“Rewrite It Just Enough to Avoid Copyright Infringement”
August 14, 2021 9:50 AM Subscribe
This popped up in my facebook feed this morning, and now all the Trumpist know-nothings are gloating that this somehow proves that all fact-checking sites are corrupt and untrustworthy. Never mind that intellectual dishonesty and actual dishonesty are not the same thing.
Also, David Mikkelson has some other sketchy behavior in his past, so plenty of ammo for ad hominem attacks; although, once again, that doesn’t impact the truth or falseness of the reporting.
posted by TedW at 10:06 AM on August 14, 2021 [23 favorites]
Also, David Mikkelson has some other sketchy behavior in his past, so plenty of ammo for ad hominem attacks; although, once again, that doesn’t impact the truth or falseness of the reporting.
posted by TedW at 10:06 AM on August 14, 2021 [23 favorites]
Really dumb site in the first place. I always complain when Google uses them to address some question.
posted by jamjam at 10:08 AM on August 14, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by jamjam at 10:08 AM on August 14, 2021 [6 favorites]
This sucks, because whether or not you like Snopes in it's current capacity, it was a pioneer in the mid 90's in debunking (or more rarely confirming) urban legends and tall tales. I always regarded it as trustworthy, and although I haven't read it regularly in many years I appreciate all the work they were doing in countering actual fake news and Trumpism. I would have thought that a site dedicated to facts and the truth in general would be well regarded on this website; clearly this changes that permanently but I never saw a reason to distrust the research and claims presented in its original content.
posted by andruwjones26 at 10:16 AM on August 14, 2021 [94 favorites]
posted by andruwjones26 at 10:16 AM on August 14, 2021 [94 favorites]
I've actually used Snopes at work to debunk bullshit that someone was mass-emailing everyone in the organization about; whatever deficiencies they may have had in general or WRT specific topics, they would at least cite their sources. This is highly unfortunate and I hope that they recover from it.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:21 AM on August 14, 2021 [33 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:21 AM on August 14, 2021 [33 favorites]
"Let he who is without sin bias cast the first stone."
As much as fact-checking is important, there is no such thing as an unbiased source, and this whole thing just seems like an attempt to poison the well.
Snopes has generally had a left-wing bias, sure, but it also has an elitist bias where they seem to jump to the aide of democratic politicians while not actually standing up for social movements under the democratic wing of the party.
"I would have thought that a site dedicated to facts and the truth in general would be well regarded on this website"
When their rich jerk buddies are deciding what facts and truth are, there's an issue when you get out of the debunking of cryptozoology game and enter into debunking social movements game. Snopes was good for a lot of things, but it's absolute deference to the Democratic party elite has handicapped it when it comes to debunking anything political.
Snopes is still better than a lot of fact-checking sites, and it is to be noted Mikkelson hasn't actually been involved with Snopes in a while (he was sort of ejected when his now ex-wife sold her 50% ownership to someone else), so I really only see this as right-wing gaslighting about the whole issue. I'm much more concerned with Snopes' general appeal to authority when it comes to the political elite in the Democratic party, but honestly, that goes for every media organization in this country so Snopes isn't exactly some unusual thing in that regard.
Money has corrupted everything and Snopes is honestly the least of my concerns. Also, their willingness to be honest and remove the articles speaks to the people working there having a sense of humility, which is exactly what I would want in a fact-checking organization.
posted by deadaluspark at 10:30 AM on August 14, 2021 [21 favorites]
As much as fact-checking is important, there is no such thing as an unbiased source, and this whole thing just seems like an attempt to poison the well.
Snopes has generally had a left-wing bias, sure, but it also has an elitist bias where they seem to jump to the aide of democratic politicians while not actually standing up for social movements under the democratic wing of the party.
"I would have thought that a site dedicated to facts and the truth in general would be well regarded on this website"
When their rich jerk buddies are deciding what facts and truth are, there's an issue when you get out of the debunking of cryptozoology game and enter into debunking social movements game. Snopes was good for a lot of things, but it's absolute deference to the Democratic party elite has handicapped it when it comes to debunking anything political.
