Just look at a list of popular conspiracy theories, if you start to label each one... there are generally common threads of anti-government rhetoric. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conspiracy_theories
Everything from chemtrails to roswell and the moon landing hinge on "the government is trying to fool you" rhetoric.
There are plenty of dangerously bad liberal-leaning conspiracy theories (liberals and conservatives share fault for anti-vax), but it seems fairly obvious that conservative-based theories outpace them in volume.
True, but probably not for the reason you describe. Anxiety is a prominent undertone in conservative psychology [1]. That is the nexus conservatism shares with conspiracy theories.
(Note that "liberal" and "conservative@ don't neatly map to modern political parties in almost any democracy.)
[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/calling-truce-pol...
2. Snopes, Which Will Be Fact-Checking For Facebook, Employs Leftists Almost Exclusively: http://dailycaller.com/2016/12/16/snopes-facebooks-new-fact-...
3. The Daily Mail Snopes Story And Fact Checking The Fact Checkers: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-dai...
4. Who’s Checking the Fact Checkers?: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/peter-roff/2013/05/28/s...
Oh HN, downvoting what was asked for. This is why nobody likes talking to you about politics and you think your minority opinions are the majority.
>One person in Silicon Valley even asked me to sign a confidentiality agreement before she would talk to me, as she worried she’d lose her job if people at her company knew she was a strong Trump supporter. - What I Heard From Trump Supporters, sama.
> The fact that, as the Lichter study shows, "A majority of Democratic statements (54 percent) were rated as mostly or entirely true, compared to only 18 percent of Republican statements," probably has more to do with how the statements were picked and the subjective bias of the fact checker involved than anything remotely empirical. Likewise, the fact that "a majority of Republican statements (52 percent) were rated as mostly or entirely false, compared to only 24 percent of Democratic statements" probably has more to do with spinning stories than it does with evaluating statements.
> http://www.snopes.com/hillary-clinton-benghazi-msnbc/
Good points, this quote was taken out of context.
> http://www.snopes.com/orlando-shooter-was-democrat/
Good points, Trump was registered as a Democrat in 2001. Old registrations aren't a great predictor of current views.
> http://www.snopes.com/is-facebook-censoring-conservative-new...
Pretty fair, there is no primary source evidence either way, so the article concludes with "Unproven". This was not "opinion-heavy" or "mocking".
> http://www.snopes.com/hillary-clinton-armani-jacket/
Very fair, the claim was wrong on both counts.
2. This article ignores the executive editor's registrations as a Republican and Independent, and doesn't provide any examples of biased Snopes content.
3. This is a nearly fact-free article. The author seems shocked that Snopes doesn't hire unbiased people, but such people don't exist.
4. This article does not mention Snopes.
It's pretty funny really, your comment is indicative of what people perceive as bias. If Carlson's site is somehow off limits for discussion, does that mean that editorials by Maddow, Morning Joe & Mika, Anderson Cooper, etc, are all worthless due to their bias? Or are only right wing sources ok to completely write off?
Great for chain letters and virus alerts, but there are probably better places to find out the truth behind the latest political outrage circulating among your friends.
EDIT: Why was the question worthy of a down vote?
But why is that relevant? I (and assume most people) are capable of assuming different modes of writing, including modes devoid of opinion; or with opinion carefully noted as such.
People who feel strongly enough about something to write legitimately leaning fluff pieces are not the personality type that I expect to be able to assume writing modes devoid of opinion, personally. I know very few people who aren't considered moderate/independent who I believe could pull that off.
These are the same people who've been proven to disbelieve factual information when it contradicts their world view.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1284908...
That is the type of person that I would not trust in a "fact checker" position, especially one in which their version of events will be cited by others as "fact".
That's because the "Clinton Body Count" is an textbook example of a Gish Gallop [1], a bad-faith debating tactic in which charlatans spread nonsense by spewing forth so much of it that opponents have no hope of countering it all with facts.
Aha, you've only bothered to refute 48 of my 100 bullshit claims, clear evidence liberal bias!
> Rating: False
I think you're mistaking your own bias for their's. They have 48 people on that list. Are you insisting that there need to be more deaths that need to be debunked in order for that claim to be rated as something other than False? Unless you have a really good argument for a particular name or names, you come off as someone who will never be satisfied.
Face it, you want this absurd Clinton conspiracy theory to be true, and you dislike Snopes because they consistently debunk it. That's not bias, that's presenting truth.
Not saying it happened, or any of those deaths were assassinations, but the nature of the claim makes it perniciously difficult to refute.
This one fails the smell test, hard.
But if someone suggests that Seth Rich shot himself twice in the back of his head..... and Snopes calls it false, does that make Snopes left or right leaning?
How is that quest for "value free facts" going for you?
- Rob Corddry
The irony
edit:
wow, didn't know there was this many snopes lovers on here. Got downvoted to hell. Funny thing is, Silicon Valley's leadership/VCs is extremely conservative, yet the people who work for them, namely lots of people who read HN aren't... weird.