MEMBERS ONLY Snopes Digest

21 January 2020 • Issue #2

1 It's Misinformation Prime Time Between geopolitics, impeachment, and the presidential election, it’s high season for rumors to take root. Snopes Managing Editor Doreen Marchionni explains how to stay informed as news breaks.

2 Behind The Snopes Snopes General Manager Vinny Green talks about the unique challenges of having a newsroom without a physical room.

3 In Case You Missed It The most popular and most important stories on Snopes.com lately.

4 Snopes-worthy Reads Good stories we’ve shared amongst ourselves recently.

Issue #2 edited by Brandon Echter, Vinny Green, and Bond Huberman.

1. It's Misinformation Prime Time

On Jan. 3, news that the U.S. assassinated Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani flashed across our screens big and small, raising the specter of war. Exactly one month later, the Iowa caucuses will kick off the 2020 U.S. presidential election in earnest. And in between begins the impeachment trial in the Senate, when a president known for his falsehoods will go to political war.

Between breaking news, electioneering, foreign affairs, and the regular glut of scams and spam, this month is a bonanza of falsehoods, viral rumors, and muck.

So what can a private citizen do to stay calm and not contribute to the rumor-mongering?

Think before you share. That applies to everything you do on the web but especially in times of national conflict. Even the innocent sharing of dubious information expands the audience for bunk by orders of magnitude at times. Consider the math: Say you have 300 friends on Facebook. If you share dubious info to your news feed, and only 10 percent see the post and share it to their friends, that’s another 30 people who could potentially share that to their 300 friends and so on. The numbers get big in split seconds.

Go directly to the source. Want to know the secret to fact- checking at Snopes? Primary sources. What are those? They’re the original, authentic source of information on something. If your mama tells you she loves you, she’s a primary source — the message comes straight from her loving mouth to your ear. If your mama’s friend tells you your mama loves you, that friend is a secondary source. We’re certain mama still loves you but be wary of stories that rely only on secondary sources, and seek out primary sources, if you can, to verify.

Be vigilant for prejudice. We’re in the grip in the U.S. of extraordinary hostility aimed at, among others, Muslims, Jews, people of color, transgender individuals — historically oppressed groups. If you trip across something that has even the whiff of prejudice, do us and your truth-loving friends an enormous, compassionate favor: Don’t spread the word, at least without context or commentary.

By following these basic rules, you can help us make a healthier, more truthful internet for everyone.

Stay safe out there, Doreen Marchionni Managing Editor, Snopes

P.S. Have feedback on this newsletter or the previous issue? Write to us here. Snopes Expert Network Being a fact-checker at Snopes means researching everything from climate science to pop culture to animal memes. We need all the help we can get. That means we need you, too.

Join the Snopes Expert Network, a group of everyday people who can help us check claims about, well, anything. It's simple — you tell us what you know a lot about, and we'll contact you if a story demands your expertise.

Join the Network

2. Behind The Snopes

How Snopes works, from the people who make it.

Do you know where Snopes is based? Don’t Google Snopes it!

Well, if you guessed California, you’d be technically correct — that’s where the Snopes business was incorporated and where we fetch our snail mail. But only five of our employees call the Golden State home.

Our company founder, managing editor, and two other members of the team live in Washington state. For those of you counting along at home, that’s only nine people so far.

What about everyone else? The remaining staff is spread across the country with one person working in each of the following states: Pennsylvania, Illinois, Tennessee, New York, Oregon, and Massachusetts. And we’re all working from home, local coffee shops, and other places.

Are you keeping count? That’s 15 people, eight states, and zero formal offices.

Would things be easier if we were all in one place? In some ways. Would Snopes be better? Not a chance. Hiring people in different places around the country, not concentrated in one city like New York or Washington, D.C., makes a huge difference in our ability to understand misinformation that might be affecting your neighborhood. Remote work also keeps our schedules flexible and our overhead low, so we can track misinformation around the clock and dedicate more resources to it.

As Snopes grows, we aspire to have more people in more places. I can’t wait to report back to you when we splashdown somewhere new.

— Vinny Green

Next time, you’ll hear from another member of the Snopes team about a unique aspect of working here that you might find interesting. Do you want us to cover something specific? Write to us here!

Snopes-tionary Speak like an insider! Each newsletter, we’ll explain a term or piece of fact-checking lingo that we use on the Snopes team.

False Premise: When an argument (valid or not) is based on an assumption or incorrect statement.

