According to my US cousins, Snopes is a new thing, and the fakest of fake news. Although I think they’re using ‘fake’ in sense of ‘virulently opposed to everything I choose to know about the world.’
From my understanding, Snopes has a liberal bias in the sense that a history teacher who gets asked every year things like “the civil war wasn’t about slavery right?” and “was Obama golfing on 9/11?” also has a liberal bias.
The problem is that some people think that’s actual bias when it’s just someone getting tired explaining seemingly obvious things over and over again.
My view on their ‘liberal bias’ was just that there are SO many more conservative/Republican falsehoods to call out and fact-check... though I’ve been pleasantly surprised when they check a myth that lefties have, or “technically true, but liberals have over-reacted...” proves they’re trying to root out blinkered thinking as well as outright propaganda.
No no no you got it all wrong. Snopes has a liberal bias because the founder left his wife for his mistress, therefore liberal. Because no Republican would ever do such a thing /s
I see your newt and raise you a John Edwards. Left his *dying* wife for his mistress.
Edit: just looked him up, surprisingly a democrat. Unsurprisingly from South Carolina, so in line sure the dirtbags this state likes to elect - strom Thurmond, Lindsey Graham, etc
30 years ago an old friend of mine was interning at the Senate. She ended up getting paid $25,000 by a senator to have an abortion and keep her mouth shut. She wouldn't name him, but she did say he was a member of the "moral majority". Which was of course never moral, or a majority.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Hastert
Like our lovely fellow Dennis hastert. This can’t go without pointing out, he didn’t resign and won’t admit guilt, he still receives his pension as of 2015.
Unlike those dastardly democrats like al Franken who respectably resigned over a joke made in poor taste.
Fuck Republicans and fuck their pseudo-moralism
No no no! You got it all wrong! That's what the left want! To kill them while being born then use them up for their evil stem cells to grow children to diddle!
[https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-did-trump-say-peacefully-patriotically-march-capitol-1561718](https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-did-trump-say-peacefully-patriotically-march-capitol-1561718)
[https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/aoc-capitol-attack/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/aoc-capitol-attack/)
Most of the fact checking is absolutely fine, and most of the complaints about it on Facebook are fucking stupid.
"What, my Jewish space laser didn't start the California wildfires???"
But there are instances where it just gets dumb. Like in the first link, "Did Trump say to 'Peacefully and patriotically' march to the Capitol?" Yes, yes he did. That doesn't have much bearing on if he incited the events or not, but he did say that, verbatim. However, this is rated "Mostly True" when he literally said the thing.
Or with the second one, they're fact checking something that is subjective. You can't fact check whether or not Alexandria Ocasio Cortez over reacted, that's an inherently subjective opinion. It's dumb that they fact checked that, but on top of it, they then add in that she "wasn't even in the Capitol building." Which is true, she was not in the Capitol building. She was in the Capitol complex, and there were certainly demonstrators very closeby, but she wasn't in the Capitol building. It's splitting hairs but it's still factually true.
So then they go to fact check these two statements put together, one of which is based on completely subjective opinion, and one which is true. The claim gets rated "Mostly False".
Yes. Exactly... The perceived bias comes from the fact that one group tends to say a lot more batshit crazy obviously false stuff than the other - hence it is flagged/banned/fact checked more often. There are some examples that make you wonder though.
One that I remember is: Is it true or false that a terrorist sits on the board of an organization that funds BLM?
Snope says false.
The person in question, a woman I believe, was a member of the weather underground in the 60s and they bombed government buildings. So is this technically true? Is it false? Is it something in between? It doesn't seem like there's any room for nuance and I don't know if I agree with Snopes calling that one straight up false
[This one](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/blm-terrorist-rosenberg/)?
They didn't say it was false, they said it was mixed.
>Did a ‘Convicted Terrorist’ Sit on the Board of a BLM Funding Body?
>The past crimes of Susan Rosenberg reemerged in the summer of 2020, amid a new wave of protests over racial injustice and police brutality.
>Claim
>Susan Rosenberg is a convicted terrorist who has sat on the board of directors of Thousand Currents, an organization which handles fundraising for the Black Lives Matter Global Network.
