Submitted by asbruckman t3_yu22hj in science
I would like to do a study on how well snopes, poltifact etc select extreme representations to paste false on, while minimizing foundational arguments on the same topic.
One of the more contentious examples is George Floyd's criminal history. Snopes etc will prominently label random memes as FALSE, but push foundational facts like Floyd's attack on a single mother of a one year old, into the minutia few will read.
Would be nice to know what the stories they posted were.
People who feel that Snopes is not reliable are in the “reason to disagree” category
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Not saying Trump isn’t disingenuous, he certainly is, but some of the fact checks on him were completely absurd.
He was legitimately fact checked on there being so many hamburgers for a visiting football “you could stack them to the moon”. Fact check: the number of burgers there could not be stacked to the moon.
Or during the months between Election Day and January 6th there was a fact check about whether or not Rudy Giuliani farted during a hearing.
The farting one bugs me more because this was in the middle of serious election denial on a national scale. There were big claims that needed to be checked. But, I guess let’s waste time laughing about a fart because facts are important or something. Idk, just rubbed me the wrong way.
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I'm not sure exactly which Snopes article you're using as an example here, but this seems to be the closest match and it is far more detailed and nuanced than you are suggesting.
I'm not going to suggest that Snopes is perfect, but the imperfections I've noticed are rather minor. The people who really have an ax to grind with them seem to invariably turn out to be the sort who don't appreciate fact checking getting in the way of narrative they're trying to push.
I also could not find anything that suggests the woman in the robbery case was pregnant. The police report that supposedly "proves" it makes no mention of pregnancy, only that she had a gun pointed at her abdomen.
So idk, but it looks a lot like you're here to cast doubt on Snopes because it's getting in the way of your narrative.
I agree it would be nice. We unfortunately couldn't share the specific stories, because the subjects in the study are anonymous and if we name the stories then we identify the people who posted them.
There are a few generalized descriptions of the stories in the paper.
Table 2 in the paper is helpful to understand the groups. It says:
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The frustrating thing about that is it takes away from real stories and gives credence to the whole fake news narrative that he spun successfully to help win in 2016. This is a troubling trend overall. We can rationally dissect fact from fiction without clickbait and pedantic behavior.
Sharing for Humor. Sloof Lirpa is a great one!
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/elephant-carrying-lion-cub/
The fart story was spread around a lot. People were interested in it.
Just like the question of whether Walt Disney’s head is frozen waiting for the technology to reanimate it, it’s not important at all. But it’s interesting to enough people to merit an entry on the site.
Exactly the article I saw, the top result on Google. The primary topics are Candace Owens, then a meme, then Floyd's arrests for minor offenses, then if you have read down 20 paragraphs they tell you he perpatrated an armed invasion of a single mother's home.
At least they explain why they rate whether a source is a lie, not or in between. All you’ve got is a statement
Is Snopes the definitive answer to everything?
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We were surprised to find Snopes fact checking some obviously humorous stories. But I guess sometimes people believe them?
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> There are a few generalized descriptions of the stories in the paper.
Ah, I found it buried within some of the sections - though, not really enough information is provided for many of the descriptions to actually determine the validity of the story. May be better to focus on individuals who all posted the same, factually incorrect, story?
On another note, which I think is important to mention, I'd be quite hesitant to trust the validity of the demographic information in the study - as we all know, many misrepresent who they are on this platform.
I've noticed they could nitpick certain Facts to disprove, this might make some people assume the whole story is true or false. Or might give a true rating to a specific detail of one event that they are for and give a false rating to a specific detail of an event that they are against.
Unproven: During the Japanese Raid on Pearl Harbor, a radar operator had to walk half a mile down the road to a gas station to call in the report of the radar detection of the invading force.
False: Josh Hartnett or Ben Affleck were not present during the attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941.
Truth: A radio operator did spot the invading force before the attack happened, but it is unknown according to Wikipedia if that was the radio operator that did not have a phone on site. The attack on Pearl Harbor was on December 7th, 1941, the main male actors in the Pearl Harbor movie by Michael Bay were not born until the 1970's.
Edit: Addition: Also, any link to a fact checking website is going to assumed the the link disproves the person making a fact. Or if linked by the person the assumption is it supports their story.
