hell, even from The Onion, in more than one case -- get stripped of context, quoted, slapped on meme GIFs, and traded around by folks who don't know (or sometimes don't care) about the source. Another quote from the linked article:

If Clickhole (an offshoot of the Onion humor/satire site) publishes a new article, and within a day 1,200 different people have queried us to ask if that article is “true,” then clearly Clickhole isn’t well known to those 1,200 people. They, and others like them, are the audience we’re attempting to reach and inform that Clickhole is a humor site — not, obviously, the many people who follow Clickhole and therefore know that the site’s material is not intended to be factual.

In our current highly-politicized environment, there's a subset -- and not an insignificant one -- of the population which is very ready to believe the worst about "The Other Side". The web site The Conversation surveyed over 800 people to ask about the most shared fake political stories on social media during a two-week period, and The Babylon Bee came up in their results:

"Members of both parties failed to recognize that The Babylon Bee is satire, but Republicans were considerably more likely to do so. Of the 23 falsehoods that came from The Bee, eight were confidently believed by at least 15% of Republican respondents."

https://theconversation.com/too-many-people-think-satirical-...

I'm not suggesting this is a sign that Republicans are more gullible, per se -- I'm suggesting it's a sign that when people are fed satire that plays into their biases and that satire is played with an Onion-style perfectly straight face, more people than you think believe it. That means there's going to be way more than you think who say, "Hey, is that true?"... and go to snopes.com to find out.

Even, yes, if the quote is from The Babylon Bee.

Hold on there.

What was believed by significant percentage of people were "claims" from satirical articles. For example, "CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper said his belief that Trump colluded with Russia is unshakable; it will not change regardless of statements or evidence to the contrary." or "National Security Advisor John Bolton said that an attack on two Saudi Arabian oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman is “an attack on all Americans.”"

When taken out of context, it could appear entirely plausible (though unlikely) that Anderson Cooper or John Bolton really said that. People say weird things all the time. Only when the context of a satirical article is given would we expect someone to understand.

An article like the CNN industrial washer story would clearly not be believed by a significant percentage of people.

Clearly I'm in the minority of the public here, but both those claims are so outrageous that even if Reuters reported them I would be checking other sources as well to see if they got duped or hacked, or who knows what.

It's happened more than once in the last couple of months that I came across actual news and had to do a double take and check to see if I'm accidentally on a satirical page. Just today:

"Trump says Republicans should release their own transcripts in impeachment probe"

You think that's satire? Here's the news article:

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/468788-trump-say...

Not a line in there to suggest this is nonsense (which it is), here it is directly from the Ass's mouth:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/11938962750931845...

Parody account? It has 'real' in it... You be the judge.

Why do you think that's satirical? It's been proven that Adam Schiff lied in statements made in Congress and he's repeatedly leaked information or cherry picked parts of testimonies to support his narrative. Trump is suggesting the republicans release transcripts too, to better represent what's happening in the hearings.

Thank you for making my point better than I ever could.

Schiff is not the actor I'd choose to rest my case on.

To believe that Schiff would doctor transcripts is ridiculous, especially because there are quite a few republicans in the room who would immediately jump on any opportunity to nail him to the nearest cross if he were to do something like that. In a situation where Adam Schiff and Donald Trump claim opposites your safe bet would be on Schiff.

Think about it this way: Adam Schiffs reputation can be damaged by mere paraphrasing of someone else's words, Trump could say anything and it would not damage his reputation.

Schiff's reputation doesn't ride on twisting of words, it rides on how much he's participating in the activities that he's supposed to be in charge of investigating.

Nobody's saying pick a side between the two. Be sceptical of every politician. Don't pick either one as your character reference for a narrative.

(That said, I don't mean any of the following to be exonerating or damning to Trump.)

I find it troubling that Schiff appears to have taken an abrupt change in strategy, once he was accused of meeting with the "whistleblower" before the claim was filed. The timeline doesn't look good, especially when considering the change in IG whistleblower rules.

And cherry-picked leaks are a giant problem in DC right now.

Regardless, you don't need to necessarily change a transcript if you told (coached) the witness what to say (or how to say it) in the first place.

It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you.

And that applies no matter how innocent or guilty Trump is of anything.

Not to mention the fact that the premise of the whole damn thing is about the misuse of political power to dictate the course of investigations.

Pot, meet kettle.