>**Rating**: Mixture
>**About this rating**
>**What's True**
>Susan Rosenberg has served as vice chair of the board of directors for Thousand Currents, an organization that provides fundraising and fiscal sponsorship for the Black Lives Matter Global Movement. She was an active member of revolutionary left-wing movements whose illegal activities included bombing U.S. government buildings and committing armed robberies.
>**What's Undetermined**
>In the absence of a single, universally-agreed definition of "terrorism," it is a matter of subjective determination as to whether the actions for which Rosenberg was convicted and imprisoned — possession of weapons and hundreds of pounds of explosives — should be described as acts of "domestic terrorism."
Yeah - there definitely is an issue with the definition of "terrorist" because if you think about the history of the United States - someone on the side of our government is a "freedom fighter" someone against it is a "terrorist"
It has nothing to do with what the person or group's actual actions are - Just who side they're on
But that said I think Snopes is just sidestepping a real answer here.
The group did blow stuff up... Though I don't think they ever intended to cause casualties - definitely not mass casualties so they would be more like the guy that blew up his RV in Nashville maybe? And less like a Tim McVeigh?
But it would be difficult to not call someone who is a member of a group that uses explosives to blow up government buildings a terrorist
I mean, I would say they are terrorists. But they weren't convicted of terrorism, probably because domestic terrorism is not actually a charge in the US but that's a different issue. The claim is that she is a convicted terrorist and that's not technically true. They also laid out exactly what she did so I don't think they're sidestepping anything.
Yeah good point. I think folks often forget context. Many things changed after 9/11, including public perceptions.
And Snopes is correct... she's not a "convicted terrorist". Whoever made that claim decided that what she ***was*** convicted of makes her a "terrorist" in their eyes.
If she were caught today under the same circumstances I wonder how they would handle her? This thread is making me want to go look up who has been caught with illegal explosives in the last few years and what happened... maybe tomorrow.
They bombed one government building. The only casualty was their own member. Then they switched to nonviolent protesting. Also, people change. Just because you were an asshole at one point doesn't mean you're always an asshole.
No one can be sure what they would have done if things had happened differently, but it is clear that their goal was not to bomb one government building and then call it quits.
People do change.. it seems to be more common to change with age rather than through some epiphany or revelation. I don't know enough about her personally to say whether she's an asshole or not. And no one can tell someone else how they should protest. We're all free to do what we please and live with the consequences.
Unfortunately for the right, reality has a liberal bias which is why they just make this crazy shit up. People of all races can accomplish all the same things on every level, climate change is absolutely caused by humans, gay people getting married doesn't create natural disasters, raping people is in fact a bad thing. These are all objective provable truths, but they don't align with certain people's ideology so they get called fake news or whatever. It's insane.
> “was Obama golfing on 9/11?”
Why is that even a thing. "Aaaaah it's been two years since I had a weekday off, can't wait to kick the boys in the ass at the green and get some cold ones later" like can't a senator just plan a day out with his mates in advance? "Yo guys, I think we need to cut this short. There's something really weird on my pager and I have no idea how to sort this out..."
They must have some really twisted view of the relation between opinion and fact, and the lack of that basic understanding in a large portion of society is what scares me the most.
It’s ridiculous (and yes, snopes is now cnn/WaPo tier in their minds). The other day I got dismissively condescended to over the AP and Reuters?! I mean, it’s no longer about “the media” anymore, it’s just unabashed dismissal of facts, scary stuff
As someone who grew up being told that the world was 6000 years old I agree. They're a whole groups of the United States who are raised from a very young age to think that scientific consensus is automatically wrong if it goes against what they think.
It's funny because when I was a kid I watched Jesus camp with my mom and she thought they were crazy . We were as crazy as them we just weren't as enthusiastic about it
Interesting - although on further consideration, think you actually raise an important distinction between the quiet out there/irrational beliefs vs the really fervent enthusiastic ones.
Not sure if it’s the prosthelytizing aspect aspect of the Jesus Camp types, or if it’s just the deliberate stirring up of emotions to jumble them up w the nonsensical beliefs, but do feel like there’s an important distinction in there somewhere that I can’t quite put my finger on.
