
Can mythbusters like Snopes.com keep up in a post-truth era? - ca98am79
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/01/snopes-com-internet-fact-checker-post-truth-david-mikkelson
======
pjc50
Rather more disturbing question: to what extent do people _want_ the truth?
Especially if it's kind of awkward. And how well do people cope with the
messiness of the real world - things that are "somewhat true" depending on
context, or probabilistic morality ("this policy is correlated with a loss of
X days of average life expectancy").

~~~
gilleain
Unfortunately, there is an underlying assumption in many debates, arguments,
rants, discussions, and wikis online that simply presenting others with "THE
TRUTH" is sufficient to change their viewpoint.

I realised a while ago that this is unlikely to be the case. Unless someone is
ready to be convinced of some particular fact or truth then you can talk at
them until you are blue in the face and not get anywhere.

It doesn't matter what clever logic you use, what pretty diagrams you make, or
if you are polite or rude or patient or pithy. If someone has convinced
themselves of some truth or other, then no statistic or image will un-convince
them.

Ultimately I believe that it comes done to differences in philosophy. Like a
web of ideas in which each person is trapped, any statement from the outside
world is filtered and altered by what people already believe. Even seemingly
'obvious' things such as what constitutes evidence; or what does it mean for a
sentence to be true; or what is 'research'.

Maybe I've been reading too many wikipedia talk pages.

~~~
pjc50
Indeed. Especially the idea of some "silver bullet" truth, the revelation of
which is enough to get people to switch parties. People really underestimate
the role of loyalty in politics.

The Trump campaign is providing really spectacular examples of this: there are
a lot of senior republicans who are really unhappy about him being the
candidate, but out of loyalty to the system aren't going to break ranks
publicly. But no amount of "surely this will convince people" argument is
making a dent in his support.

It's always hard on the internet to know if you're convincing bystanders. Your
interlocutor is rarely going to give up, but what about everyone else reading
who doesn't want to tip their hand?

~~~
striking
> It's always hard on the internet to know if you're convincing bystanders.

Hm, not always. Some sites let you compare your relative vote scores to those
of the person you're arguing with, on each comment you post.

~~~
throwaway7767
That does not measure if you're convincing people who previously disagreed
with you, it might just be that your view is more common.

------
colordrops
There are several problems with sites like snopes and politifact. They are
centralizing "truth", making themselves an authority, and creating a single
point of failure. The information can be manipulated or misrepresented toward
an agenda. Its even more powerful than mainstream media because people put
more trust in these "truth" sites. Also, they make a judgement call with their
meters and traffic light widgets as to the truth value of a claim. This is
problematic because it makes judgement extrinsic, and creates a visual
component that can be embedded out of context to drive people toward an
opinion using only their emotions.

A better version of these sites would teach about how to source information
and use critical thought, then list as many verified sources on a topic as
possible without making a judgement themselves as to the truth of the matter.

~~~
mod
I don't fully agree. They present contradictory or supporting evidence. I
don't think that is presenting oneself as the authority.

Merely the fact-checker.

If you're saying they should present all the same evidence and NOT decide
whether the claim is true or false--I think that's a pretty trivial point.

When I read snopes, I look at their evidence, not their actual rating. I know
they have a bias and I don't want to include it in my own decision.

~~~
colordrops
> I look at their evidence, not their actual rating.

Your behavior is not an indicator of behavior at large. The politifact truth-
o-meter is regularly embedded on Reddit and other sites out of context by
those with an agenda.

~~~
mod
Any source of information can be used improperly. We still owe it to ourselves
to present facts without bias.

------
merpnderp
It depends on what is meant by truth. It appears that Snopes decided the that
the "no flags at the DNC" was false, but the C-SPAN evidence show that at
times there were no flags on display. The whole issue is politicized
asshattery, but Snopes decided that since at times there were flags, the whole
issue was false leading a reader to believe there were always flags on
display.

Hat's off to Politifact for staying detached and reasonable, instead of
partisan and pedantic.

[http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2016/jul/...](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2016/jul/27/donald-trump/dnc-flag-missing-controversy/)

[http://www.snopes.com/flags-banned-at-dnc/](http://www.snopes.com/flags-
banned-at-dnc/)

~~~
dragonwriter
> It appears that Snopes decided the that the "no flags at the DNC" was false,
> but the C-SPAN evidence show that at times there were no flags on display.

If there were flags on display at any point during the DNC, the claim of no
flags at the DNC (including both forms which Snopes explicitly was addressing,
that "flags were absent" from the convention or that "flags were banned" at
the convention) is false. The claim that there were moments without flags at
the DNC is a distinctly different claim, which is not false, but also not the
claim that snopes was addressing.

