Can mythbusters like Snopes.com keep up in a post-truth era?
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
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.
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?
Your argument does fit quite well for those in the DNC and Hillary camp. Despite all of the evidence that Hillary and the Clinton Foundation have engaged in pay-for-play politics since Bill left office and the DNC's active roll in assuring Hillary gets the nomination, hardly anyone on the Democrat side sees an issue with the Truth
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.
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.
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.
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.
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/...
^1 Actually there is, as many as there are readers.
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.
https://ethicsalarms.com/2016/07/31/bye-bye-snopes-youre-dea...
It's turtles all the way down.
Cf. Pravda and "Honest John's Used Cars".
Are their assertions about Snopes mischaracterizing the facts in this case correct or not?
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.
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.
"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?
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.
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.
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?
That's--well, that's what Snopes is for.
If sites like Snopes only based their ratings on the literal meanings, that would create a huge loophole for any number of dishonest techniques, and obvious cases of lying by omission and quote-mining would end up with a giant "True" label.
Yes, absolutely. I would go even further and say that they're trying to smear Hillary Clinton, just as the rash of "Peter Thiel: Billionaire Vampire" stories we've seen in the past couple of days are trying to smear Thiel. Clinton apparently did defend a child rapist and later laugh about the case. Thiel apparently is interested in substances found the blood of young people. The objectionable behavior lies in a) not explaining that all criminals (even accused child rapists) have the right to defend themselves in court and b) not explaining that many existing treatments are derived from human blood. However, the base statement is true in both cases.
"Is it the job of places like Snopes to only review the literal interpretation of statements being reviewed,"
It is the job of places like Snopes to not mark things that are true as false.
If they wanted to introduce a "spun" category, I would certainly have no objection to that.
To me, the article used the technical accuracy to paint her as a person who had zero issues defending a sexual predator on a personal level with a lacadaisical attitude. This can't be further from the truth: she was ethically obligated to give a good defense. That she was able to find some humor is just human and arguably necessary for a job defending morally repugnant people.
If the value of the blog is its ability to be utterly pedantic about language while ignoring context, implication, and personal bias, perhaps they should re evaluate their brand as an ethics watchdog.
Only if one ignores every single bit of context.
But the accused wasn't convicted of rape, and that polygraph was to do with the case.
There is both truth and false there. If you look at the original meme it is pretty clear there is more false than true:
She didn't volunteer to defend the rapist (FALSE)
She didn't make up a story that the woman enjoyed the rape, although she did ask for the woman to be assessed by a psychologist. (MOSTLY FALSE)
He served jail time, but he was freed, and it was after a plea-bargain (EVEN, but I'd tend towards more false than true here)
She did seem to know he was guilty (TRUE)
She didn't laugh about him being guilty (Note the phrasing in the meme is "she knew he was guilty. And she laughed about it") (FALSE)
So one true statement, one even, one mostly false and two false statements.
I'd say "Mostly False" is fair overall.
The thing is, Snopes is in the business of facts, not implications.
At least, I think they should be. I go there for fact checking, not for implication checking. I can make my own assumptions about implications. Implication is not rooted in fact.
I have no idea why I'm responding to this.
Take Clinton's laughter—the claim is "Clinton laughed about the case". Does that mean that "she laughed about the results", or "she laughed when discussing the case"? Which ever they discuss, people will criticize them using the other metric.
Of course, both of these have the same problem: there's a claim, which can be interpreted 2 ways. Snopes defends the one they felt is meant, and this site criticizes them for the other. On its own, whatever. But these are interesting that, while Ethics Alert's interpretations may be valid, they're a lot less emotionally weaker. Take the laughter:
- If Clinton had laughed about getting a rapist off, that would be bad.
- She did laugh when discussing the case, and so that can be seen as "laughing about the case".
- But "laughing about the case" isn't really bad. Nobody cares if she's discussing the case, and laughs about something. It's meaningless. But they do care about laughing about getting a rapist off.
You see? These both have a similar bait-and-switch:
- Claim: Something that people care about.
- Snopes: That something didn't happen.
- Ethics Alert: Something can also be interpreted this other way, which did happen. But the other way nowhere near as significant.
So can you interpret "successfully defended" as "got a plea bargain". But if you try and substitute them both back into the original claim, one of them is really bad, and one of them isn't nearly so:
- "Clinton freed a child rapist".
- "Clinton got a child rapist a plea bargain".
Suddenly it's like, so what? Lots of cases get plea bargains, for lots of reasons. Maybe the facts of the case are open to dispute, maybe the prosecutors don't have a strong case, maybe there was some procedural mistake. That's not a very strong criticism.
Also, they accuse Snopes of responding to statements that aren't directly in the claim. Is that good, or bad? Well, if they do, then they're susceptible to attacks like this. If they don't, then they get to hear an endless litany of "no no when they say X it means Y and why didn't you address that point what are you trying to hide"? It's a no-win.
