Manny's primitives discuss Snopes

[franksolich]

https://jackpineradicals.com/boards/topic/snopes-wants-money-to-stay-afloat-wont-get-mine/

Oh my.

madfloridian  (1871 posts) July 25, 2017 at 8:36 pm

Snopes wants money to stay afloat. Won't get mine.

I have too many questions and concerns about that site I used to trust, so I will not be donating.  Also I admit to holding grudges from the primary, especially when  a trusted site lies about fake news.  Snopes did just that.

From the New York Times last December.

For Fact-Checking Website Snopes, a Bigger Role Brings More Attacks

Brooke Binkowski, the managing editor of Snopes, in its office in San Diego. The idea that the website’s work would slow down after the presidential election has proved unfounded. Credit John Francis Peters for The New York Times

One way to chart Snopes’s increasing prominence is by measuring the rise in fake news about the site itself. If you believe the internet, the founder of Snopes, David Mikkelson, has a longer rap sheet than Al Capone. He was supposedly arrested for committing fraud and corruption and running a pit bull ring. In the wake of a deal that Snopes and others made this month to start fact-checking for Facebook, new slurs and allegations poured forth.

The underlying message of these spurious attacks is that the movement to fact-check the internet is a left-wing conspiracy whose real goal is to censor the right, and therefore must be resisted at all costs.

“Smearing people just because you don’t like what they’re saying often works to shut them up,” Ms. Binkowski, 39, said. “But at Snopes you learn to grow a thick skin. I will always push back. At least until someone shows up at my workplace and kills me.”

But Binkowski said something that truly had no basis in fact at all.  Hillary supporters jumped on it in joy not caring about the truth of it.  Just because Brooke says it does not make it true. From 2016:

Just about everyone at Snopes thought things would calm down after the votes were in. “The fake news wasn’t from Trump so much. It was from people who hated Hillary Clinton,” Ms. Binkowski said. “Once the election was over we figured it would go away.”

That did it for me.

The Atlantic covers their plea for money.

Snopes Faces an Ugly Legal Battle

Snopes began in the early 1990s as a small website built by the husband-and-wife team of David and Barbara Mikkelson. Snopes was what you sent to your cousins who circulated crazy conspiracy theories from their Hotmail accounts. In 2003, the Mikkelsons founded a parent company, Bardav, for the site.

All the way up into the 2010s, it had that look and feel, too, of a previous era of the internet. And perhaps because of that, its pronouncements on the veracity of subjects had a kind of authority that other media fact-checkers lacked. People, at least as many as possible in today’s crazed informational environment, trusted Snopes.

The founders divorced in 2015, some titillating details of which became public. Both founders received 50 percent of the company.

In the summer of that year, Bardav had entered into an agreement with a newish San Diego company called Proper Media to “provide content and website development services as well as advertising sales and trafficking” to Snopes. Proper Media’s principals were Chris Richmond, who co-owns a wiki called TV Tropes, and Drew Schoentrup, both now described in court filings as residents of Puerto Rico (more on that shortly).* Each of these men had a 40 percent share in the company. They were joined by three other people who had smaller equity stakes: Tyler Dunn, Ryan Miller, and Vincent Green.

In July 2016, Barbara Mikkelson sold her half of Bardav to these five men, leaving her ex-husband with five new partners in the company. Because Bardav was an S corporation, its shareholders had to be people, not other companies. So, the stock purchase agreement between Mikkelson and the men assigned them each equity on the same split that they had in Proper Media.

About those “titillating details” of the Mikkelson divorce.  From The Free Thought Project last December.

Snopes, the Supposed Arbiter of ‘Fake News’ — Accused of ‘Defrauding Own Site to Pay for Prostitutes’

Facebook’s choice to hire Snopes to arbitrate which news items will be allowed to stand and which should receive the Scarlet-Letter label ‘disputed’ already brought outrage — the site is notoriously left-leaning — but an exclusive report from the Daily Mail on alleged shady dealings should turn Mark Zuckerberg’s cheeks a deep shade of red.

David and Barbara Mikkelson, ex-spouses and founders of Snopes, have been hurling accusations allegations at one another in an ongoing bitter legal dispute following their divorce — and many of the claims don’t exactly give the company an air of professionalism.

Last month, David remarried — his new wife is a former porn actress and escort — and is now one of the site’s fact-checkers. As for the accusations, reports the Daily Mail,

“They are accusing each other of financial impropriety, with Barbara claiming her ex-husband is guilty of ‘embezzlement’ and suggesting he is attempting a ‘boondoggle’ to change tax arrangements, while David claims she took millions from their joint accounts and bought property in Las Vegas.”

As the Daily Mail notes, the couple met on an online message board with a folklore theme in the early 1990s, and created a fake organization — “The San Fernando Valley Folklore Society” — which, according to a Webby Awards profile, is “an entity dreamed up to help make the inquiries seem more legit.”

David, now CEO of Snopes — which the former couple created after marrying in 1995 — told the Los Angeles Times in 1997, as cited by the Daily Mail, “When I sent letters out to companies, I found I got a much better response with an official-looking organization’s stationery.”

……Barbara, in court filings, accuses David of “raiding” Snopes’ bank account “for his personal use and attorney fees” and embezzling “$98,000 from our company over the course of four years, which were monies he expended upon himself and the prostitutes he hired …

So I won’t be donating.  If a group of people is going to be judging the authenticity of Facebook posts,  I would expect them to be able to prove their own..authenticity that is.

closeupready  (1190 posts) (Reply to original post)    July 25, 2017 at 8:42 pm

1. In my view, Snopes sold out their 'gold standard' status, as explained here,

and as a result, I also will not be donating, nor do I view them as authoritative or impartial any longer.  I did once, but no, not now.

CalGoldenBear  (387 posts) (Reply to original post)    July 25, 2017 at 9:51 pm

5. IIRC, last year, perhaps about the same time as the Ides of March

diktat from Kos that his creation was shifting to “general election mode” in support of Shrillary, Snopes.com seemed to make a similar pro-Shrillary, anti-Bernie shift.

So you fricking corporatists and neoliberals, together with sycophants like David Brock, are welcome to each other.  The “little people” are waking up — no more donations to you leeches, thank you.  We’ll donate directly to Berniecrats and smile as you and the DNC insiders shrivel up and have to lay off well-paid staff due to donations big and small drying up.

Question.

When have Manny's primitives ever donated to anyone, anything?

Anybody know?

It's not their modus operendi; they mean to take from others, not give to others.

[BlueStateSaint]

Virtue-signaling, Coach.  That's all it is.

[SVPete]

Snopes' politicization had consequences: too much for conservatives, not faithful enough to the D/Prog party line, so both go elsewhere. DU-folk reject facts that contradict their worldview, and Snopes just wasn't a faithful propaganda parrot. So this is just DU-folk sour-graping.

If Snopes goes under or becomes a porn site I won't much care.

[Skul]

Oh good grief.
Who left the whiners without adult supervision!

[freedumb2003b]

Snopes' politicization had consequences: too much for conservatives, not faithful enough to the D/Prog party line, so both go elsewhere. DU-folk reject facts that contradict their worldview, and Snopes just wasn't a faithful propaganda parrot. So this is just DU-folk sour-graping.

If Snopes goes under or becomes a porn site I won't much care.

And yet, they raised 1/2 a million in a few days on GoBegMe.

Just like the jill stein nonsense, fools and their money are soon parted.