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Yeah ok but does the study assume that snopes is a source of truth? This sounds like a self fulfilling statement.
You either agree with snopes or you fall in the misinformation category, by axiom.
If you want them to evaluate the claims prior to establishing the claims and providing critical background information for later readers who may not know what event is being referred to, then you're simply being unreasonable. That is not an effective way to organize and present information.
Additionally, they first mention the unsubstantiated claim that he robbed a pregnant women in paragraph 7, as part of introducing the claims they intended to evaluate.
I do find it very interesting how hung up you are on this pregnant woman bit. You continue to repeat it, despite the fact that it's totally unsubstantiated, and in fact even use it as your motivation for distrusting Snopes. Strange.
I’m not saying Snopes is always right. But the specific stories in the study were not borderline—they were provably wrong.
Does Snopes actually support the idea that Pearl Harbor was an inside job?
https://www.snopes.com/news/2016/12/30/pearl-harbor-inside-job/
I just post the Snopes link whenever I see that false info posted on Facebook. You can't argue with someone about false political info because of the emotional investment they have in the bad info. But for things like the crime prevention tips, I will post the Snopes or law enforcement link and tell people not to do whatever the tip is, because of safety. I don't see the bad info as much as I used to, thank goodness.
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That's what people say when their false political posts are refuted with actual fact.
Snopes cites sources that you can follow.
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Wrong. You either agree with the facts, or you fall into the misinformation category. That is how facts work.
How confident are you that there is a real difference between RD and SBF? It does not seem obvious to me that there is a significant difference between distrusting fact checkers generally for reasons like believing they're politically biased (as in SBF) and rejecting wide swaths of fact checkers for similar reasons in favor of a few that generally agree with what the person already believes (which is within the confines of RD). It doesn't seem like that usage of fact checkers by RD is substantially different than their initial belief formation where they simply regurgitate memes that make appealing and convenient claims.
Does snopes only post aseptic facts 100% of the time?
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>You either agree with snopes or you fall in the misinformation category, by axiom.
What would you suggest should have been used instead of snopes then?
My point is that selecting anything as a source of truth leads to assumptions.
Can you link a specific example where snopes presented untrue information as fact?
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This one was moderately good, but no shadow on cub. But if I spotted it, it was probably the story. Do these things happen, why is the Elephant holding the cub? Why aren't they attacking each other?
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I concede that I do not know as I'm not american and do not follow snopes, but is it wrong in general to assume that a singular outlet is not an absolute source of truth?
No thats what people say when... ok just stop with this superficial understanding of people. It's too complicated a topic to say dumb things like "that's what people say when.."
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>Just like the question of whether Walt Disney’s head is frozen waiting for the technology to reanimate it, it’s not important at all. But it’s interesting to enough people to merit an entry on the site.
It's on the site because when it started back in the 90's it was literally just for exploring and/or debunking urban legands like that. Like many sites it's evolved and changed since then, but that entry predates most stuff on the site, tbh.
Facts. Facts are the definitive answer to everything. Facts. Never sources.
I love that you guys can’t even see it you’re in so deep. The study didn’t have a “misinformation category” it was about how people REACT to it broken into 5 types and “people who disagreed with the fact check because they didn’t trust snopes” was ONE of them. THATS you. That’s all it said but your so busy being offended you can’t SEE it, I’m dyin over here!
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My question still stands.
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Pull the crime report from whichever source you like. There was a 1 year old child, Amanda Negrete, at the residence Floyd invaded. Whether the mother was again pregnant is not listed, maybe my mistake. I will edit my first post to reflect single mother of one year old, rather than pregnant mother.
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What about when snopes is wrong? Snopes uses opinion sources as a reason to mark a story false quite often.
This post is marked partially as false, missing context, And misinformation.
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> not really enough information is provided for many of the descriptions to actually determine the validity of the story
You're saying you think Snopes is wrong to label at least some of those stories as fact-checked to be found false?
> You're saying you think Snopes is wrong to label at least some of those stories as fact-checked to be found false?
Some of them, not at all- they are clearly false. Not enough information is provided from quite a few of them to actually determine what the story even is.