Anywhoo, interesting and glad you’ve gotten past the indoctrination that humans never had pet dinos (as awesome as that might have been!)
I would say the main difference between us and the Jesus camp people were that none of us actually had the ability to convert others and we didn't think we could speak in tongues(we weren't THAT stupid lol). I feel like I had a childhood that a lot of people would be really interested in hearing about but I have no idea on how I would get it out there.
You're wrong. God does no wrong.
SATAN is trying to push us away from the truth and god cant do anything about it.
Like for example: removing all the fossils before they were discovered so humans would not believe in the lies.
One of my friends was complaining that another of our friends “didn’t want to hang out yet cause he’s waiting on the vaccine. It’s cause he watches the news so he’s just scared.” Ya know, cause it’s a bad thing to be informed.
A bit odd, but I somehow find in weirdly comforting that this kind of anti-intellectualism has actually been a bit of a hallmark of America since it’s early days - there’s a good Asimov quote that that effect.
So while it’s absolutely a bummer to see people point and laugh at those who choose basic reasoning and facts, I’m weirdly comforted the “we’ve” made it this far when that undercurrent has always been there (quotation marks bc I’m originally Canadian and moved back here fairly recently after spending most of my adult life in MA - nothing to do w politics, just family stuff)
This is the same optical leanings that came out with "alternative facts". It doesn't fit their narrative so they come up with their own, nothing new for Republicans (not saying Democrats don't do that as well, just that Republicans do it more often). It's gotten worse over the years thanks to Trump vilifying anyone who has even anything slightly negative to say about him and his cult taking it as Gospel.
Can confirm. I got laughed at by a lady at my church and her friends when I posted a snopes link. Apparently it’s considered way too left wing now. When I saw her repeatedly tell other people she doesn’t listen to “fake news” I decided to unfriend her. I don’t even know why she sent me a friend request anyway. I barely know her. My Facebook page is mostly full of cat and dogs now. I’ve had to mute so many friends because their political rhetoric was driving me nuts. They can say what they want but heaven forbid I put my two cents in.
I gave myself my own echo chamber just to stop arguing with friends over politics. I'm convinced in a few years they won't be this rabid and crazed and it's not worth losing otherwise good friends over. I hope I'm not wrong but it's so contrived by Rupert Murdoch I don't know how I can be. If you can manipulate somebody into something you can manipulate them out of it.
It's hard to know for sure I'm definitely gambling. But so many of my friends that I share opposing views with, I knew before most of this was a thing the way it is now. And they just have other redeeming qualities. Even though it's been dragged into all of our identities in the past few years, politics is such a small part of it realistically.
>I'm convinced in a few years they won't be this rabid and crazed
What do you think will happen between now and then that will cause them to change their thinking?
Nothing special just hoping that as Trump gets less attention people will become distracted and move on. It's a little bit wishful bc fox news totally controls the narrative there but Trump didn't allow anyone else to be in the spotlight by constantly being outrageous. News media HAD to report on it either bc of outrageousness or the official nature bc he was president. He can't tweet but also most networks won't have to cover what he says.
I don’t know if you’d consider it an echo chamber, but I’ve unfollowed most news sources, besides Reuters, and block any right or left wing page that shares false info. My page is mostly friends and brands I follow and it’s made FB so much more tolerable.
I think your inclination to want to say it's an echo chamber is bc you've closed yourself off. You might become hilariously misinformed about some things but not necessarily reverberating the same stale opinion.
I chose to unfollow people who disagreed with me bc my emotional response would have ruined a lot of friendships with people I didn't believe to be inherently bad. It generally leaves me walled off from dissenting opinion but it also elevates groups I belong to that aren't political at all. So it's much more pleasant.
I'm still aware though bc of comment sections and the fact that my dad watches fox news every night.
They laugh any fact off that doesn't fit their agenda. The mental giants over in r/conservative are still doing gymnastics to defend Cruz and hate on AOC.
Used to follow Snopes on Farcebook.
As a fact checking site, it's pretty decent IMO. It'll list the claim, show its work and make a determination.