You seem to misunderstand some basics: using political power to dictate the course of investigations for personal gain is what the problem is, not the use of political power to dictate the course of investigations as such.

You don't think Democrats get a personal gain out of this?

There's a pretty good chance that they won't. See also what happened to the Republicans after trying to go after Clinton.

Very true. Which is also why I don't get why so many Dems are supporting this so enthusiastically. As much as I never thought I'd say this, Pelosi had the right idea for how to play this, politically, until she caved. She seems to be the one thinking more than 2-3 steps ahead.

But I also think you're giving them too much credit, because I really doubt they think they're going to suffer, politically. (The enthusiasts anyway, not those who supported Pelosi's slow play.)

> Which is also why I don't get why so many Dems are supporting this so enthusiastically.

Because they are trying to limit the damage to their country. Which is substantial already, to put it mildly. Give Trump some more times and you may find yourself in an unrecoverable situation. This Ukraine mess is likely just the tip of the iceberg.

But if they really wanted to limit damage (in their eyes) wouldn't the politically smart play be to go the Pelosi route?

Instead of dealing with negative post-impeachment fallout, and potentially ending up in a worse place on the eve of next years election, politically?

Also genuinely curious if you've watched hearings this week, and if it's affected your opinion of Schiff.

I'd say meeting with the whistleblower is well within the job description for the leader of the committee.

As for being skeptical of every politician, Schiff has so far been pretty clean in all this as opposed to the counterparty, who seem to have made a bonfire of all the rulebooks and are running the United States over a cliff at a speed that I would have considered impossible a decade ago. Suddenly all those questions about how Germany could have slid off as fast as it did from being a reasonable country to a totalitarian state make good sense. All it takes is a small bag of money, a couple of Stephen Millers and you're good to go.

The good news if you can call it good news is that they are going about it in the most stupid way possible and that just maybe there is an outside chance that the United States constitution was drawn up in such a way that this travesty can be brought to a halt. I fear it may be too late though, with the recent stacking of the Supreme Court and the way in which all these puppets are in various pockets we may very well be in the endgame for that country and what it stood for.

It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you, but that doesn't mean they're out to get you for the wrong reasons. You may simply deserve being 'got' and put in jail. In the case of the Trump family and their grifting hangers on that's a slam dunk, that they just might end up being censored (at worst) or pushed out (at best) because some people come to their senses and put their country over their party is about equal to getting Al Capone on tax evasion. Works for me though.

> Regardless, you don't need to necessarily change a transcript if you told (coached) the witness what to say (or how to say it) in the first place.

Not sure if you are aware of it but the 'transcript' of the call was published by Trump and the transcripts of the various depositions appear to have been made without any coaching whatsoever, if you sincerely believe that witnesses have been coached then you have crossed a line somewhere that you probably should not have crossed.

Why must everyone act like criticism of other politicians is somehow defending Trump?

The committee could question him, on the record. Oversight responsibilities are, by definition, reactive, hands off, public, and transparent. Any one-on-one should have been through the IG, not Schiff.

Regardless, impeachment is an inherently political process (as was intended), which means optics matter. And Schiff has really screwed this aspect of it up, no matter how "relatively clean" he might seem compared to other politicians.

If there's one thing Americans hate more than corrupt politicians, it's hypocritical corrupt politicians. If there are two things, it's that and being backed into a corner, politically.

Both are reasons why Trump was elected in the first place, even though I'd argue most of his voters weren't as thrilled about voting for him as he'd have you believe.

Schiff's methods are only serving to stir this up again, regardless of whether some think the ends justify the means.

>if you sincerely believe that witnesses have been coached then you have crossed a line somewhere that you probably should not have crossed.

Because politicians would never do something so corrupt? We'll see what comes out. But at this point, Schiff needs to do some serious disclosures on what was discussed between him and the witnesses before the report was filed, including if he suggested waiting on the timing, for the IG rule change.

Which is why he should never have put himself in that position to begin with. It soils the integrity of the entire thing. It stops looking like an investigation, and starts looking like an orchestrated coup.

If Al Capone's prosecutor would have been caught doing such things, they wouldn't have even gotten him on the tax charges.

If Trump gets impeached, but the prosecution looks dirty, it'll all but guarantee he's re-elected. The sense of injustice will motivate voters far more than whoever's name happens to be on the ballet.

