Snopes doesn't know the objective truth. All they do is check other sources: other media, press releases, and such, and decide whether they trust those sources.

How well do they choose sources to trust? When "fact checking" claims that Obama paid for the release of hostages from Iran, they used Vox as a primary source.[1] Surely we all agree Vox is biased.

The story originated in claims by Iranian officials, and lacking direct evidence to support either claim, any objective observer would admit there was no way to know whether Iran or Obama was telling the truth. Snopes, not being objective, confidently rated the story "FALSE".

Snopes is most useful when they're able to trace a story back to an admitted satirical source. When they attempt to judge the truth of disputed claims, they don't know more than anyone else. They shouldn't attempt to rate those disputes at all, but the temptation to use the platform to promote opinions is the Shakespearean flaw in fact checking.

1: http://www.snopes.com/obama-bribed-iran-400-million-to-relea...

That does pretty bad for Snopes. Though I suspect you’re cherry picking… To be honest, I don’t usually read Snopes. However, I do read PolitiFact from time to time, largely for amusement, so I have a pretty good idea of what their output looks like. They do fake news checks too (more since the Facebook partnership thing), but most of their fact checks are for actual claims from politicians or pundits. The articles provide value with a few different elements:

- They do the research, things like finding the relevant statistics buried in some government website, as well as supplementary/background information to provide context for the claim. You or I might know how to use Google well enough to find the same information after spending enough time on it, but I’m not going to do that for every claim I feel like questioning; that’s their job.

- Most of the time there’s at least one interview with a relevant expert - indeed, even when that would seem semi-unnecessary, like when they’ve already found statistics proving something false, but still get an expert confirmation of “yeah, that‘s bogus”. I don’t know how often Snopes does this, but it definitely bolsters credibility.

- And they reason through the claim, consider different angles, and ultimately decide on a rating. This is the most subjective element, of course, and the easiest to challenge with claims of bias. Certainly I’ve ended up disagreeing with a decent fraction of their ratings, even as a sort of moderate liberal, pretty close politically to where you’d imagine PolitiFact to be. (Usually in a minor way, though, e.g. thinking something rated False should be Mostly False.) Nevertheless, I find their perspective valuable: more analytical and details-oriented than traditional publications tend to be, even the ones I like. Your mileage may vary.

Again, I don’t know how well Snopes holds up by comparison - if nothing else, PolitiFact seems to make it much more clear what exact statement is being checked. And certainly no outlet is perfect, as demonstrated by your link. But at least what I’ve read I believe to be far, far better than nothing, if you care about finding the truth rather than throwing around political slogans.

>an objective truth separable from political spin

I agree fact checkers are valuable, but it's important to consider them critically because I've yet to find one truly "separate from political spin." Politifact specifically I find is usually right as a general barometer, but sometimes they reaaally stretch what makes a statement a lie/truth. Ultimately they're still a media news site and that includes some bias. I first knew Snopes as an urban legend verifier, and at least in my experience their political fact checks retain a more objective voice and tend to be less editorialized. Politifact seems to abuse their "scale of truth" to regard some politicians more critically than others. "Politician X lied, but it's only a SORT OF lie, but politician Y from the other side is ON FIRE with lies." Regardless, Snopes still uses completely biased sources at times and requires canny evaluation itself.

There's no getting around it - to have an informed opinion, you need to really understand what's happening in the news, educate yourself, and be able to critically evaluate the advice you get from sources like fact checkers. Unfortunately, it seems like that's becoming an impossible task in 2017. I think that's an opportunity for something better, maybe.

"You think it’s Orwellian for there to be an objective truth separable from political spin?"

I think it is "Orwellian" for me and everyone else to have blind faith in them just because they sport a "Fact Check" moniker above their statements.

I've found that people who dislike fact checkers often have viewpoints that conflict with objective reality. Thankfully they're usually pretty explicit about it, "this campaign won't be dictated by fact checkers", and thus easy to discard.