Fascinating articles from the NYT about Snopes – ‘the definitive Internet reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation.’
Snopes is now helping with general fact checking for Facebook, and as a result finds itself under attack, which may or may not be a good thing…
It’s easy to laugh at people who get fooled by fake news and outrageous rumours, but I’m the first to admit just how gullible I am. As such a visit to Snopes is a standard reflex to just about any possibly suspicion story I see on social these days.
And starting your morning by visiting their Home page isn’t such a bad habit. It at least prepares you for the day ahead.
Bonus points to Snopes for providing helpful summaries under each headline – meaning for many articles you don’t even need to click through. For a site that makes money from advertising (and thus pageviews) it is refreshing to see they put user experience ahead of clicks.
BTW check the bios for each author – they’re hilarious (and yes, they’re fake, in case you needed to check…)
Finally, did you hear that Obama has signed an executive order banning all fake news sites?
UPDATE: I’m seriously not sure if this article about Facebook’s Safety Check being triggered by fake news is actually true or not…
