Comment by beerandt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by beerandt | Hacker News Reader

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Well for one thing, the majority of the articles seem to be done by completely 3rd party authors, without mention of vetting, conflicts, or bias.

>More troubling is that we simply don’t know who contributed to a given fact check. David noted that Snopes’ “process is a highly collaborative one in which several different people may contribute to a single article,” but that “the result is typically credited to whoever wrote the initial draft.” David did not respond to a request for comment on why Snopes only lists a single author for each of its fact checks, rather than provide an acknowledgement section that lists all of the individuals who contributed to a given fact check.

It's the same problem Wikipedia sometimes has. Selectively pick sources that confirm the story you want to convey, and ignore the others.

The other big problem recently is to spin something that's true as being false, by slightly changing the question, to be broad enough to encompass an "out."

Also this story covers most of the history of what's in the linked article, from over 3 years ago.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-dai...

>spin something that's true as being false, by slightly changing the question

Do you have an example of this?

Here's an example:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/10/...

The claim is correct, and the article even acknowledges that. They then throw in a bit about "negative wealth" amongst the world's poor and somehow award it "Three Pinocchios" as a result.

This article is not from Snopes. The question is about the integrity of Snopes and whether or not they re-frame questions to fit a political spin. The Washington Post has been found to have done this on numerous occasions.

Here's one- The original claim was about a viral tweet- a photo at the Whitehouse with 33 X's over the faces of supposed congressmen that had been voted out since voting against Obamacare.

Since there were 33 x's, and that many Republicans had been voted out of Congress, they said true.

But in the original picture, many of the X's were reelected, and many weren't even in Congress to begin with.

The author has since retracted the tweet, and admitted it was fake. But Snopes just rephrased the question and left it as true.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/gop-obamacare-repeal-elect...

>Since there were 33 x's, and that many Republicans had been voted out of Congress, they said true.

That is not at all what the article you linked states. Not only does the article confirm that some of the X's in the picture were not in Congress but it provides a specific list that shows that, for those who were, the claim is accurate.

How is that at all considered to be true?

The original claim was those specific people were voted out of Congress. Not that it's representative of the general quantity.

The claim in the title that they edited might be true, but the original claim from Twitter is not. That's the whole point. From the article:

>this one got the general idea and numbers correct (even if the persons actually pictured in the accompanying photograph are difficult or impossible to identify).

Difficult or impossible to identify? Dozens of others have done it, and even the author admitted it was made up.

Here's the one about the Democrats not having an American flag at the first day of the DNC.

After being busted stealing a pic from another website from the second day (a page that fact checked the claim as true), the question was changed to whether the American flag was "banned" from the convention, which was never the claim.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/flags-banned-at-dnc/

You need to be more specific with your criticisms and provide some support for the "after being busted stealing" part. For one, that has no bearing or relevance on whether the claim is true or not. Secondly, whether they were "banned" or not is irrelevant as the actual claim is shown, in full, right on the page. Whether the claim is "banned" or whether it was that the "DNC announced the flag may not be worn or waved" matters little if both claims are objectively false.

If they plagiarized the image from a website with a caption saying "day 2", and Snopes claims it's from "day 1", that has no bearing on their credibility? The pic was from cspan, via a media matters story from day 2 that was pulled after all the attention.

That's at least 3 degrees of dishonesty, from a website who depends on it's reputation.

Here's the original claim:

That same day, Snopes writer Dan Evon wrote a “fact-check” article declaring it “false” that: “No American flags were on display in stage at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.” (posted on day one)

The whole point is they changed the question to fit the answer they wanted.

>that has no bearing on their credibility

If it changes the context or response to the claim, then yes it does. In this case, whether it's from Day 1 or Day 2 is irrelevant as the original claim doesn't make a distinction between the days. It simply says that the flags weren't allowed at the convention which is objectively false.

Even if I assume that this statement is true - (“No American flags were on display in stage at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.” (posted on day one)) - the claim is still 100% false as there is video evidence that shows that the screens did in fact show American flags on both Day 1 and Day 2.

>That's at least 3 degrees of dishonesty, from a website who depends on it's reputation.

Your links, claims, and responses don't support any kind of assertion of dishonesty. They may have made a mistake in captioning a Day 2 image as Day 1 but nothing suggests, at all, that this was anything more than a mistake as opposed to something that was intentionally malicious.

Additionally, after seeing the rest of your responses, I don't think you're arguing this in good faith at all. You have yet to provide any kind of evidence that changes were made to re-frame the articles.

> If it changes the context or response to the claim, then yes it does. In this case, whether it's from Day 1 or Day 2 is irrelevant as the original claim doesn't make a distinction between the days. It simply says that the flags weren't allowed at the convention which is objectively false.

The point is that that wasn't the original claim - the original claim was that there wasn't a flag present, and then snopes changed it to something similar but false to get the desired result.

If I'm understanding this comment chain correctly, of course.

Exactly. And there was originally no specific day mentioned, because the original claim was made on and about day one, which at the time, was the only day.

>The point is that that wasn't the original claim - the original claim was that there wasn't a flag present, and then snopes changed it to something similar but false to get the desired result.

That's what I said in my response, though. Even if the original claim was that "there wasn't a flag present", that claim is still false as there is demonstrable proof that shows there were plenty of flags present on both Day 1 and Day 2. Even if the original claim was "flags were banned" or "flags were banned on Day 1", it doesn't change the fact that the piece would still be labelled as "False".

If people are claiming that Snopes is changing either the claims or the content to get a desired result, they need to show some kind of evidence for that. The only thing that they've shown is that Snopes has changed the claim despite the fact that the result is still the same. They're attributing editorial changes to malice rather than clarity.

To be clear, if the claim was originally "Flags were banned" and they changed it to "Flags were banned for Day 1" because it lets them call it false, that might be cause for a call of malice. The evidence, though, shows that any variation of "flags were banned" or "flags weren't present" is not true because there are photos and videos that clearly show they were present for both Day 1 and Day 2. Any change from either of those headings to the current heading would still be 100% accurate as far as the assessment is concerned.

>show they were present for both Day 1 and Day 2

The only flag ever on stage day 1 was the color guard, who left with it.

Other pictures from "day one" are actually from day 2. Even politifact admitted that they were over compensating on day 2 after Trump called them out on Twitter the evening of day 1.

>The only flag ever on stage day 1 was the color guard, who left with it.

There are literally videos of the entirety of Day 1 that show several American flags and people in the audience with flag paraphernalia.

Being willfully ignorant is not an excuse here.

The claim was flags on the stage. Not some audience member with a lapel.

They were added the next day, after being called out.

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