Snopes is still better than a lot of fact-checking sites, and it is to be noted Mikkelson hasn't actually been involved with Snopes in a while (he was sort of ejected when his now ex-wife sold her 50% ownership to someone else), so I really only see this as right-wing gaslighting about the whole issue. I'm much more concerned with Snopes' general appeal to authority when it comes to the political elite in the Democratic party, but honestly, that goes for every media organization in this country so Snopes isn't exactly some unusual thing in that regard.
Money has corrupted everything and Snopes is honestly the least of my concerns. Also, their willingness to be honest and remove the articles speaks to the people working there having a sense of humility, which is exactly what I would want in a fact-checking organization.
posted by deadaluspark at 10:30 AM on August 14, 2021 [21 favorites]
Snopes was great in the early Internet, and this doesn't really undermine the veracity of the article. Before this, I long I grew tired by the amateur Xeroxed flyer vibe of the site. It just seemed a little too early Internet when we've all moved on from the format. Just had a dated, retro feel.
I'm not at all surprised that he plagiarized things and was dubious in getting information. Funny it comes from the site that has articles like "10 ways you're showering is wrong!" but I give BuzzFeed credit for having integrity in their more long-form pieces.
That said, it seemed like intention was to drive traffic to the site. As the article points out, the alt-right used similar dubious tactics all the time to game Google/Facebook/Twitter into promoting their content. This is a bit less so now but around 10 years ago "SEO specialist" or something similar was a real job and they also had less than reputable ways to increase your traffic. It was scummy then and it is scummy now. I'm not at all defending snopes but just because he got away with it for a long time and I'm guessing a a lot of sites do something similar for SEO purposes and I would not be surprised if more reputable sites get brought down. This is unique in that plagiarism is an old-school wrong because we were taught to in school not to do it. We weren't talking about creating fake twitter accounts to link to our sites to generate more engagement. It is easier for most people to digest. Again, it says something that it was apparently not meant to be plagiarism in the sense of passing it off as your own work but simply to game the SEO. Still wrong, but wrong in a different way.
posted by geoff. at 10:36 AM on August 14, 2021 [5 favorites]
I'm not at all surprised that he plagiarized things and was dubious in getting information. Funny it comes from the site that has articles like "10 ways you're showering is wrong!" but I give BuzzFeed credit for having integrity in their more long-form pieces.
That said, it seemed like intention was to drive traffic to the site. As the article points out, the alt-right used similar dubious tactics all the time to game Google/Facebook/Twitter into promoting their content. This is a bit less so now but around 10 years ago "SEO specialist" or something similar was a real job and they also had less than reputable ways to increase your traffic. It was scummy then and it is scummy now. I'm not at all defending snopes but just because he got away with it for a long time and I'm guessing a a lot of sites do something similar for SEO purposes and I would not be surprised if more reputable sites get brought down. This is unique in that plagiarism is an old-school wrong because we were taught to in school not to do it. We weren't talking about creating fake twitter accounts to link to our sites to generate more engagement. It is easier for most people to digest. Again, it says something that it was apparently not meant to be plagiarism in the sense of passing it off as your own work but simply to game the SEO. Still wrong, but wrong in a different way.
posted by geoff. at 10:36 AM on August 14, 2021 [5 favorites]
[s] nope [/s]
posted by fairmettle at 11:05 AM on August 14, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by fairmettle at 11:05 AM on August 14, 2021 [4 favorites]
I'll make my usual plea here, to please either link to sources that everyone can access, or give alternate links. I cannot see the NYT article even in an incognito tab.
posted by Flock of Cynthiabirds at 11:15 AM on August 14, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by Flock of Cynthiabirds at 11:15 AM on August 14, 2021 [6 favorites]
Flock of Cynthiabirds: "I'll make my usual plea here, to please either link to sources that everyone can access, or give alternate links. I cannot see the NYT article even in an incognito tab."
