Snopes in trouble, looking for the internet to bail it out #SaveSnopes (UPDATE)

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That contractual relationship ended earlier this year, but the vendor will not acknowledge the change in contractual status and continues to essentially hold the Snopes.com web site hostage. Although we maintain editorial control (for now), the vendor will not relinquish the site’s hosting to our control, so we cannot modify the site, develop it, or — most crucially — place advertising on it.

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So get your backups, find a new host, and point the domain name there?

Honestly, there has never been a valid reason that Snopes was the "go to" place for fact checking. This sentence really says it all.

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Snopes.com, which began as a small one-person effort in 1994

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They made their brand basically being glorified net surfers who "fact checked".

People somehow bought in to the idea that there was a such thing as an entity that somehow "knows" all the "is that true" questions.

The entire concept of "fact checking" sites, if you really think about it, makes no sense whatsoever.

But, the bottom line for Snopes is that they COULD have just stayed some site that googles where other people don't have the time to google. But instead, they began to be political.

Some might think I mean political simply in being wrong on their checking. But, you can be political as frick in the fact checking business simply by what you CHOOSE to fact check or NOT fact check.

Now, they want to be saved but, they spent the last several years thumbing their noses at the very basis for their existence. At least PERCEIVED impartiality.

So. They'll die. It's not that big a deal. There's nothing special about Snopes vs any other fact checkers.

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#SaveSnopes

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In my best Rorshach voice:

"No."

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As misinformation has increasingly threatened democracies around the world (including our own), Snopes.com has stood in the forefront of fighting for truth and dispelling misinformation online.

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this won't possibly end well

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nope nope nope nope nope it won't

LINK

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Now an advertising and internet services company called Proper Media is making similar accusations against Mikkelson in a lawsuit filed in May in California which is scheduled for a court hearing next month.

Proper Media's owners last year purchased 50 percent of Bardav Inc., the company founded by both Mikkelsons that owns Snopes, taking Barbara's 50 per cent share.

Proper Media claims that over the past year Mikkelson 'engaged in a lengthy scheme of concealment and subterfuge to gain control of the company and to drain its profits.'

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But Proper Media insists that Mikkelson's personal spending and mismanagement is to blame for Snopes's money woes.

In legal papers filed in San Diego Superior Court, they say: 'But while Snopes is built entirely around the concepts of transparency and truth, its founder, Defendant David Mikkelson ('Mikkelson') has engaged in a lengthy scheme of concealment and subterfuge to gain control of the company and to drain its profits.'

The company says Mikkelson unilaterally broke the advertising contract earlier this year and has bristled at shareholder efforts to rein in his spending.

They note that even as Mikkelson claimed to be under financial duress in court filings in June, he signed the documents while on a trip to Orleans, France.

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