Example: "Should Joe Biden and his son be investigated for their corrupt business dealings in Ukraine?"

However you answer this question, it requires accepting as fact that both Joe Biden and his son engaged in "corrupt business dealings" in Ukraine, despite a lack of evidence of such. It also glosses over an important distinction: Hunter Biden engaged in business in Ukraine as a private citizen, whereas the former vice president represented the U.S. government in his dealings with Ukraine. Conflating the two activities — or incorrectly suggesting the Bidens (father and son) did business in Ukraine together — makes this a false premise.

Sources: The Associated Press; The New York Times; Wikipedia.

3. In Case You Missed It

The latest news and fact checks on Snopes.com. While climate scientists and fire experts affirmed that global warming played a role in the Australian wildfires that captured the world’s attention earlier this month, climate change deniers floated an alternative explanation based on reports of arson arrests.

The drone strike that killed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani prompted fears about war, as well as a spate of fraudulent text messages ordering draft-age Americans to report for military service. The military draft has not been in effect since 1973.

Teen Vogue faced criticism for posting an item that was indistinguishable from a news article but was in fact a piece of “sponsored content” — an advertisement — paid for by Facebook. The publishing comedy of errors climaxed with the ad’s deletion.

In one of the weirder fact checks we've investigated in recent memory, a viral photograph appears to reveal a white horse staring longingly out of a third-story apartment window, as if wishing to join passersby below. Is that you, Mr. Ed?

We investigated the story of a young Mexican boy’s death at the hands of his abusive mother that was apparently repurposed as propaganda against the LGBTQ community — a case of tragedy compounded by misinformation.

Have a story tip? Send it here!

Snopesing 101 Fact-check like a pro! Every newsletter, we’ll let you peek behind the curtain and see some of the ways we check shady information so you can check dubious claims yourself.

How to Practice Safe Sharing

On Jan. 15, the morning after a seemingly contentious moment between candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in a Democratic primary debate, Twitter users awoke to find #NeverWarren was the top trending topic. It appeared as though Sanders supporters, unhappy with the exchange, were now turning on Warren en masse. But if you take a closer look at the topic itself, the hashtag was not driven by unhappy progressives turning on Warren, but mostly by people specifically posting to reject the idea.

This is a prime example of the shortcomings of the trending topics algorithm, and how disinformation can flourish on Twitter. The algorithm makes no value judgement on whether people are for or against a topic; it only knows that people are using #NeverWarren.

If you want to engage on a topic without amplifying misunderstanding, it’s better to screenshot the original message rather than retweet it, or you can avoid using the hashtag. 4. Snopes-worthy Reads

What Team Snopes is reading across the web.

Trump Is Running Hundreds of Facebook Ads Praising Himself for the Killing Of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani Alex Kantrowitz, Buzzfeed News

‘When Money Is Offered, We Listen’: Foundation Funding and Nonprofit Journalism Jacob Nelson and Patrick Ferrucci, Columbia Journalism Review

#ReleaseTheJJCut: “Star Wars” Misinformation Hell Is The New Future of Everything Ryan Broderick, Buzzfeed News

YouTube Overhauls Advertising, Data Collection on Kids Content Greg Bensinger and Tony Romm, The Washington Post

Facebook’s Refusal to Fact-Check Political Ads Is Reckless Emily Bell, The Guardian

Have any recommended reads? Submit them here.

The Pets of Snopes It’s true: The Snopes “team” was once just two people and a cat. Twenty- five years later, we have more humans and more cats (and even some dogs) than at our once-humble beginnings. We want you to meet our furry, fact-finding friends because, well, who doesn’t love a cute animal picture? This week, meet Snopes Founder David Mikkelson’s furry friends, Travis the cat and Rueben the pug! When these two aren’t helping investigate rumors, Travis loves eating everything in sight, while Rueben is an avid TV binger (who likes to bark at anything remotely resembling a dog on screen).

Thanks for reading the first edition of the Snopes Digest. We’ll be releasing them every two weeks, so please add this email address to your white list and keep an eye out on February 4 for the next issue. Have feedback about this newsletter you want to share with us? Just email us.

Thank you for being a Snopes member.

Snopes Media Group Inc. 864 Grand Ave #256 San Diego, CA 92109

© 1994 - 2020 by Snopes Media Group Inc. This material may not be reproduced without permission.

Snopes and the Snopes.com logo are registered service marks of Snopes Media Group Inc.