Archive version
posted by chavenet at 11:26 AM on August 14, 2021 [3 favorites]
Archive version
posted by chavenet at 11:26 AM on August 14, 2021 [3 favorites]
The article quotes former managing editor Brooke Binkowski, who I've followed on Twitter for years now just because she's a relentless and outspoken crusader against misinfo/disinfo in all its forms. She jumped ship from Snopes a while ago and has a lot to say about Mikkelson, none of it good. The Buzzfeed article gets into the plagiarism but doesn't even touch on the pattern of misogyny. Here's her thread in response to this article, which includes links to some of her past comments, including a January 2020 thread (with screenshots) about Mikkelson's pro-plagiarism editorial policy and an August 2020 comment which I'll just quote in full:
David Mikkelson, who changed his ex-wife Barbara's byline to his own wholesale when we switched to a new site design, has now been quietly changing my writer
@KimLaCapria's byline to his own every chance he gets. Erasing the hard work of smart women is a pattern there.
If you're looking for alternatives to Snopes, Binkowski is now the managing editor at TruthorFiction.com (@erumors on Twitter), which is apparently run mostly-if-not-all by ex-Snopes-employees who got fed up with crap like this.
posted by mstokes650 at 11:26 AM on August 14, 2021 [55 favorites]
David Mikkelson, who changed his ex-wife Barbara's byline to his own wholesale when we switched to a new site design, has now been quietly changing my writer
@KimLaCapria's byline to his own every chance he gets. Erasing the hard work of smart women is a pattern there.
If you're looking for alternatives to Snopes, Binkowski is now the managing editor at TruthorFiction.com (@erumors on Twitter), which is apparently run mostly-if-not-all by ex-Snopes-employees who got fed up with crap like this.
posted by mstokes650 at 11:26 AM on August 14, 2021 [55 favorites]
@flock of cynthiabirds: I'll keep posting this hopefully it'll reach critical mass. Bypass paywalls in Chrome/Edge/Firefox
posted by geoff. at 11:26 AM on August 14, 2021 [16 favorites]
posted by geoff. at 11:26 AM on August 14, 2021 [16 favorites]
It just seemed a little too early Internet when we've all moved on from the format.
Not quite all.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 11:28 AM on August 14, 2021 [15 favorites]
Not quite all.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 11:28 AM on August 14, 2021 [15 favorites]
Claim: Snopes co-founder David Mikkelson plagiarized dozens of news articles over many years to drive traffic to his website.
Rating: ✅ True
posted by glonous keming at 11:35 AM on August 14, 2021 [29 favorites]
Rating: ✅ True
posted by glonous keming at 11:35 AM on August 14, 2021 [29 favorites]
I'll keep posting this hopefully it'll reach critical mass. Bypass paywalls in Chrome/Edge/Firefox
There's also the Bypass Paywalls Clean fork (Chrome/Edge/etc - Firefox - Android) which bypasses a lot more paywalls and is updated more often.
posted by flabdablet at 11:49 AM on August 14, 2021 [13 favorites]
There's also the Bypass Paywalls Clean fork (Chrome/Edge/etc - Firefox - Android) which bypasses a lot more paywalls and is updated more often.
posted by flabdablet at 11:49 AM on August 14, 2021 [13 favorites]
For a lot of paywalls you can just disable javascript.
posted by deadaluspark at 12:05 PM on August 14, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by deadaluspark at 12:05 PM on August 14, 2021 [1 favorite]
Kinda gotten the sense that Barbara Mikkelson was the core of the old good Snopes...
