Did Snopes get taken over by Republicans?

[live love laugh]

Everything I have searched recently has come up as either a “mixture” or false.

Searched today for Trump statement on why he’d run as a Republican (because they’re dumb). Snopes says that was never said. 🙄

Searched a few weeks ago whether Trump said Covid was a hoax. Snopes said it’s a “mixture.”

Searched just to see how fucked up Snopes has become whether he said he’d date his daughter. Snopes called that a “mixture.”

Little by little they’re buying up websites and the truth is disappearing. Take plenty of screenshots is all I can say. I do.

[pwb]

1. I never use snoops but my puke sister does

so yea it must be.

[live love laugh]

2. Yeah it used to be reliable. Oh well 🤷‍♀️ nt

[Amishman]

51. It was never reliable on anything with a political slant

I think they have multiple people who work on the content, and little oversight. Bias was inconsistent (sometimes in our favor, sometimes with a righty slant), but fairly frequently inaccurate overall.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

54. NONSENSE. Snopes provides links to the information & YOU can decide yourself.

It is as simplistic in the extreme to swallow Snopes' conclusion without actually reading the article, as it is simplistic to accept an NYT opinion headline or an InfoWars headline.

The bottom line: read and THINK! Don't go looking for a supportive binary verdict. Otherwise it is just indulging in confirmation bias.

[Generic Other]

63. Snopes started soliciting donations

You can't offend your donors. I am going to try and give them the benefit of the doubt for now.

[Turbineguy]

3. The russians are helping republicans

to bone up on their agitprop skills. Propaganda should contain some truth.

[Generic Brad]

4. Give me a moment while I check that rumor out on Snopes

Snopes had nothing on that rumor.

[live love laugh]

5. What rumor are you referring to?

[Generic Brad]

7. Was Snopes taken over by Republicans

[Loki Liesmith]

6. Just because you believe something that's in error

Doesn’t make Snopes biased.

[live love laugh]

12. What's in error? nt

[mr_lebowski]

30. That he said he'd run as a Repub cause they're dumb ...

Do you any evidence that was actually said?

Also he actually something like 'maybe if she wasn't my daughter I'd be dating her' ... which I suppose is a 'mixture' depending on how the title/question is phrased.

What is definitely NOT a 'mixture' ... is how creepy it was to say that with her right there, in front of a bunch of other women, on The View.

Slimeball ...

[Mz Pip]

44. That was debunked years ago.

It’s not new.

[mr_lebowski]

45. Hence my question ;) nt

[jberryhill]

53. +1

[Bernardo de La Paz]

55. +1. If you dismiss binary results without reading it is confirmation bias on YOUR part. . . . nt

[dem4decades]

8. I thought Trump said the coronavirus was a hoax, now the sites give him cover?

What's up with that? The Idiot Horde heard it that way?

[JHB]

18. It's a fine distinction that Republians never bother with

The "mixture" is based on a hair-thin distinction that Republicans never, EVER make when the shoe is on their foot.

From a post of mine related to this in another thread:

The pushback is that Trump didn't call the virus a hoax, he called the calls for him to take action "the Democrats' new hoax" and brushed off such calls as "politicizing" and "hysteria" from the "fake news media".

And, removed from context, it's technically true that he didn't call the virus itself a hoax.

That rally was on Feb. 28. Over the next few days various fact check sites rated the characterization as "false" or "mixed"


Mar. 2: Snopes: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-coronavirus-rally-remark/
Mar. 3, FactCheck.org: https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/trump-and-the-new-hoax/

But there's no separating it from context: Trump has called the Mueller investigation a hoax. At this very same rally he called impeachment a hoax (attributing the comment to an unnamed spontaneously-fawning underling, as he is wont to do).

Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. You know that, right? Coronavirus. They’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, ‘How’s President Trump doing?’ They go, ‘Oh, not good, not good.’ They have no clue. They don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa, they can’t even count. No they can’t. They can’t count their votes.

One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia. That didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything, they tried it over and over, they’ve been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning, they lost, it’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax. But you know, we did something that’s been pretty amazing. We’re 15 people [cases of coronavirus infection] in this massive country. And because of the fact that we went early, we went early, we could have had a lot more than that.

"Hoax", translated from Trumpspeak, means: Thing that is as true as sunrise but I desperately want to portray as a baseless attack.

Please note, the people who will fight tooth and nail over the fine distinction over what Trump called a hoax will be the same people who were all outraged at "You didn't build that" when it was clearly referring to publicly-built infrastructure. No, they separated it from context, brewed it up and triple distilled it, hooked it up to their outrage taps, and binge-drank.

Old Soviet propagandists could only wish for an audience so easily malleable. Small wonder how Vlad played them so easily.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213149208#post23

[malaise]

23. THIS

Thing that is as true as sunrise but I desperately want to portray as a baseless attack.