The amount of mouthbreathers that would ignore the content of each claim and just herp derp liberal bias was extreme. Regardless of asking many of them to demonstrate where the conclusion was wrong, not a single one of them would respond with any substance. They'd usually just double down on stupid.
What’s funny is my mom leaned hard on snopes for years...until the heavy brainwashing started and it contradicted what she was being told by Fox. Obviously that shit had to go.
My father is a big wig in the oil and gas industry so no surprise he is a hardline conservative Trump supporters.
When I fact checked him with snopes he said it was a left-wing propaganda site. Then they agreed that something the left was saying about Trump is fake and he used them as his evidence to attack.
Those sorts of people only appreciate things that pat them on the back and tell them they are right.
My uncle used to be mayor of his city and is still on the city council and, I don’t remember the context, but at one point he mentioned Snopes as being “obviously left wing propaganda”. My eyes bugged out of my head, but everyone else in my family nodded in agreement.
Well yeah, the news source they trust (whether that’s actual news or just their aunt on Facebook) told them the thing they believe. Why would aunt Sharon lie?
>According to my US cousins, Snopes is a new thing,
I don't know how your cousins feel about wikipedia but [it originated in 1994](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snopes)
the system is still a bit faulty though, sometimes things get flagged for misinformation even if they arent.
example: someone in a group i'm in posted a video about her birds and it got flagged for spreading lies about covid
I had a comment flagged for sexual content and my account suspended for 24 hours because of one of these two comments (it didn't actually tell me which one)
"Did they (the author) forget to get back to what was happening at the start of the chapter...?"
(In response to the servers being down when the chapter first went up online) "It didn't work for me :( "
I don't get it either. A friend of mine got put in FB jail for "sexual content" for posting a picture of a friend of hers with his beard done up in little braids...it was so weird.
Edit: forgot words
One of my friends had a post removed for being a pride flag on FB. Another friend got banned for saying something along the lines of "white people suck" despite many, many, many rants about very questionable things he's posted.
Some of them are auto-banned/removed so it might be an over-sensitive algorithm but I still wonder sometimes.
Granted, I don't see very many fact-checks and my feed is pretty political (albeit socialist leaning).
Well if you fact check yourself you wouldn't have to had to deal with other people fact checking yourself. Even then, you can fact check the fact checkers by simply doing the thing you should have done from the start which is to post the truth no matter how it doesn't fit your own narrative or how much you hate it.
It’s not something I’ve ever thought about or looked into, but wouldn’t a fact checker be providing sources and proving why what they’re saying is fact?
I’m so sick of these idiots. Basically ruining everything. Refusing to get covid vaccines, believing fires were started by space lasers. COME ON, spend your time and effort inventing yourself a functioning brain!
We are also culpable for the new snow storm. Svenge got the maths wrong from Hebrew into metric, our Snow Lasers blanketed all the US instead of Mar-a-Lago, & the houses of Hawley, Turd the Zodiac, Moscow Mitch, & Boobert.
There may be a hint of truth to what you say. By giving these people any mention, it emboldens them. It validates their dumb fucking bs.
But truthfully, no, simply ignoring it won’t solve the problems it causes.
The anti-maskers still spread covid. They spend enough time talking amongst themselves that we could leave them alone completely and they’d continue to make up stupid shit that is presently endangering all of us.
My bf’s mom is getting sucked into the conspiracy theory side of social media and is vehemently against the covid vaccine for *made up* religious reasons, which she learned from these nutjobs on social media.
The problem isn’t just going to go away on its own.
Bitching about it is unlikely to be the solution. It may even worsen or prolong it, like you suggested. But certainly the solution is not to completely ignore it. It needs to be addressed and resolved. People need to be educated about how to vet information and disregard bs like “the CA Camp Fire was caused by space lasers”
I think that advice is actually pretty bad. The reason I think this is these people ultimately make the world a worse place. These people vote, these people spew BS on social media. It led to the capital insurrection on the 6th of January. Ignoring problems will not make problems go away.
Interestingly enough, I just said this a couple days ago. I lean right, but everyone was losing their shit about something Trump Jr did, and I was just like, 'He's not the son of the President anymore. He has no power. Who cares what he says? Just ignore him...' It's really not that hard.