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 12:49 PM on August 14, 2021 [15 favorites]
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 12:49 PM on August 14, 2021 [15 favorites]
Wow, this is really disappointing. Way back in the dark ages, circa 1999, the Snopes message boards were where I spent most of my time online. It was a small enough site then that the Mikkelsons themselves participated in threads and it was a pretty tight little community, like a pre-Metafilter Metafilter, but eventually the message boards were phased out and I doubt they’re archived anywhere. I haven’t visited the site in a long time, not since the golden age of chain email forwards, but I often find myself wondering where some of the people from those boards went. Any MeFites who were also part of the SLC? MeMail me.
posted by Fuego at 1:29 PM on August 14, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by Fuego at 1:29 PM on August 14, 2021 [4 favorites]
This popped up in my facebook feed this morning, and now all the Trumpist know-nothings are gloating that this somehow proves that all fact-checking sites are corrupt and untrustworthy. Never mind that intellectual dishonesty and actual dishonesty are not the same thing.
Also, David Mikkelson has some other sketchy behavior in his past, so plenty of ammo for ad hominem attacks; although, once again, that doesn’t impact the truth or falseness of the reporting.
This is the key for me, too. The articles in question were plagiarized, but the facts in them are nevertheless true, right?
Granted, this will make it more difficult to disambiguate the fact-checking validity of the site (which seems to be intact) vs the nonexistent journalistic integrity of Mikkelsen, which is what is at issue here.
I have no problem still linking to a Snopes page debunking a hoax as long as it’s accurate.
posted by darkstar at 2:03 PM on August 14, 2021 [11 favorites]
Also, David Mikkelson has some other sketchy behavior in his past, so plenty of ammo for ad hominem attacks; although, once again, that doesn’t impact the truth or falseness of the reporting.
This is the key for me, too. The articles in question were plagiarized, but the facts in them are nevertheless true, right?
Granted, this will make it more difficult to disambiguate the fact-checking validity of the site (which seems to be intact) vs the nonexistent journalistic integrity of Mikkelsen, which is what is at issue here.
I have no problem still linking to a Snopes page debunking a hoax as long as it’s accurate.
posted by darkstar at 2:03 PM on August 14, 2021 [11 favorites]
Jeebus, the twitter outrage. Bad faith'll be the death of us.
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 2:53 PM on August 14, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 2:53 PM on August 14, 2021 [5 favorites]
This is the key for me, too. The articles in question were plagiarized, but the facts in them are nevertheless true, right?
If you want good fact-checking in the long run, you need to make sure the people checking the facts get paid for doing it.
posted by mstokes650 at 3:01 PM on August 14, 2021 [8 favorites]
If you want good fact-checking in the long run, you need to make sure the people checking the facts get paid for doing it.
posted by mstokes650 at 3:01 PM on August 14, 2021 [8 favorites]
The thing that was great about Snopes in the 90s was that they did actual reporting. A chain email about children in Anytown being abducted by spider people? We called the chiefs of police in Anytown Arizona, Illinois, and Rhode Island, and they’d heard the story too, but it wasn’t in their Anytown and they didn’t know where it had actually happened. A mishmash of half-truths put together into an inviting conspiracy? Here are six links to independent credible sources that let you put together both the actual truth and also the way it got distorted into the fiction.
For the people who “don’t trust Snopes,” I have basically the same response as for the people who “don’t trust Wikipedia”: fine, don’t trust it. At the bottom of the page is a bibliography of ten other places that say the same thing in a less compact way. We can discuss those instead.
I also had the sense (in the early years) that Barbara was a stronger writer and reporter than David, and that the quality of new material on the site was not as good after she stopped contributing.
I don’t envy the folks at Snopes. What started a generation ago as probably a fun side project got upgraded to a self-sustaining business, right around the time that historic changes made reporting/writing/publishing basically unsustainable as a business model. The demand to constantly generate more new content, of any quality, so that the internet’s illiterate robots will send idle people to look at your advertisements … that has broken a lot of people in the past decade. Furthermore, Snopes’s original appeal (to me at least) was its epistemological approach. For me Snopes was never about “that’s false”; it was about “we took this question seriously and here is why we’ve concluded it’s false.” And in the past several years, people with a penchant for violence have started attacking the very idea that there might be differences between the things they say and the truth. I’m sure that someone at Snopes made an argument that the era of “alternative facts” would present growth opportunities for a myth-debunking business. The day-to-day of making it work, though.
