Comment by duaneb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by duaneb | Hacker News Reader

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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.

"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.

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?

> 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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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

Is there a serious question to what the original claim was implying?

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.

"Statements like this are used when people are trying to criticize Clinton."

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.

Is a plea bargain a successful defense? Only if you are really guilty. If you got bullied into taking the plea, it's an utter failure. Depending on how you weight the two parts of the assertion, it isn't unreasonable to call it mostly false.

I already addressed these claims in my original comment. The claim may be 100% true on a very literal level: Clinton defended him for some definition of success (her success, not his), and laughed at the case for some definition of laughing at a large span of time (laughed at some specific aspects of some specific events).

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.

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

Only if one ignores every single bit of context.

Well, she didn't win the case, and the laughter was at how she would never trust a polygraph again.

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.

> without touching what it implies.

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.

Implications are just as real as facts--that is, not at all. The world runs on implications. This is what advertising is. We expect to be lied to daily.

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