I'm not saying that's what should happen, only what's likely.

I never said he doctored transcripts, I said he cherry picked bits of the transcripts to release to support his narrative.

But he did claim Trump said things in the call that he did not, in a statement he made to Congress.

Also, Schiff has been on RT numerous times. Why would an American congressman make statements on a news outlet controlled by the Russian government? Nothing about this guy is trustworthy. He also claimed for two years they had definite proof of corruption.

> I said he cherry picked bits of the transcripts to release to support his narrative.

And what would that narrative be? The only narrative I'm aware of has been confirmed by Trump himself - and in writing no less.

> But he did claim Trump said things in the call that he did not, in a statement he made to Congress.

Are you serious? Did you actually believe for one second that a paraphrasing should be taken as a literal quote?

> Why would an American congressman make statements on a news outlet controlled by the Russian government?

Are you seriously suggesting that Adam Schiff is in the pocket of Putin? If you believe that about Schiff then you should have serious problems with the current occupant of the White House, who it seems can't wait to do Russia's bidding at every possible turn.

Snopes exists for people who think that a claim is outrageous and want to check other sources to determine the truth.

>not be believed by a significant percentage of people

The requests to fact-check that article on the Snopes forums beg to differ with this assessment.

An article like the CNN industrial washer story would clearly not be believed by a significant percentage of people.

I'm sure it wouldn't be believed by a significant percentage of people, but "no reasonable person would believe this" has never been Snopes's standard. If you take a meander through their whole database, there are a lot of articles that will make you go "come on, who would even ask about something this stupid?".

Exactly. "Come on... no one is stupid enough to eat a Tide Pod. It's laundry detergent!" Yet, here we are...

If they were honest about this, Snopes would publish a single entry covering all the prominent satire sites by name, and "warning" people that they are satire. As opposed to whacking moles.

>If they were honest about this

Most traffic to Snopes probably comes from people searching for specific articles, quotes, and/or stories and a generic "these are all satire sites" page wouldn't pull up for those. If the goal is to combat specific instances of inaccurate information, even if the intent initially is satire, then what they're doing seems like a better solution that what you've suggested. I can't even understand how you'd jump from that to calling them dishonest because of it.

And there's no reason why someone going to Snopes for an article at theonion.com or babylonbee.com can't be redirected or otherwise sent to an article covering the satire of the site. Nobody needs a separate Snopes article for every article produced by every satire site out there.

Given the amount of disinformation put out there by so many sources versus the relatively limited resources of Snopes, wasting time on stuff no one needs or wants is a mistake.

I'm wondering if a better model would be heavily moderated, crowdsourced fact-checking, like wikipedia.

>And there's no reason why someone ... can't be redirected

And how would you propose they do that? If there's no article that addresses the specific article, nothing would come up on a Google search for that which means there's no prompt to redirect them. They would still have to create some kind of content that gets indexed which would serve as the redirect.

^https?:\/\/(www)?\.theonion\.com.*$ -> http://snopes.com/the-onion

As a start, need to get more complex from there (probably exclude theonion's About page, for example, but that covers 90% with almost 0 effort -- and standard analogy from there, if Snopes uses 90% of its effort to cover the first 90%, there's no way they can cover the last 10%; if they use 1% effort to cover 90%, there's still a lot of ability to cover the remaining 5% or 9% (because, let's be realistic, 100% is absolutely impossible).

> And there's no reason why someone going to Snopes for an article at theonion.com or babylonbee.com can't be redirected or otherwise sent to an article covering the satire of the site

There's a very good reason that people going to Snopes for claims originating in such sites aren't redirected that way, and that's because the claims often get separated from the originating site as soon as someone believes them and decided repeating them as original(or in the form of an unsourced meme) is the best way of sharing them.

Of course, the Snopes article on the claim should mention the satirical original source, but that's no reason not to do everything else Snopes would normally do to address a claim about which they have received questions.

If we're conducting an arms race against someone who wants to deliberately obscure the source of disinformation, we're going to lose that by attrition, flat out, following the same basic argument I made originally.

Snopes, and anyone else actively trying to combat disinformation, absolutely have to use their resources wisely, the enemy has a lot more money and time.

By the same token; on average, more intelligent and less sheltered people tend to be more gullible.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/05/060523072353.h...

Careful with that word "gullible" - I do not think it means what you think it means.

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