A shame.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 3:06 PM on August 14, 2021 [38 favorites]
For the people who “don’t trust Snopes,” I have basically the same response as for the people who “don’t trust Wikipedia”: fine, don’t trust it. At the bottom of the page is a bibliography of ten other places that say the same thing in a less compact way. We can discuss those instead.
I also had the sense (in the early years) that Barbara was a stronger writer and reporter than David, and that the quality of new material on the site was not as good after she stopped contributing.
I don’t envy the folks at Snopes. What started a generation ago as probably a fun side project got upgraded to a self-sustaining business, right around the time that historic changes made reporting/writing/publishing basically unsustainable as a business model. The demand to constantly generate more new content, of any quality, so that the internet’s illiterate robots will send idle people to look at your advertisements … that has broken a lot of people in the past decade. Furthermore, Snopes’s original appeal (to me at least) was its epistemological approach. For me Snopes was never about “that’s false”; it was about “we took this question seriously and here is why we’ve concluded it’s false.” And in the past several years, people with a penchant for violence have started attacking the very idea that there might be differences between the things they say and the truth. I’m sure that someone at Snopes made an argument that the era of “alternative facts” would present growth opportunities for a myth-debunking business. The day-to-day of making it work, though.
A shame.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 3:06 PM on August 14, 2021 [38 favorites]
I don't think I've been to Snopes since I encountered mediabiasfactcheck
Speaking of which (from 2017):
Snopes is a Least Biased Source despite what you may have read
posted by philip-random at 3:06 PM on August 14, 2021 [4 favorites]
Speaking of which (from 2017):
Snopes is a Least Biased Source despite what you may have read
posted by philip-random at 3:06 PM on August 14, 2021 [4 favorites]
Seems like one contributing factor to the plagiarism, on top of a general willingness to act unethically, was internet content creators desperately trying to cobble together the funding to keep afloat off traffic and advertising. One main alternative to which is asking readers to pay for the content they're reading.
posted by eponym at 3:28 PM on August 14, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by eponym at 3:28 PM on August 14, 2021 [7 favorites]
This is sad. alt.folklore.urban was one of my Internet homes back in the early nineties, and nobody had any idea that "Snopes" the web site would become what it became - there was no such thing as a web site!
posted by Daily Alice at 3:44 PM on August 14, 2021 [11 favorites]
posted by Daily Alice at 3:44 PM on August 14, 2021 [11 favorites]
Like so much of the world today, very disappointing but not the least bit surprising.
posted by briank at 4:00 PM on August 14, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by briank at 4:00 PM on August 14, 2021 [3 favorites]
MetaFilter: very disappointing but not the least bit surprising.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:11 PM on August 14, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:11 PM on August 14, 2021 [5 favorites]
> [...] one contributing factor [...] was internet content creators desperately trying to cobble together the funding to keep afloat off traffic and advertising. One main alternative to which is asking readers to pay for the content they're reading.
does anyone have a non-paywalled link discussing this
posted by glonous keming at 6:33 PM on August 14, 2021 [10 favorites]
does anyone have a non-paywalled link discussing this
posted by glonous keming at 6:33 PM on August 14, 2021 [10 favorites]
I'm much more concerned with Snopes' general appeal to authority when it comes to the political elite in the Democratic party, but honestly, that goes for every media organization in this country--deadaluspark
It is not often you hear the 'liberal controlled media' charge on Metafilter.
posted by eye of newt at 7:21 PM on August 14, 2021 [11 favorites]
It is not often you hear the 'liberal controlled media' charge on Metafilter.
posted by eye of newt at 7:21 PM on August 14, 2021 [11 favorites]
It is not often you hear the 'liberal controlled media' charge on Metafilter.
