Snopes

''Snopes'' (), formerly known as the ''Urban Legends Reference Pages'', is a fact-checking website. It has been described as a "well-regarded reference for sorting out myths and rumors" on the Internet. The site has also been seen as a source for both validating and debunking urban legends and similar stories in American popular culture.

History

1990s

In 1994, David and Barbara Mikkelson created an urban folklore web site that would become ''Snopes.com''. ''Snopes'' was an early online encyclopedia focused on urban legends, which mainly presented search results of user discussions based at first on their contributions to the Usenet newsgroup alt.folklore.urban (AFU) where they'd been active. The site grew to encompass a wide range of subjects and became a resource to which Internet users began submitting pictures and stories of questionable veracity. According to the Mikkelsons, ''Snopes'' predated the search engine concept of fact-checking via search results. David Mikkelson had originally adopted the username "Snopes" (the name of a family of often unpleasant people in the works of William Faulkner) in AFU.

2000s

In 2002, the site had become known well enough that a television pilot by writer-director Michael Levine called ''Snopes: Urban Legends'' was completed with American actor Jim Davidson as host. However, it did not air on major networks.

2010s

By 2010, the site was attracting seven million to eight million unique visitors in an average month.
By mid-2014, Barbara had not written for ''Snopes'' "in several years" and David hired users from ''Snopes.com'''s message board to assist him in running the site. The Mikkelsons divorced around that time. Christopher Richmond and Drew Schoentrup became part owners in July 2016 with the purchase of Barbara Mikkelson's share by the internet media management company Proper Media.

On March 9, 2017, David Mikkelson terminated the brokering agreement with Proper Media, which was also the company that provided ''Snopes'' with web development, hosting, and advertising support. The move prompted Proper Media to stop remitting advertising revenue and to file a lawsuit in May. In late June, Bardav—the company founded by David and Barbara Mikkelson in 2003 to own and operate ''snopes.com''—started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to continue operations. They raised $500,000 in 24 hours. Later, in August, a judge ordered Proper Media to disburse advertising revenues to Bardav while the case was pending.

In July 2018, ''Snopes'' abruptly terminated its contract with Managing Editor Brooke Binkowski, with no explanation. By the time ''Snopes'' co-founder and CEO David Mikkelson confirmed the termination to her, the situation was still not clear.

In early 2019, ''Snopes'' announced that it had acquired the website '' OnTheIssues.org'', and is "hard at work modernizing its extensive archives". ''OnTheIssues'' is a website that seeks to "present all the relevant evidence, assess how strongly each piece supports or opposes a position, and summarize it with an average" in order to "provide voters with reliable information on candidates' policy positions".

In 2018 and 2019, ''Snopes'' fact-checked several articles from '' The Babylon Bee'', a satirical website, rating them "False". The decision resulted in Facebook adding warnings to links to those articles shared on its site. ''Snopes'' added a new rating called "Labeled Satire" to identify satirical stories.

In 2019, ''Snopes'' was embroiled in legal disputes with Proper Media, with a court case scheduled for spring 2020. By then Proper Media had become a co-owner of Bardav through acquiring Barbara Mikkelson's half-interest share, intending to take overall ownership of ''Snopes'' for its own "portfolio of media sites". The move failed as David Mikkelson had no intention to sell his share.

2020s

COVID-19 pandemic and misinformation

As the COVID-19 pandemic started in 2020, many people tried to "educate themselves on the coronavirus" and find "any comfort, certainty, or hope for a cure or the coronavirus. ''Snopes'' has around 237 COVID-related fact-checking articles.

Plagiarism by co-founder David Mikkelson

On August 13, 2021, ''BuzzFeed News'' published an investigation by reporter Dean Sterling Jones that showed David Mikkelson had used plagiarized material from different news sources in 54 articles between 2015 and 2019 in an effort to increase website traffic. Mikkelson also published plagiarized material under a pseudonym, "Jeff Zarronandia". The ''BuzzFeed'' inquiry prompted ''Snopes'' to launch an internal review of Mikkelson's articles and to retract 60 of them the day the ''BuzzFeed'' story appeared. Mikkelson admitted to committing "multiple serious copyright violations" and apologized for "serious lapses in judgment." He was suspended from editorial duties during the investigation, but remained an officer and stakeholder in the company.

Change of ownership

On September 16, 2022, David Mikkelson stepped down as CEO and was succeeded by shareholder and board member Chris Richmond. Richmond and fellow shareholder Drew Schoentrup together acquired 100% of the company, ending the ownership dispute which began in 2017.

Main site

''Snopes'' aims to debunk or confirm widely spread urban legends. The site has been referenced by news media and other sites, including CNN, MSNBC, '' Fortune'', ''Forbes'', and ''The New York Times''. By March 2009, the site had more than six million visitors per month. David Mikkelson ran the website from his home in Tacoma, Washington.

Mikkelson has stressed the ''reference'' portion of the name ''Urban Legends Reference Pages'', indicating that the intention is not merely to dismiss or confirm misconceptions and rumors but to provide evidence for such debunkings and confirmation as well. Where appropriate, pages are generally marked "undetermined" or "unverifiable" when there is not enough evidence to either support or disprove a given claim.

In an attempt to demonstrate the perils of over-reliance on the Internet as authority, ''Snopes'' assembled a series of fabricated urban folklore tales that it termed "The Repository of Lost Legends". The name was chosen for its acronym, T.R.O.L.L., a reference to the internet slang term '' troll'', meaning an online persona intended to be deliberately provocative or incendiary.

In 2009, '' FactCheck.org'' reviewed a sample of ''Snopes'''s responses to political rumors regarding George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, and Barack Obama, and found them to be free from bias in all cases. In 2012, '' The Florida Times-Union'' reported that '' About.com'''s urban legends researcher found a "consistent effort to provide even-handed analyses" and that Snopes' cited sources and numerous reputable analyses of its content confirm its accuracy.

Mikkelson has said that the site receives more complaints of liberal bias than conservative bias, but added that the same debunking standards are applied to all political urban legends.

Funding

In 2016, ''Snopes'' said that the entirety of its revenue was derived from advertising. In the same year it received an award of $75,000 from the James Randi Educational Foundation, an organization formed to debunk paranormal claims. In 2017, it raised approximately $700,000 from a crowd-sourced ''GoFundMe'' effort and received $100,000 from Facebook as a part of a fact-checking partnership. ''Snopes'' also offers a premium membership that disables ads.

On February 1, 2019, ''Snopes'' announced that it had ended its fact-checking partnership with Facebook. ''Snopes'' did not rule out the possibility of working with Facebook in the future but said it needed to "determine with certainty that our efforts to aid any particular platform are a net positive for our online community, publication and staff". ''Snopes'' added that the loss of revenue from the partnership meant the company would "have less money to invest in our publication—and we will need to adapt to make up for it".

''Snopes'' publishes a yearly summary detailing expenses and sources of income.

See also

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References

External links

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{{Disinformation

Internet properties established in 1995
Webby Award winners
Skeptic organizations
1995 establishments in California
Fact-checking websites