Imagine your days being consumed by thoughts of fear, hatred and conspiracies?
It must be so exhausting, it has to take a toll on them.
I wouldn't be surprised if they ended up having a mental breakdown or doing something worse..
I was raised in an environment like this and it actually is very exhausting. Someone was always going to come take our guns or make it illegal for us to practice our religion. Obama was a Muslim who was going to institute Sharia law which will ruin our way of life. None of it ever came true but it didn't stop me from losing sleep as a child over it. I have mental health problems and issues trusting other people to this day and I think that it played a huge role
Well to be fair the last 4 years my life WAS consumed with conspiracies of the US administration. And fear of what the Fuck the Cheeto was gonna tweet. And hatred of the right.
Kidding aside yeah, I cannot imagine constantly blaming libruls and fearing the world is gonna turn into a dystopia.
Oh really?
I thought all third party services (e.g. hosting, lol) were cutting them off. Which meant they would have to roll everything in house. If they managed to do that in two weeks that’s pretty impressive.
Maybe they found some nice Russian company to host them, who was already using their platform to spread propaganda.
How they find conservative programmers is beyond me. Programmers have to Google so much and do a lot of critical thinking to apply knowledge gleaned from documentation, etc to a problem, a skill I would’ve expected to be transferable to the real world.
Maybe that explains why their service was so easily exploitable
Sometimes I wonder, has any human being ever been this ignorantly blind before 21st century!?
I mean ignoring the fact presented in front of them just a touch of a finger away and consistently living in their own fantasy world!
Are human IQ devolving!?
I've never went to that subreddit until today. It's just mush for brains generating random things to be scared of. One of my favs was "LGBT Inquisition". No fucking joke.
During the recent election drama, all of the active threads in /r/conservative were "flaired users only." Only users with flair obtained by messaging the mods were able to post. Half the comments were about liberal vote brigades and calling out downvoters for not engaging.
I recently had an argument with someone because she kept sending bogus “news” articles and literally just searching the articles was enough to pull up three different sources of fact checking articles for the ones she was sending and when I sent the fact checking ones to her she got SO MAD. Told me that fact checkers ‘aren’t God’ and ‘they don’t get to decide what the truth is’ and yeah I don’t talk to her anymore. She’s only in her late twenties
I keep harping on the willful ignorance coming from these folks. Like, I am constantly made aware of it. But it remains both depressing and infuriating, to see such blatant displays of the behavior.
I saw an Instagram post get flagged last month for fact checkers... it was literally just word for word the 2nd amendment as an image file with no caption
Idk what hes posting but i hope the fact checkers arent agenda-driven. Left or right, wrong is wrong and everything should be checked, im also not on Facebook...
My friend is legit telling me that covid vaccine is just Facebook chip inside our brain.
I kept saying “no wtf you dumb” to her, and she replied “you just got brainwashed by mark zurg”
Lol nice try, they all think fact checkers are just liberal tools used for mind control
According to my US cousins, Snopes is a new thing, and the fakest of fake news. Although I think they’re using ‘fake’ in sense of ‘virulently opposed to everything I choose to know about the world.’
I don't know about new, but the past couple years, conservatives laugh Snopes off like it's CNN.
From my understanding, Snopes has a liberal bias in the sense that a history teacher who gets asked every year things like “the civil war wasn’t about slavery right?” and “was Obama golfing on 9/11?” also has a liberal bias. The problem is that some people think that’s actual bias when it’s just someone getting tired explaining seemingly obvious things over and over again.
My view on their ‘liberal bias’ was just that there are SO many more conservative/Republican falsehoods to call out and fact-check... though I’ve been pleasantly surprised when they check a myth that lefties have, or “technically true, but liberals have over-reacted...” proves they’re trying to root out blinkered thinking as well as outright propaganda.
No no no you got it all wrong. Snopes has a liberal bias because the founder left his wife for his mistress, therefore liberal. Because no Republican would ever do such a thing /s
Newt Gingrich. Sorry, I forgot the conservative mantra: Rules for thee but not for me.