It’s almost certainly a charge that they’re biased against people further left, not the right.
(Which I have no interest in getting into in this particular case, just saying that would be a good bet at what the accusation is, here.)
posted by atoxyl at 9:43 PM on August 14, 2021 [7 favorites]
It’s almost certainly a charge that they’re biased against people further left, not the right.
(Which I have no interest in getting into in this particular case, just saying that would be a good bet at what the accusation is, here.)
posted by atoxyl at 9:43 PM on August 14, 2021 [7 favorites]
it is to be noted Mikkelson hasn't actually been involved with Snopes in a while
Um, has it? It...kinda sounds like he isn't divorced from the site if he's been writing all this crap and still owns 50% of it and is CEO.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:20 PM on August 14, 2021 [4 favorites]
Um, has it? It...kinda sounds like he isn't divorced from the site if he's been writing all this crap and still owns 50% of it and is CEO.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:20 PM on August 14, 2021 [4 favorites]
"Um, has it? It...kinda sounds like he isn't divorced from the site if he's been writing all this crap and still owns 50% of it and is CEO."
This is the last I heard about it, and maybe I remembered events wrong, but I thought he had lost the battle and Snopes had continued without him. All the dirty laundry between him and his wife was aired back then (2017ish), and his wife selling her shares of the company in the divorce was why he was at risk of losing the site. You'll have to excuse me, because I just assumed it was plainly clear he was a complete ass and that he was just jettisoned from the company forthwith. I shouldn't make such assumptions, because I should know better than to assume than anyone will ever actually do anything about scummy men being scummy. Just... I thought people knew this guy sucked years ago. So, once again, my bad and I should know better.
"It’s almost certainly a charge that they’re biased against people further left, not the right."
Bingo and it's really not worth going into beyond that.
posted by deadaluspark at 1:00 AM on August 15, 2021 [3 favorites]
This is the last I heard about it, and maybe I remembered events wrong, but I thought he had lost the battle and Snopes had continued without him. All the dirty laundry between him and his wife was aired back then (2017ish), and his wife selling her shares of the company in the divorce was why he was at risk of losing the site. You'll have to excuse me, because I just assumed it was plainly clear he was a complete ass and that he was just jettisoned from the company forthwith. I shouldn't make such assumptions, because I should know better than to assume than anyone will ever actually do anything about scummy men being scummy. Just... I thought people knew this guy sucked years ago. So, once again, my bad and I should know better.
"It’s almost certainly a charge that they’re biased against people further left, not the right."
Bingo and it's really not worth going into beyond that.
posted by deadaluspark at 1:00 AM on August 15, 2021 [3 favorites]
I've known of the Mikkelsons since their days on alt.folklore.urban. Also, back in the day, I was on a yahoo list with an owner who was constantly spamming conspiracy theories and urban legends. I'd point out snopes articles to proved him wrong. He finally kicked me off the list. Sorry to see that David has sunk to plagiarizing. The alt-right will have a heyday.
posted by jgaiser at 4:22 PM on August 15, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by jgaiser at 4:22 PM on August 15, 2021 [2 favorites]
Ah that's a shame. I used to use it all the time to reply to my mothers email chain letters and other readily debunked rubbish communications.
Saved me a lot of time and brain-space.
Totally stopped referring to it after Trump got elected thought, because the combination of whatsapp/facebook/disinformation media seemed to be an uncontrollable all consuming beast at that point, so I just stopped having those kinds of conversations with anyone...
posted by Faintdreams at 7:44 AM on August 16, 2021 [1 favorite]
Saved me a lot of time and brain-space.
Totally stopped referring to it after Trump got elected thought, because the combination of whatsapp/facebook/disinformation media seemed to be an uncontrollable all consuming beast at that point, so I just stopped having those kinds of conversations with anyone...
posted by Faintdreams at 7:44 AM on August 16, 2021 [1 favorite]
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