The fact you need someone to link publicly available information is sad. Snopes uses opinion pieces to claim studies are false quite often. Studies aren't facts they are studies, disagreeing with the study isn't misinformation but saying a study is misinformation is denying science... Yes snopes failed the scientific method and posts misinformation quite often. Snopes is not a reliable source of information.
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A lot of the comments in here need to read at least the Abstract. Seems many are assuming an order of operations that is backwards from what this study actually did.
This study did not see a story and then go to Snopes to find out if the story was true or not. This study started with false stories and then found those who were sharing those false stories. As one of the authors have already said in these comments, "the specific stories in the study were not borderline—they were provably wrong."
Show me where they don't.
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The fact that you can't link a single example to back up your claim, so instead you repeat the same claim in several different ways as if that would make any difference, is even sadder.
We are talking about facts. You keep using the word "assume". That's not how facts are found.
I've found when there's not enough information Snopes is very good at pointing out there's not enough information. It sounds like you disagree with that?
Do you not trust the OP who said "the specific stories in the study were not borderline—they were provably wrong"?
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> This study did not see a story and then go to Snopes to find out if the story was true or not. This study started with false stories and then found those who were sharing those false stories.
That certainly doesn't seem like the best way to describe how the research was conducted, this (directly from the methods) seems much better:
> We used the Reddit API to find accounts who created subreddit posts that contained these links from Snopes fact-check articles
> As one of the authors have already said in these comments, "the specific stories in the study were not borderline—they were provably wrong."
Considering the lack of information provided by the authors of the study regarding what the stories are...it seems quite odd. While some are certainly bs just based of the few words mentioned in the paper, for quite a few of them, that is certainly not the case.
Right there.
>We started with stories marked as false by a popular fact checker, Snopes, and identified people who posted those stories on Reddit.
Which is perfectly in line with your quoted portions.
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> I've found when there's not enough information Snopes is very good at pointing out there's not enough information. It sounds like you disagree with that?
Sure, Snopes can provide decent information on a topic, but making a blanket statement of that always been the case has not been my experience utilizing them. Therefore, as the authors do not provide the actual Snopes sources, no, I cannot make the conclusion that the individual stories on Snopes sufficiently explained the topic.
> Do you not trust the OP who said "the specific stories in the study were not borderline—they were provably wrong"?
I believe the authors should provide the stories that were shared, instead for providing vague snippets for many of them (while some others were certainly false). A potential solution, which I mentioned before, would instead be conducting interviews on individuals who shared the same provably false story (for example, vaccine misinformation).
> This study started with false stories and then found those who were sharing those false stories. As
So the study went: Snopes -> Sources on Snopes containing misinformation -> Searching Reddit for those stories. That is exactly what I said before.
Instead, you wrote:
> This study started with false stories and then found those who were sharing those false stories
Which makes it seem that it went:
Find false stories -> Search Reddit for false stories
Which completely misses the snopes part.
Great question. Confident. The RD folks said things like “Snopes is biased,” and the PFB folks said things like “I see you have succumbed to the globalist conspiracy.”
SD was more like “this is self evidently ridiculous—can you believe people buy into garbage like this?” They didn’t say “this is false” because they believe that omg their readers know it’s false.
The burden of proof is on the accuser. You've stated they are objectively not a a reliable source of information. That is your assertion to make, but you don't get to just tell others "oh, go look it up", and expect that to be taken as proof of your assertion.
It’s a nice idea. But all the people who shared X is an identifiable group? And also, not enough folks share the same story to make a study.
> But all the people who shared X is an identifiable group?
I guess if the goal was to understand why they posted misinformation, and then see what the reaction would be to presenting the user with information that is the case.
> And also, not enough folks share the same story to make a study.
I've certainly seen articles (with misinformation) posted hundreds of times (the 'other discussion' page is quite helpful at finding that). I bet you could find at least 21 individuals for that (since that was the sample size here).
What? No. It started with Snopes, found ones labeled false, chose ones provably false (according to the researcher's statements elsewhere in this thread), then it searched for people who were sharing the misinformation.
That is exactly what I said.