------
Brendinooo
It doesn't cover as many topics as some of the more well-known fact checking
sites, but
[http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/) has a
pretty good framework for evaluating claims, and the best answers tend to be
really objective.

------
fdavison
Sites like Snopes or FactCheck.org are not immune to their own political
biases:

[https://ethicsalarms.com/2016/07/31/bye-bye-snopes-youre-
dea...](https://ethicsalarms.com/2016/07/31/bye-bye-snopes-youre-dead-to-me-
now/)

~~~
saturdaysaint
I regard Snopes as sort of low rent but Ethics Alarms is a right-wing smear
blog that seems to make comical attempts at portraying itself as a paragon of
objectivity and educators in classical philosophy. At some point you have to
choose your own curators.

~~~
Turing_Machine
They may or may not be a "right-wing smear blog", but I don't see how that is
relevant to this case in particular.

Are their assertions about Snopes mischaracterizing the facts _in this case_
correct or not?

~~~
duaneb
Did you read the article? this is clearly a Clinton smear job using snopes as
a vehicle. At best it splits hairs; at worst it makes her out to be an amoral
Machiavellian who doesn't care about child rapists. I can't think of a more
obvious conflict of interest here with the right wing politics at play on the
blog.

I'm personally ok with snopes as a whole even if their characterization is
"mostly false" instead of "half false".

Yes, Clinton laughed at aspects of the case, not the case itself. Yes, she
defended him, but a plea deal is a far cry from success for the child rapist,
it's success on her part.

All the stuff they complain about in the snopes article can be inverted to
complain about this article--they took the most damning possible
interpretation of the events even if it's clear they're only proving the
literal phrase is 100% correct without touching what it _implies_.

Actually, on further thought, this gives me more confidence in snopes's
ability to tease apart delicate political topics. I would be truly interested
in hearing what aspects of the blog post people found convincing.

~~~
Turing_Machine
"this is clearly a Clinton smear job using snopes as a vehicle."

Which statements in particular are incorrect?

On the contrary, from what I read they go out of their way to note that
criminal defendants have the right to a vigorous defense, and that there was
nothing unethical about Hillary providing one.

"Now, as I explained here, there was nothing wrong, unethical or hypocritical
about Clinton’s work in this case. Her laughter in the interview is a little
unsettling, but Hillary’s laughter is often unsettling. She did her job as a
defense lawyer. The accusation that what she did was unethical is ignorant..."

They are objecting to the Snopes spin, not the actions of Clinton herself.

Edit to include the salient point:

The original assertion was that "Hillary Clinton successfully defended an
accused child rapist and later laughed about the case".

Snopes rates this "mostly false", when it appears to actually be 100% true.

~~~
Goronmon
The issue of bias comes into play when it comes to the implied meaning behind
the statements being reviewed.

"Hillary Clinton successfully defended an accused child rapist and later
laughed about the case"

Statements like this are used when people are trying to criticize Clinton.
They are used as evidence that she is a despicable human being, because what
kind of person not only defends child rapists, but laughs about it? And I
think Snopes is basically responding to the implied meaning.

Is it the job of places like Snopes to only review the literal interpretation
of statements being reviewed, or is their job to provide more insight and
context into the matter as a whole?

~~~
mod
> Is it the job of places like Snopes to only review the literal
> interpretation of statements being reviewed, or is their job to provide more
> insight and context into the matter as a whole?

Both!

Rate the claim literally. As a fact-checker, it's not your job to wonder what
someone is implying.

Then provide more insight and context. Let readers make their own decisions
about hidden meanings.

~~~
duaneb
Literally rating the claim is worthless, though. If all people were wondering
about was whether Clinton defended a sexual predator as a lawyer and whether
Clinton laughed at any aspect of that it wouldn't be worth putting on snopes
in the first place.

If anything, you've argued that snopes overstepped their bounds by covering it
at ALL if their job is to cover literal claims. The _only_ reason the claim is
interesting is because of context and implication.

Snopes should REALLY evaluate who's on first; I think we all agree that's a
good use of their time.

~~~
mod
I think that they can privately decide okay, this is worth rating because of
implications.

In the presentation, though, I think the implications should be left out.
You're a fact checker, and whatever implication you pull from a claim is not
necessarily the same as what others pull.

Anyway, I don't want my fact-checkers pushing an agenda, or defeating an
agenda, with anything except facts. Let me use facts to side with the truth!

