It was with incredible surprise therefore that I received David’s one-sentence response which read in its entirety “I'd be happy to speak with you, but I can only address some aspects in general because I'm precluded by the terms of a binding settlement agreement from discussing details of my divorce.”

This absolutely astounded me. Here was the one of the world’s most respected fact checking organizations, soon to be an ultimate arbitrator of “truth” on Facebook, saying that it cannot respond to a fact checking request because of a secrecy agreement.

In short, when someone attempted to fact check the fact checker, the response was the equivalent of “its secret.”

It is impossible to understate how antithetical this is to the fact checking world, in which absolute openness and transparency are necessary prerequisites for trust. How can fact checking organizations like Snopes expect the public to place trust in them if when they themselves are called into question, their response is that they can’t respond.

What's so astonishing about it? A divorce settlement in which the parties agree not to talk about each other in public isn't scandalous, and it's not like these people are on the public payroll; rather, they provide a service, have built a good brand from the overall high reliability of that service (notwithstanding a lack of total perfection), and the market has been largely satisfied with the quality of the offering. Divorces happen and they're sometimes bitter and contentious. So what?

I don't really care how Snopes is run as long as it consistently provides a high quality of information, while being aware of variations in the quality of their output from time to time. I have certainly found it a more reliable source of information, on average, than the Daily Mail or indeed Forbes over a period going back to its founding.

But there are quite a few things, like the allegations of criminal activity (e.g. embezzlement) going on at Snopes that reasonable people might have questions about with respect to their fact-checking operations.

I neither know nor much care how their operation runs, and it's not my purpose to defend it. To be honest I've never especially liked the people who run it; their deconstructions of internet rumors are often snarky and shallow, and undermine their factual value with distracting tone issues - but that's how they choose to run their business. I'm just pointing to the fact of the site's general reliability as a fact-checking service over a long period.

http://kalevleetaru.com/vita.pdf

David Mikkelson's c.v.:

?

(disclaimer: I know Kalev slightly)

Just let that sink in for a moment: the Guardian is unable to dispute the Daily Mail on a factual level on this one. Instead they talk about everything and anything else rather than discuss the actual subject matter in the reports. "Nothing to see here, move along!" But even a stopped clock can be right twice a day. And this would hardly be the first real news broken by a tabloid.

We live in interesting times. I just hope they're not the "interesting times" from that fictitious Chinese curse.

The usual saying is, "When the law is on your side, argue the law; when the facts are on your side, argue the law; when neither is on your side, pound the table."

The variant I've heard is: "When the facts are against you, argue the law; when the law is against you, argue the facts; if both the facts and the law are against you, get a new client."

[1] http://able2know.org/topic/98689-1

Seems to me you're in such a hurry to have a trial that you've decided not to wait for a crime to take place.

No one is on trial here (unless there are still court proceedings I don't know of), but my point is more around how trying to refute something without discussing the allegations or any kind of evidence just makes it look like you're doing a cover-up, even if that's not your intent.

But there was a crime alleged here: embezzlement. Whether that was true or not I do not know, but it would seem like someone could check the legal documents. There might even be two (or more) crimes if any of these documents were sealed by the court.

I'm kind of surprised no one is interested in checking that out or discussing this for what is to be one of the biggest and most important fact-checking outfits on the planet with the upcoming Facebook deal.

From New Statesman

http://www.newstatesman.com/media/2013/12/man-who-hates-libe...

> In the files of the Press Complaints Commission, you will find records of 687 complaints against the Mail which led either to a PCC adjudication or to a resolution negotiated, at least partially, after the PCC’s intervention. The number far exceeds that for any other British newspaper: the files show 394 complaints against the Sun, 221 against the Daily Telegraph, 115 against the Guardian. The complaints will serve as a charge sheet against the Mail and its editor.

> This year, [2014] the Mail reported that disabled people are exempt from the bedroom tax; that asylum-seekers had “targeted” Scotland; that disabled babies were being euthanised under the Liverpool Care Pathway; that a Kenyan asylum-seeker had committed murders in his home country; that 878,000 recipients of Employment Support Allowance had stopped claiming “rather than face a fresh medical”; that a Portsmouth primary school had denied pupils water on the hottest day of the year because it was Ramadan; that wolves would soon return to Britain; that nearly half the electricity produced by windfarms was discarded. All these reports were false.

Here's another example: A columnist accused a muslim family of being extremists. That was libel. She tweeted her apology at 2am.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/katie-hopkins-twitt...

I think the apology for incorrect claims should take as much space as the original claim. If you print a 92point headline on the front page that's libellous you should print the apology in 92 point on the front page.

EDIT: And about libel in England. You need to be able to prove what you say is true. In the context of "false news" that doesn't seem to burdensome for newspapers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_defamation_law

> Allowable defences are justification (i.e. the truth of the statement), fair comment (i.e., whether the statement was a view that a reasonable person could have held), and privilege (i.e., whether the statements were made in Parliament or in court, or whether they were fair reports of allegations in the public interest). An offer of amends is a barrier to litigation. A defamatory statement is presumed to be false, unless the defendant can prove its truth. Furthermore, to collect compensatory damages, a public official or public figure must prove actual malice (knowing falsity or reckless disregard for the truth). A private individual must only prove negligence (not exercising due care) to collect compensatory damages. In order to collect punitive damages, all individuals must prove actual malice.

You're certainly right that the Daily Mail isn't someone I'd trust much, but this sort of thing ought to be verifiable--I mean, the courts themselves may well have public documents regarding cases put before them, etc.

It's a pity if they did scale up for altruistic reasons, but in the process ended up out of their depth - fact-checking news stories in a highly controversial and partisan environment seems like an entirely different kettle of fish than unravelling easily-debunked urban legends.

I'm sure being an Official Facebook Fact Checker is a job that pays quite well.

Would you care to link that tenuous red flag to the investigate articles Scopes produces in some fashion?

She now works as an admin for Snopes. Read the entire comment before kneejerk replying champ

So because David Mikkelson either divorced his wife and married his assistant, or divorced his wife and hired his mistress, you worry that he might be corruptible, given the right incentives. OK, although this kinda skates over the fact that their consequent unreliability would be obvious to others and thus reduce the market value of their service.

I'm not clear why you keep mentioning the fact that the other woman was a former porn star/professional escort. Are you trying to argue that sex workers are inherently untrustworthy people or something?

You have it exactly backwards. I've never seen anyone give a good reason why Snopes should be trusted. The Mikkelsons were self-appointed "authorities" from the beginning, with zero actual expertise or credentials in most of the areas they opine upon.

Edit: I should add that I view any organization that feels the need to use "truth", "fact", or similar in its name with an extremely jaundiced eye. It's reminiscent of Pravda and "Honest John's Used Cars". Organizations with actual earned credibility don't use names like that, as a rule.

Their impressive library of detailed articles in where they factually report on myths and conspiracy theories?

Why are you asking such a vague, open-ended question?

"The sky is blue because other stars reflect blue light onto our atmosphere." How would you rate that, given Snopes' scales?

Do you have any specific examples where there was a concise yet opinionated decision on any published articles from Snopes that don't rely on hard evidence for their conclusion?

Now they are into very fuzzy realms where they are going to have to fact check claims that are plausible. That's hard work. You have to actually... uhh... check the actual claims.

Nobody really fact checks anymore because it's damn expensive. Unless someone gives them a budget for real gumshoe work, Snopes will just end up applying a bunch of political bias filters and lazy heuristics. Facebook could get that with deep learning so I'm not sure why they'd be interested.