Unless you are witnessing events firsthand, you have to trust someone to tell you what the facts are. If two information sources disagree on what the facts are, you either don’t know what to believe or you come up with your own process to decide which source to believe.
Facts may be objective, but we very rarely come up against facts. Rather, we come up against claims of facts, and we cannot independently assess whether these claims are true. We can only ask if they are consistent with other things we believe are true, or are consistent with other sources that we trust, and this is an imperfect strategy.
Even scientific facts which are in principle verifiable might not be in practice. And since science makes plenty of counterintuitive claims, there is legitimate reason to be skeptical of things that are known to be factual.
The point is that it isn’t that simple. We take for granted that we know what the facts are, and that they are self evident. The truth is much more complicated.
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Oh. "Sources on Snopes containing misinformation" sounded like you were saying Snopes contains misinformation.
What I wrote is exactly what my top comment was trying to say. Find false stories (through Snopes), search Reddit for (people spreading those) false stores (for various reasons, which is what the paper is about... what are the reasons they shared them)
They dont "feel" snopes is not reliable either. Snopes is politically biased and posts misleading "facts" as their conclusion with the evidence in the explanation many times. Snopes was widely trusted by many people including myself previously as a fact checker and I feel angry and that "fact checkers" like this and politifact can be held to such a high standard when they are so biased.
For example I dont love trump ok, but when you push lies about him to make people more fearful of his administration you're not helping anyone. You're not informing anyone.
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Actual statements of fact or even quotes from politicians not edited for political bias for other side or the other.
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They also misrepresent quotes and information often in their conclusions to come to a politically biased end. You could see this a lot with trump and joe biden
September 11th, 2001
Not at all.
I just think the authors should be sharing more data (including sources) than was released in this paper.
I have had numerous people say that, when presented with facts. They immediately jump to "well Snopes is run by (insert political opposition), it's well known, so-and-so said so". That so called expert is always a fringe political editorialist who has said laughably false statements that can be proven as false. Snopes cites sources for every case at the bottom of the pages. And as far as my "superficial understanding of people", bold statement to make about someone you don't know. Personal attacks speculating on the experience or qualifications of someone are always a last ditch effort to stop a perceived attack. Which I did not do to you, so it's interesting that you have jumped right to that, and that you are having such an emotional reaction to my statement. Perhaps you should examine that.
I'm not making wide ranging statements about human behavior, just reading your words and deciphering your intent. I stand by my analysis. You tried to make a mean point with a gross over generalization, now you're evading the fact and attacking me. It's cute, and loudly proclaims your intent.
Ideally, and call me crazy, but fact checking should be motivated by facts and not childish farting.
You follow the sources that snopes uses and read up a little. Snopes, like wikipedia, is nothing without their sources. It's not a source of truth, it's a summary.
Also, if you read the article, you'll see that they aren't studying posts where snopes is wrong, they are studying verifiably incorrect stories.
Spoken as someone with no knowledge of the history of snopes as an organisation. Incredible initial flaw in a study that requires objectively false information
If you think ‘we used a north korean fact checker to determine whether these stories are true or false’ would be a critical issue for you then you can’t use the commercial ‘fact checker’ used by corporate and state interests in the west either
The list of stories they have ’fact checked’ siding with govt (particularly over war crime accusations in the middle east and defending pharmaceutical conglomerates committing criminal activity) only to be exposed as correct after all a few short years down the line makes it completely unsuitable for blindly using it as an omniscient source of objective fact for a study
This is however a good insight into a growing flaw of science in the for-profit medicine age: blindly trusting organisations that directly benefit in misleading the public, either immorally or even criminally, is already swallowing the industry. Find me a scientist who doesn’t think for-profit journals are bad for science, for-profit thinktanks, for-profit pharmaceutical corporations, for-profit charities, for-profit research institutes, research needing to be funded before taking place, corporations writing the textbooks and heading the standard procedures agencies, et cetera. But putting these individual issues all together into a bigger picture of ‘science is fundamentally undermined by the existence of profit’ and everyone prefers cognitive dissonance and to not think about it. Science at some point must escape the shackles of the poison of ‘profit’ and it will only do so when it understands that a corporation saying ‘you can trust us, just don’t look at my bank account or my prior actions’ is not trustworthy actually
>Actual statements of fact or even quotes from politicians not edited for political bias for other side or the other.