[coti]

37. He said the severity of and the public concern over the virus were a hoax. He was WRONG.

Just the same as him calling the virus itself a hoax, he was wrong.

In other words, there's no meaningful distinction. He said that what matters- the virus' impact on our lives- was a hoax.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

56. Exactly. Republicans famously said they "don't do nuance". We do because we are more analytical. .nt

[ProfessorGAC]

57. Their Reasoning Is Semantic Nonsense

He used coronavirus & hoax in the same sentence.
A guy not known for nuance cannot be excused from the clear interpretation that he was talking about the virus itself because there's possible syntax that suggests he was vaguely referring an ancillary point.
When taken in the context that he actually said "15, and it will be down to zero", and accused the media, again, of being fake news, there is only one reasonable conclusion.
He called it a hoax.

[Tweedy]

19. Sleight of hand

Our fabulist president claimed after the fact that he meant democrats were using the coronavirus to get him and that was the hoax.

It is a ludicrous stretch of reality, but for goodness knows what reason, some buy it.

It makes little sense in light of the fact that this president also said this was "a little flu" and it would soon be "under control" with "zero cases."

Perhaps some fact checkers are afraid they will be denied care in "alternative fact" coronavirus world? It makes little sense to me.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

61. When I posted about this on FB, it got slammed as false

by their right-wing Daily Caller "fact-checking" apparatus. They parsed the s**t out of the statement but a lot of contorting to get there.


Bottom line is that they think we're dumb and are trying to gaslight us.

[Hoyt]

9. I find lots of things people supposedly say -- Democrat or GOPer -- are mischaracterized or taken

out of context.

I’ve found Snopes generally reliable, but like to verify for myself.

“Mixture” usually means trump is still a worthless POS.

[TwilightZone]

13. Ah, but we love to ignore context.

The GOP certainly doesn't have the entire market cornered on that one. The two examples in the OP are pretty much textbook.

[Ms. Toad]

29. Agreed -

And when anyone dares point out the actual here, they get lambasted.

They are vile enough - we don't have to make crap up, or take it out of context.

[uppityperson]

31. Exactly

[Proud Liberal Dem]

62. "Mixture" sounds a lot like

"Both Sides"

[TwilightZone]

10. It helps to actually read what they wrote.

Just because we like to pretend there's no context doesn't mean there isn't any. Snopes clearly noted how they came to that conclusion.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-coronavirus-rally-remark/

[thesquanderer]

21. Precisely. It's not just the other side who dismiss snopes because they don't like the conclusions.

As you say, they fully document how they came to their conclusion.

[Ferrets are Cool]

32. This

[Newest Reality]

11. I noticed that over time.

That's one way to deflect the truth.

Ah, we should check Snopes on Snopes and see what they say about Snopes!

There are other resources. Here are some that I use and you can try:

https://www.factcheck.org/

https://www.metabunk.org/home/

http://debunkatron.com/

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/

[DonaldsRump]

27. Thanks for these!

I've bookmarked all four of them.

[Newest Reality]

34. Great!

You are welcome.

I find that you really have to fact check certain things these days. It does take a little more effort and time, but there is just too much noise, nonsense, propaganda, conspiracy theory, foreign insertions, etc. out there now.

It's like a form of good mental hygiene. If we all did this, we would be helping each other by posting more sound and substantial information. The "gotchas" are pretty easy to perpetrate and perpetuate, as we all know.

[smirkymonkey]

43. Thank you for the links!

Very helpful!

[malaise]

14. Mixture my ass

Calling the virus a hoax was bullshit
Dems and the media warning Americans about the seriousness of the virus was justified 100%
There was no fucking hoax no matter how you take it

[JHB]

22. See #18 above. Technically, it's true he never called the virus itself a hoax...

...in the same technical sense that Bush never connected Saddam to 9/11.

Didn't say it, but said what he did in a way that strongly implied it, and certainly never corrected RW pundits who did directly connect those dots.

[ProfessorGAC]

58. It's Still Semantic Nonsense

They are attributing nuance to a speaker incapable of same.
Connotation is a real thing.
He was talking about the virus.

[robbob]

66. Simply by using hoax and Coronavirus in the same sentence

he was putting into the minds of his supporters that there was nothing to worry about. Add his many statements about the virus being like the flu, number of cases 15 and declining, totally under control, and, of course, his broken record complaining about “fake news” and you clearly have a case for tRump downplaying the seriousness of the situation and endangering the lives of those (idiots) who put credence in what he says.

Parse until the cows come home, the pResidents actions clearly put peoples lives at risk.

[ProfessorGAC]

68. Precisely My Point

As I said, it's unreasonable to assume nuanced meaning to a sentence spoken by a person for whom bluntness is considered a redeeming quality.
He used both words in the same sentence, everybody who doesn't dismiss his every utterance helped officials ignore it, the response was late, & people are dying.
Snopes really needs to rethink this analysis.