Don't you agree that if you present the facts in the Hillary claim, the
implication & agenda is defeated? Why undermine your own trustworthiness by
rating the (literal) claim false?

~~~
duaneb
It honestly never occurred to me to rate the literal claim. That's what google
and newspapers are for.

~~~
mod
That's weird. It's honestly never occurred to me to go to a newspaper for any
"literal" claims about politics.

That's--well, that's what Snopes is for.

~~~
duaneb
What do you think the role of a newspaper is if not to report the news
literally?

------
criddell
Snopes? I'm more worried about Wikipedia. Thirteen million people were able to
make Trump a Presidential contender. It would take a much smaller force to
take over Wikipedia.

~~~
Someone1234
Incidentally I added an edit to Wikipedia for Clinton's current VP pick Tim
Kaine (before he was picked). Essentially his page has a bunch of his policies
positions for big issues (LGBTQ, Abortion, Environment, etc), I added another
one for his position on Gun Rights/Gun Control, fully cited, and really
unbiased (neither for or against him, just raw facts).

A mod came along, simply said "astroturfing" and removed it. I spend a decent
chunk of time creating content, citing it, and a mod can just wipe it out
without any real justification. All because they didn't want anything which
could be seen as negative before he was picked as VP.

The section has since been re-added with all of the same information by
someone else, but it is the principle of the thing, that a mod didn't allow it
at a politically inconvenient time and when it fell out of the spotlight it
was allowed again.

~~~
notahacker
You get treated as a second class citizen if you're editing from an IP address
or a new account...

The other side of this is that I'd estimate that at least a fifth of UK MPs
have been edited by someone in the MP's office or otherwise directly involved
with their campaign at some point, sometimes even openly.

------
Kenji
Let's be frank: Every source of information is tainted when it comes to topics
where political interests play a role. Simply because part of politics is
misinformation and dogmatism, and it's nearly impossible to strip that off the
information. As soon as the outcome of the research or investigation benefits
or harms someone, there are very strong incentives to warp the results. The
best thing we can do is collect all the raw evidence we have and let the
people decide for themselves - but then again, evidence can also be altered or
faked.

~~~
kej
You don't even have to skew the results, you can impart bias just by choosing
which stories to research. I've always liked the way Howard Zinn put it in the
afterword to _A People 's History of the United States_:

>But there is no such thing as a pure fact, innocent of interpretation. Behind
every fact presented to the world—by a teacher, a writer, anyone—is a
judgment. The judgment that has been made is that this fact is important, and
that other facts, omitted, are not important.

~~~
mod
You would be imparting a bias on some scale, sure.

But to anyone wanting to verify a certain claim, you would impart no bias
(they would land on your site, verify the claim, and leave), so long as you
were honest & accurate.

------
pklausler
I've thought a bit about what living in a "post-truth" era really means, and I
think that it comes down to a lack of accountability for lying. If there are
people who support a candidate and _don 't care_ whether that candidate is
lying to them or not, we're all in a bad situation.

I find it fascinating that it's still considered to be shocking or
unacceptable to call somebody a liar -- as if we _prefer_ media that is
complicit in the lack of consequences for lying.

------
pdkl95
> post-truth era

The most terrifying statement I've ever heard from the US government is this
quote[1] that the NY Times[2] attributes to an unnamed aid to G.W.Bush, which
was supposedly said by Karl Rove.

    
    
        The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based
        community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge
        from your judicious study of discernible reality." [...] "That's not the way
        the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when
        we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality [...]
        we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too,
        and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors... and you,
        all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
    

We have a serious problem if this nonsense has started to become accepted
enough to justify being called a "post-truth era".

May I suggest trying to get as many people as you can to read Sagan's "The
Demon-Haunted World"[3]? A free democracy cannot rely upon snopes (et al) as
the only filter of facts from opinions and lies. Remember Sagan's warning:

    
    
        I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time --
        when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all
        the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome
        technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing
        the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the
        ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority;
        when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our
        critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good
        and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition
        and darkness...
    
    

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-
based_community](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community)

[2] [http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-
certainty-a...](http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-
and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-
Haunted_World](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World)

------
MrZongle2
The only one calling this a "post-truth era" is _The Guardian_.

Falsehoods and rumors are nothing new. The speed by which they travel over the
Internet _is_ , but they're still spread by trolls, useful idiots and
partisans as they have been for a long, long time.

~~~
cmurf
Yeah but there was a time when most everyone believed in superstitions. The
question not asked in the article is what happens to a society when a
significant minority start believing in superstitions,give in to paranoia and
conspiracy theories, etc. What happens in the aggregate when facts aren't
persuasive? Is this sufficiently culturally different that it becomes
untenable, and what does that mean?