So, Snopes?
How is that different than what I said? Often their sources are biased opinion based and not actual impartial facts. They cherry pick to get the results they want. I have seen many snopes articles that were completely based in opinion but offered as fact.
Again not a fact, can't and fact.... You guys and your opinion based facts. Your opinion will never be fact or evidence.
Most people won't review the sources and or can't spot junk science.
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That would be ethically problematic since that information could be used to identify/out participants.
> The list of stories they have ’fact checked’ siding with govt (particularly over war crime accusations in the middle east and defending pharmaceutical conglomerates committing criminal activity) only to be exposed as correct after all a few short years down the line makes it completely unsuitable for blindly using it as an omniscient source of objective fact for a study
I haven’t heard these claims before. Do you have suggested reading on this topic?
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Tell you something. I previously assumed that snopes was generally reliable, but as everything, should be taken with a decent bit of salt. The fact that you can't provide a single example of where they're unreliable really increases my trust in them.
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The thing is, Snopes shows their work. If you think their result is fishy, incomplete, inaccurate etc you can follow all their citations and reasonings.
I’d argue: it’s safe to say that Snopes acts in good faith, which is distinctly different than calling them a “source of truth”. They aggregate and digest available factual sources, and are not afraid to update their assessments when available facts change. It’s a very different thing than being a “source of truth” themselves; it’s more scientific than that.
They posted one link to a biased right-wing propaganda site that, itself, demonstrates how Snopes acts in good faith based on all currently available data. Said article attempts to spin that as a bad thing.
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90's snopes was awesome. Before the divorce, redesign, ads / sponsored content, and plagiarism. Just good old fashioned web design with a lot of interesting urban legends.
Then that seems like a poor study design by the authors that they cannot release essentially all of the data that they obtained, but that why it is in this journal compared to others.
A photo of an elephant carrying a lion cub may seem obviously doctored to you or me, but I'm not sure it would have been obvious to 10 year old me.
Or if there was an obviously false story involving football rules instead of animal behavior, I'd probably have no idea.
I suspect that even "obvious" fact checks can help with building up a good intuition for truthiness.
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I mean if the past 6 years have taught us anything, it’s that the fact checkers aren’t always correct.
Sharing to debunk is so incredibly important today!
How have we arrived here with such ignorance?
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Read the article, smart guy.
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They link to all of their sources. You can go check them yourself.
Ahhh, so you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about. That makes sense.
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The problem with the “war on misinformation” is that people with opposing views weaponize it to discredit their opposition. They twist words and situations to make them “misinformation”. We need to get back to teaching critical thinking skills so people can decide on their own what to believe. Attempting to police misinformation will only lead to more misinformation. It will be a vicious cycle that will end badly. Example: Covid vaccines don’t work. That statement is true and false. The vaccine doesn’t prevent the virus from spreading as they claimed over and over. But then it also prevents serious illness in many. If you twist the truth your only fanning the flames of people who were skeptical to begin with. Media needs to get back to reporting facts or I’m afraid it will be the end of journalism all together.
I can wish people were not obsessed with the Kardashians.
You can wish Snopes didn't write about farts.
Ultimately, the world is a better place when we don't get to decide what other people enjoy or do with their time.
You seem to have trouble with the distinction between all of Snopes and things Snopes definitely got correct.
The authors are very clear about making this distinction.
Just gonna copy and paste this reply, cuz this exact question keeps being asked.
There is a distinction between 'all of Snopes' and 'things Snopes definitely got correct'.
The authors are very clear about making this distinction.
Just gonna copy and paste this reply, cuz this exact question keeps being asked.
There is a distinction between 'all of Snopes' and 'things Snopes definitely got correct'.
The authors are very clear about making this distinction.
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Just gonna copy and paste this reply, cuz this exact question keeps being asked.
There is a distinction between 'all of Snopes' and 'things Snopes definitely got correct'.
The authors are very clear about making this distinction.
Snopes is an institution with a specific goal. People being interested in Kardashians isn’t comparable.
>Snopes is an institution with a specific goal
And that goal is... posting stuff people are interested in.