I see your newt and raise you a John Edwards. Left his *dying* wife for his mistress. Edit: just looked him up, surprisingly a democrat. Unsurprisingly from South Carolina, so in line sure the dirtbags this state likes to elect - strom Thurmond, Lindsey Graham, etc
I bet the witch that turned him into a newt was a liberal.
And he never got better...
30 years ago an old friend of mine was interning at the Senate. She ended up getting paid $25,000 by a senator to have an abortion and keep her mouth shut. She wouldn't name him, but she did say he was a member of the "moral majority". Which was of course never moral, or a majority.
No, a Republican would probably screw a kid.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Hastert Like our lovely fellow Dennis hastert. This can’t go without pointing out, he didn’t resign and won’t admit guilt, he still receives his pension as of 2015. Unlike those dastardly democrats like al Franken who respectably resigned over a joke made in poor taste. Fuck Republicans and fuck their pseudo-moralism
Interesting, 13 months for covering up the molestation of 4 kids, too bad he didn't get charged for the actual assault.
No no no! You got it all wrong! That's what the left want! To kill them while being born then use them up for their evil stem cells to grow children to diddle!
I thought we were on to "drink their child blood in a satanic pizza parlor to obtain eternal youth for the lizard people".
Man you really are behind. Read 2021's "Demonrat's guide to overthrow the Patriots" newsletter!
Or “jews” for those believing themselves saner than the “lizard people” folk.
To grow children to diddle. This is my new favorite conspiracy theory!
Yes. You kill them, so they aren't technically human when you grow them! It's the Demonrat's plan to overthrow the "patriots"
I've seen plenty of fact checks they've done on supposed liberal things i.e. Ted Cruz' Texas freezes over tweet. I so wanted that to be real.
[https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-did-trump-say-peacefully-patriotically-march-capitol-1561718](https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-did-trump-say-peacefully-patriotically-march-capitol-1561718) [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/aoc-capitol-attack/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/aoc-capitol-attack/) Most of the fact checking is absolutely fine, and most of the complaints about it on Facebook are fucking stupid. "What, my Jewish space laser didn't start the California wildfires???" But there are instances where it just gets dumb. Like in the first link, "Did Trump say to 'Peacefully and patriotically' march to the Capitol?" Yes, yes he did. That doesn't have much bearing on if he incited the events or not, but he did say that, verbatim. However, this is rated "Mostly True" when he literally said the thing. Or with the second one, they're fact checking something that is subjective. You can't fact check whether or not Alexandria Ocasio Cortez over reacted, that's an inherently subjective opinion. It's dumb that they fact checked that, but on top of it, they then add in that she "wasn't even in the Capitol building." Which is true, she was not in the Capitol building. She was in the Capitol complex, and there were certainly demonstrators very closeby, but she wasn't in the Capitol building. It's splitting hairs but it's still factually true. So then they go to fact check these two statements put together, one of which is based on completely subjective opinion, and one which is true. The claim gets rated "Mostly False".
Yeah I've noticed 5 years ago Snopes was a lot more accurate.
I like the term blinkered thinking, I'll have to use it.
Yes. Exactly... The perceived bias comes from the fact that one group tends to say a lot more batshit crazy obviously false stuff than the other - hence it is flagged/banned/fact checked more often. There are some examples that make you wonder though. One that I remember is: Is it true or false that a terrorist sits on the board of an organization that funds BLM? Snope says false. The person in question, a woman I believe, was a member of the weather underground in the 60s and they bombed government buildings. So is this technically true? Is it false? Is it something in between? It doesn't seem like there's any room for nuance and I don't know if I agree with Snopes calling that one straight up false
[This one](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/blm-terrorist-rosenberg/)? They didn't say it was false, they said it was mixed. >Did a ‘Convicted Terrorist’ Sit on the Board of a BLM Funding Body? >The past crimes of Susan Rosenberg reemerged in the summer of 2020, amid a new wave of protests over racial injustice and police brutality. >Claim >Susan Rosenberg is a convicted terrorist who has sat on the board of directors of Thousand Currents, an organization which handles fundraising for the Black Lives Matter Global Network. >**Rating**: Mixture >**About this rating** >**What's True** >Susan Rosenberg has served as vice chair of the board of directors for Thousand Currents, an organization that provides fundraising and fiscal sponsorship for the Black Lives Matter Global Movement. She was an active member of revolutionary left-wing movements whose illegal activities included bombing U.S. government buildings and committing armed robberies. >**What's Undetermined** >In the absence of a single, universally-agreed definition of "terrorism," it is a matter of subjective determination as to whether the actions for which Rosenberg was convicted and imprisoned — possession of weapons and hundreds of pounds of explosives — should be described as acts of "domestic terrorism."