As for the flags one, I don't know. And honestly, I don't particularly care. There was no shortage of patriotism on display at the DNC, that playing games about which days had flags and which days didn't and which days had the attendees make giant flags in their seats is childish. If they have the pictures mis-dated, then definitely they should be fixed—but this looks like a similar problem to the above, where critics use "They didn't show enough flags!" as a substitute for "The DNC was unpatriotic!", and while you might think they didn't use enough flags, there was no shortage of patriotic attitudes on display.
Their statements aren't wrong just because they're a smear blog, but their smear blog status should prime you to expect horribly inaccurate claims.
Snopes uses a four-part breakdown for their claims. Ethics Alert took two parts, misrepresented them, then blasted Snopes for inaccuracy and incompleteness (while, mind you, ignoring the bulk of the article).
Snopes includes:
- An example of the claim "in the wild"; in this case, a picture with text.
- A simple 'Claim' section, stating the core assertions shared by most of the 'wild' examples in easy to read/search text.
- An assessment, giving a conclusion and basic propositions about what was true and false.
- An analysis, giving sources and reasons for the decision.
Ethics Alert quotes parts two (claim) and three (assessment) then tears into them for incompleteness and mismatch.
They open by saying that the assessment doesn't match the claim, and that the claim is "100% true". The assessment doesn't match the written claim, it matches the specific statements from the "wild" example. By failing to mention or reproduce that example, Ethics Alert hides the entire focus of Snopes' analysis to make them easier to attack.
E.A. then says "Then Snopes tries equivocation, saying that Clinton didn’t laugh about the outcome of the case. I see: she laughed (three times!) while talking about the case, but wasn’t laughing about the case’s outcome, just…the case. Ridiculous."
We're expected to accept that there's no meaningful difference between "about the case" and "about the outcome of the case". That's what's ridiculous - what they call equivocation, I call a crucial difference. If a man breaks into a murder trial wearing a rubber chicken on his head, I'm not going to claim that everyone telling the story is laughing about murder. Clinton laughed about how inaccurate polygraphs are, and we're being told to treat that as laughing about rape. Ethics Alert also fails to mention that Snopes includes the tape with the laughter, acting as though it's a dirty secret Snopes hid from their readers.
(Incidentally, this is a sloppy, though common, use of 'equivocation'. Equivocation is "abusing multiple meanings", not "drawing petty distinctions".)
E.A. also blurs the line between legal actions and factual claims, saying "Similarly ridiculous is Snopes’ claim that Hillary 'did not assert that the complainant ‘made up the rape story.'' She pleaded not guilty."
That's a standard part of a legal proceeding for all kinds of reasons, and there isn't an honest lawyer alive if "entering a plea which doesn't match the result" counts as lying. Notably, Hillary didn't claim innocence, but took a plea bargain for her client. Pleading 'guilty' has legal consequences apart from whether one committed the action in question (like the loss of ability to seek a plea bargain), and pleading 'not guilty' encompasses claims like insufficient evidence to convict.
The E.A. article goes on at great length, wandering closer and further from reality. But all all points, it misrepresents Snopes, misrepresents the cases in question, and views clear, reasonable language with the most hostile interpretations it can find.
1. They accuse Snopes of "moving the goalposts" and "attacking straw men" by only quoting Snopes' summary of the text Snopes is responding to, and not the text in the image itself. The Snopes article includes both, so while the summary is perfunctory, it's clear where Snopes got the claims it was refuting.
2. The original claim says: "Hillary got my rapist freed. In 1980 she gave an interview where she admitted she knew he was guilty. And she laughed about it." Snopes interprets this as suggesting that Hillary laughed about the fact that she knowingly got a guilty rapist off, and their debunking is based around this interpretation. Ethics Alarms objects to Snopes' rebuttal on the grounds that Hillary laughed at some point in the interview, which seems to me to miss the point that the original image was trying to make.
3. The last point they take issue with is whether Hillary accused the girl of making it up because she enjoyed fantasizing about older men. Snopes' explanation is that this claim comes from an affidavit where Hillary merely asked for permission from the court to examine whether this might be the case, and that not to follow this avenue of inquiry after her client suggested it would have been failing to do her job. Ethics Alarms objects that by pleading "not guilty," Hillary made this accusation. Ethics Alarms then goes on to agree that Hillary acted responsibly here, so I don't even know why they're attacking Snopes on this.
All you've done above is attacked the messenger and overlooked the message.
There are several lengthy replies further down, but basically:
Ethics Alert quotes two small sections of a pages-long Snopes pieces, then acts like Snopes wrote nothing else. They claim that Snopes didn't answer the original question while hiding the actual image being analyzed (which Snopes addressed pretty directly). They draw specious conclusions (like equating a temporary 'not guilty' plea with calling the plaintiff a liar). They reveal facts already included by Snopes with the implication that they're unveiling a dirty secret, and without acknowledging that Snopes addressed those topics (in particular, the "Hillary laughed" bit).