I'm unclear which category my extended family member falls into. She posts random, demonstrably false info all the time. She just doesn't do any research and goes by what her "gut seems right". I use snooes to call her out whenever I can.
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So, do you think the replies to this post are sufficient for a follow up study on people doubling down on fact denialidm?
I read the report and it is very preliminary. Most importantly it missed perhaps the most germane possible cause of the spreading of misinformation, the inability of a significant portion of the population to engage in Rational thought. Without that ability and practice, a significant portion of the population simply cannot determine if something is true or false. Instead they make decisions based on associations with others and simply repeat what they read or hear without any critical analysis. This per Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. I find the continued assumption that humans are rational actors in analyses such as this truly miss one of the simplest explanations and blindly ignores research that truly could illuminate the phenomenon under study.
And I'm always right. Why would anyone else not want me king of the world?
Can you please point some of them out?
Honestly not surprised seeing people be so anti-snopes in here. For being a science sub, a large part of the userbase really seem to be very politically motivated to only believe science that confirm their right wing beliefs and are frequently upset with topics that go against primarily conservative ideas.
You see this a lot whenever research confirms progressive ideas, not just in social sciences but more "hard" sciences as well, the userbase bends itself backwards to nitpick the most innane things to try and discredit the research. The way people are discussing snopes in like half the comments here feels like an encapsulation of that.
Actually I think our findings suggest that you need different approaches to helping someone who is rational (Reason to Disagree) than someone who is not (Persistent False Belief). That's the point.
What does she say when you tell her "Snopes says this is wrong"? If she says "oh, ok" then she's Changed Belief. If she says "I don't trust Snopes" then she's Reason to Disagree. If she says "I don't trust any fact checkers" then she's Steadfast Non-Standard Belief.
(edited to correct category name)
Honest question... Weren't there times in human history where there were regular forums for discussion and debate in public places in person? Wisdom and knowledge worked out and settled and progressed because of them? I vaguely remember temple steps outside being one of these in history to debate ideas on religion and philosophy for example.
The point of the study is that people fall into different groups, and if we are to design ways to help them then we need different approaches for each group?
Yeah, but those weren’t tested under rigorous scientific methods.
Dilute to the essence of something. No contamination or particulates.
Filtering out misinformation and pseudoscience is extremely important.
It was the best they had at each time in history. Don't you think we can have an evolved model that takes care of the weaknesses and needs you mentioned. Again, I'm riffing here, brainstorming with an intelligent fellow human, to try and move in a positive direction. I think we could engineer something, based on our observed and recorded history as well as learn from the resulting good and bad in it.
“Persistent False Belief” does not appear to be one of the categories listed in the findings. Is that an alternative name for one or more of the categories?
Oh sorry--that was the term we used in an earlier draft of the paper, and it's stuck in my head. We changed it to "Steadfast Non-Standard Belief." That's a much better term because we're not necessarily saying their belief is wrong--just that it's non-standard.
I believe the term used in the article is “steadfast non-standard belief”. Please refer back to the published version of the article.
Thanks. I guess she would be steadfast non-standard. It's not that she doesn't trust snopes, she will just say something like "well I don't know about that, but it (the flawed fact) seems right to her".
She has no desire to research, and when challenged she will play ignorant and just say she doesn't want to argue.
I think once we have demystified an unknown, that all the previous understanding of that topic should be adjusted to the new information available.
Specifically, human made religions should essentially be reset and our new understanding of the universe should be a foundational pillar learning taught to all.
Just think, we all came from the stars. We are just as much a part of the universe as the universe is a part of us. That is a special, historically significant understanding.
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>For being a science sub, a large part of the userbase really seem to be very politically motivated
You are one of those people, obviously.
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How exactly would knowing the specific misinformation stories, lead to the identities of random online people who posted them?
Misinformation, like about vaccines or the elections, have been shared millions of times, by millions of people online.
Are these stories you selected so rare and unique, that we would be able to find the persons used in the study if we searched the stories?
Why would you select such specific misinformation, that it is impossible to even reveal what it is, for your study?
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>You either agree with the facts, or you fall into the misinformation category.
Imagine positing this to, of all places, a board that is supposedly about science.
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