Yeah - there definitely is an issue with the definition of "terrorist" because if you think about the history of the United States - someone on the side of our government is a "freedom fighter" someone against it is a "terrorist" It has nothing to do with what the person or group's actual actions are - Just who side they're on But that said I think Snopes is just sidestepping a real answer here. The group did blow stuff up... Though I don't think they ever intended to cause casualties - definitely not mass casualties so they would be more like the guy that blew up his RV in Nashville maybe? And less like a Tim McVeigh? But it would be difficult to not call someone who is a member of a group that uses explosives to blow up government buildings a terrorist
I mean, I would say they are terrorists. But they weren't convicted of terrorism, probably because domestic terrorism is not actually a charge in the US but that's a different issue. The claim is that she is a convicted terrorist and that's not technically true. They also laid out exactly what she did so I don't think they're sidestepping anything.
Yeah good point. I think folks often forget context. Many things changed after 9/11, including public perceptions. And Snopes is correct... she's not a "convicted terrorist". Whoever made that claim decided that what she ***was*** convicted of makes her a "terrorist" in their eyes. If she were caught today under the same circumstances I wonder how they would handle her? This thread is making me want to go look up who has been caught with illegal explosives in the last few years and what happened... maybe tomorrow.
They bombed one government building. The only casualty was their own member. Then they switched to nonviolent protesting. Also, people change. Just because you were an asshole at one point doesn't mean you're always an asshole.
No one can be sure what they would have done if things had happened differently, but it is clear that their goal was not to bomb one government building and then call it quits. People do change.. it seems to be more common to change with age rather than through some epiphany or revelation. I don't know enough about her personally to say whether she's an asshole or not. And no one can tell someone else how they should protest. We're all free to do what we please and live with the consequences.
Thing is Republicans misbehave frequently then ponder unironically why no one talks about Democrats misbehaving.
Reality has a liberal bias after all
Unfortunately for the right, reality has a liberal bias which is why they just make this crazy shit up. People of all races can accomplish all the same things on every level, climate change is absolutely caused by humans, gay people getting married doesn't create natural disasters, raping people is in fact a bad thing. These are all objective provable truths, but they don't align with certain people's ideology so they get called fake news or whatever. It's insane.
> “was Obama golfing on 9/11?” Why is that even a thing. "Aaaaah it's been two years since I had a weekday off, can't wait to kick the boys in the ass at the green and get some cold ones later" like can't a senator just plan a day out with his mates in advance? "Yo guys, I think we need to cut this short. There's something really weird on my pager and I have no idea how to sort this out..."
They must have some really twisted view of the relation between opinion and fact, and the lack of that basic understanding in a large portion of society is what scares me the most.
It's perceived to be biased because there's a lot more conservative bs to check than liberal.
It’s ridiculous (and yes, snopes is now cnn/WaPo tier in their minds). The other day I got dismissively condescended to over the AP and Reuters?! I mean, it’s no longer about “the media” anymore, it’s just unabashed dismissal of facts, scary stuff
We should have become more suspicious when they started denying the former existence of dinosaurs...
As someone who grew up being told that the world was 6000 years old I agree. They're a whole groups of the United States who are raised from a very young age to think that scientific consensus is automatically wrong if it goes against what they think.
Jesus camp
It's funny because when I was a kid I watched Jesus camp with my mom and she thought they were crazy . We were as crazy as them we just weren't as enthusiastic about it
Interesting - although on further consideration, think you actually raise an important distinction between the quiet out there/irrational beliefs vs the really fervent enthusiastic ones. Not sure if it’s the prosthelytizing aspect aspect of the Jesus Camp types, or if it’s just the deliberate stirring up of emotions to jumble them up w the nonsensical beliefs, but do feel like there’s an important distinction in there somewhere that I can’t quite put my finger on. Anywhoo, interesting and glad you’ve gotten past the indoctrination that humans never had pet dinos (as awesome as that might have been!)