They use quotes and facts, but their citations of Snopes are so selective, and use such fragile language breakdowns, that the content they're "responding" to has basically nothing in common with what was actually posted.
The claim, as stated, is true.
Snopes then goes on to defend the implications of the statement--implications that Snopes interprets.
I'm not sure an organization that deals in facts should be interpreting the tone/meaning/intended result of claims that it checks.
I would have liked Snopes to rate the claim true, and then provide details about the case. Readers can then decide for themselves how to think about those details.
Someone out there needs to deal strictly in facts and not the implications, greater meanings, or feelings related to those facts.
"Claim is true. X happened, Y happened, Z happened. Here are sources. Here's what people involved said."
http://www.snopes.com/hillary-clinton-freed-child-rapist-lau...
What is "the claim, as stated," that you believe is true? If it's the page title, "Hillary Clinton Freed Child Rapist," that is not true, as detailed in the explanation. The man was convicted, not freed. If it's the image (which is clearly what Snopes is rating), I count eight statements, seven of which involve Hillary Clinton. The first three of those seven are false, the fourth is technically true with false implications based on one of the earlier falsehoods, and the fifth is debatable, depending on what what "it" means in that context. The final two are demonstrably false, inasmuch as they purport to be factual statements.
So seven statements, five of which are definitely false, and two of which are arguably true in misleading ways.
I'd say "MOSTLY FALSE" sounds about right. How would one word the claim to come up with "true?"
"CLAIM: Hillary Clinton successfully defended an accused child rapist and later laughed about the case."
That was the claim I referenced.
The Snopes arguments seem rather convincing to me. The first example was a specific claim based on a meme that went around of Facebook: "Hillary Clinton successfully defended an accused child rapist and later laughed about the case."
Snopes said: Yes, she defended the rapist. However, she was appointed by the judge, and the prosecutor on the case backs up Clinton's claim that she didn't want to take the case. There is a tape of her talking about the case, and she does laugh, but to quote Snopes: "When she audibly laughed, she was not laughing about the outcome of the case, but rather about how the case had forever destroyed her faith in polygraph tests because the defendant had taken one and passed (while, presumably, answering questions in a manner Clinton knew or assumed to be false)"
Snopes says it is "Mostly False". I think that is a reasonable assessment based on the evidence available.
I'm not going to summarize the other case at all - I don't think it is worth the time.
The claim, as stated, is 100% true.
The rest of Snopes' argument seems to be justification on behalf of Hillary, which in Snopes' defense, changes the light in which the statement paints Hillary.
If I were snopes, I would have rated the claim true, and then still explained the circumstances. I think that removes the bias and lets readers draw their own conclusion about why something happened. That's what's supposed to be going on at a fact-checking outfit.
I would say that "mostly false" is fine, based on the photo. This is based on the concluding statement: "Hilary is an advocate for rapists" etc.
Now, we all know that defense attorney for rapists != advocate for rapists. Ethics Watch admitted as much. However, they seemed to leave out the conclusion, which really was the whole point of the photo. To me, the conclusion should be given much greater weight in driving the rating.
Yes, the beginning of the photo is mostly true, but if the photo's post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacious conclusion is the real point, it doesn't matter. If I create a photo saying "Johnny listens to (insert current moral panic music here), Johnny grew up to be a criminal. Therefore, (moral panic music) makes you a criminal", that would be just as false... even if the first two statements are correct.
Based on the meme, I would say "mostly true." I would take issue with "volunteered," I would question what she laughed about (it's unclear, and so not very fact-check-able), and I would ignore the "advocate for rapists, not women & children" bit as it doesn't seem to be a fact I can check. I would just say as much in my presentation of the facts.
Perhaps Snopes would have been better served by not wording the "claim" headline in a way that was expressly true, before then saying it was false.
They could have taken the meme line for line and rated them individually, as well. That happens anyway in the supporting detail, and it's an easy way to organize the page.
The "claim" has to be written in a way people will be able to find it when searching for the meme. I agree it isn't a good summary of what the meme claims.
Snopes does it correctly; they say that the fact is true but it is evidently not the cause of the outrage that the original statement tries to create in the readers.
Snopes does not rate the claim true, and that's really all I'm taking issue with. I'd like them to rate it for truthiness and then give some evidence and context. No need for them to guess at what the author was inferring.
This used to be exactly what I went to Snopes for. There's a million places online where people interpret facts and tell you whether or not they should be a cause of outrage.
Context in the article is good, but the top level "True/Mostly True ..." classification felt sacred to me. This one seems like a clear "Mostly True"
Maybe if Snopes doesn't want to face politically-motivated attacks they shouldn't pursue a political agenda?
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.
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.
This times 100. Politics tends to cover things that aren't readily testable in scientifically repeatable ways. So decisions must be made on principles or ideologies which shade every topic. And since people are now basing their decisions on unprovable "facts" or claims, the line becomes fuzzy on what to believe and not to believe. So people tend to believe what reinforces what they already believe.
>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.
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.
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.
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."
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...
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-a...
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.