[RKP5637]

15. ... need to use lots of multiple sources these days, I guess. n/t

[Maeve]

16. No, they didn't

Read the whole article and you'll usually find there is a more complex situation than a simple yes-no response.
And as a point of disclosure, I am a "founding member"--a supporter-- as well as a fan of the site since shortly after it started

[ismnotwasm]

28. That's really cool btw

[live love laugh]

49. Things have changed since Snopes was founded.

Apparently they are fending off incessant right wing legal battles from truth haters—typical Trumpublican attacks.

I’m not a frequent user but over the years that I’ve used Snopes I never saw the “mixture” response used as much as now. It was either true or false.

[ismnotwasm]

20. I think it depends on who is writing

Snopes is still pretty good, but Ive detected bias before, which is disappointing.

[Ferrets are Cool]

33. I think it matters more on who is "reading" it.

[stevil]

39. That's exactly it

[ismnotwasm]

42. Ha!

You are probably right. I don’t even remember the article I was reading, it was a few years back, and Snopes had changed their format a bit. I was taken aback, I remember because it read more like an opinion piece. I don’t even remember if I verified it or not.

[sl8]

24. Have you you checked Internet Archive for earlier versions? n/t

[live love laugh]

26. I don't know how to 🤷‍♀️ nt

[sl8]

36. Never mind, it's not there.

https://web.archive.org/web/*/snopes.com

Sorry.
This URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine.

[live love laugh]

40. Okay thanks 🙏🏽 nt

[stillcool]

25. I don't use it that much...

but at the very least it provides me with more context than I had before looking. Gives me new links to persue. Sometimes I end up far, far, away from where the simple search started out.

[Azathoth]

35. The "hoax" quote is a deliberate strawman

Trump didn't call the virus itself a hoax, he called the threat the virus posed a hoax.

This is largely a distinction without a difference, since when people talk about "the virus" in casual discussion, they're not talking about it as an abstract entity but rather as something that relates directly to them and society. So saying Trump called "the virus" a hoax is true in this shorthand.

But fact-checkers are allowing right-wing propagandists to drag them down into a semantics debate over a strawman: no one (that I know of) has seriously accused Trump of calling the existence of the virus a hoax.

[coti]

38. Yes nt

[subterranean]

41. I thought their explanation about the "hoax" comment was pretty even-handed.

Technically, he did not say the virus is a hoax (meaning it doesn't really exist), but he certainly did downplay the threat from it, and said the Democrats and the media were exaggerating the threat just to attack him.

So I think it's fair for Snopes to rate that one a "mixture."

[live love laugh]

50. Yes so both false and a mixture. And yet it's fresh enough

that everybody remembers it before it disappears down the memory hole.

[ahoysrcsm]

47. Snopes had a legal battle...

https://www.npr.org/2017/07/26/539576135/fact-checking-website-snopes-is-fighting-to-stay-alive

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/tacoma-based-snopes-debunker-of-fake-news-is-locked-in-a-nasty-legal-dispute/

https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2019/06/10/snopes-debunker-of-fake-news-is-locked-in-a-nasty-legal-dispute

https://www.snopes.com/2019/09/09/outstanding-news-regarding-the-lawsuit/

https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2018/snopes-has-its-site-back-but-the-legal-battle-over-its-ownership-will-drag-on-for-months/

I don't think it's the same snopes as before the legal battle. I would not trust anything posted on their site.

[live love laugh]

48. I knew it. Thank you. Obviously they're being muffled and

are more careful.

[ahoysrcsm]

60. Well, yes and no.

IIRC The lawsuit had to do with ownership over the domain/company when the couple divorced. Wife sold her shares to a media group that was administering the site. Husband filed suit with the media group when he no longer had access to the admin tools and effectively lost the site. Husband won the lawsuit. I don't know who owns the "keys" to the site.

I don't trust them as i once did, and am using multiple sources.

[Mike Nelson]

52. Well...

... the conclusions are correct. "Mixture" seems explained - and it's not what Crooked Donald's supporters want from that site. I see them calling it part of the "liberal media."

[ehrnst]

59. Trump said that the Democratic reports of his slow response was a hoax, not the virus itself

which is why it's considered a "mixture."

And he stated that if ivanka "wasn't his daughter" he might be datitng her, so that's why it was a mixture...

[RhodeIslandOne]

64. The "I'd run as a Republican because...." is a verbatim quote that was in fact not true.

That was debunked prior to the primaries in 2015.

It was supposedly in People magazine in 1998 and every political fact check site has said there's nothing in any People magazine from that era.

[melm00se]

65. Have heard the exact same complaint

that Snopes is another mouthpiece for the (insert other side here).

[live love laugh]

67. I agree nt