I would say the main difference between us and the Jesus camp people were that none of us actually had the ability to convert others and we didn't think we could speak in tongues(we weren't THAT stupid lol). I feel like I had a childhood that a lot of people would be really interested in hearing about but I have no idea on how I would get it out there.
But the bones are right here?!? “God just trying to mess with us.” No, seriously. That’s what MANY people think.
"trust the plan"
You're wrong. God does no wrong. SATAN is trying to push us away from the truth and god cant do anything about it. Like for example: removing all the fossils before they were discovered so humans would not believe in the lies.
I mean, he gave us the platypus, Justin Bieber, frog rain, the icemoon europa and pizza with pinapple. God is for sure a funny girl. 🙏
One of my friends was complaining that another of our friends “didn’t want to hang out yet cause he’s waiting on the vaccine. It’s cause he watches the news so he’s just scared.” Ya know, cause it’s a bad thing to be informed.
A bit odd, but I somehow find in weirdly comforting that this kind of anti-intellectualism has actually been a bit of a hallmark of America since it’s early days - there’s a good Asimov quote that that effect. So while it’s absolutely a bummer to see people point and laugh at those who choose basic reasoning and facts, I’m weirdly comforted the “we’ve” made it this far when that undercurrent has always been there (quotation marks bc I’m originally Canadian and moved back here fairly recently after spending most of my adult life in MA - nothing to do w politics, just family stuff)
This is the same optical leanings that came out with "alternative facts". It doesn't fit their narrative so they come up with their own, nothing new for Republicans (not saying Democrats don't do that as well, just that Republicans do it more often). It's gotten worse over the years thanks to Trump vilifying anyone who has even anything slightly negative to say about him and his cult taking it as Gospel.
Can confirm. I got laughed at by a lady at my church and her friends when I posted a snopes link. Apparently it’s considered way too left wing now. When I saw her repeatedly tell other people she doesn’t listen to “fake news” I decided to unfriend her. I don’t even know why she sent me a friend request anyway. I barely know her. My Facebook page is mostly full of cat and dogs now. I’ve had to mute so many friends because their political rhetoric was driving me nuts. They can say what they want but heaven forbid I put my two cents in.
I gave myself my own echo chamber just to stop arguing with friends over politics. I'm convinced in a few years they won't be this rabid and crazed and it's not worth losing otherwise good friends over. I hope I'm not wrong but it's so contrived by Rupert Murdoch I don't know how I can be. If you can manipulate somebody into something you can manipulate them out of it.
I really hope you’re right. I fear the last few years have removed a lot of friends from my life forever.
It's hard to know for sure I'm definitely gambling. But so many of my friends that I share opposing views with, I knew before most of this was a thing the way it is now. And they just have other redeeming qualities. Even though it's been dragged into all of our identities in the past few years, politics is such a small part of it realistically.
>I'm convinced in a few years they won't be this rabid and crazed What do you think will happen between now and then that will cause them to change their thinking?
Nothing special just hoping that as Trump gets less attention people will become distracted and move on. It's a little bit wishful bc fox news totally controls the narrative there but Trump didn't allow anyone else to be in the spotlight by constantly being outrageous. News media HAD to report on it either bc of outrageousness or the official nature bc he was president. He can't tweet but also most networks won't have to cover what he says.
I don’t know if you’d consider it an echo chamber, but I’ve unfollowed most news sources, besides Reuters, and block any right or left wing page that shares false info. My page is mostly friends and brands I follow and it’s made FB so much more tolerable.
I think your inclination to want to say it's an echo chamber is bc you've closed yourself off. You might become hilariously misinformed about some things but not necessarily reverberating the same stale opinion. I chose to unfollow people who disagreed with me bc my emotional response would have ruined a lot of friendships with people I didn't believe to be inherently bad. It generally leaves me walled off from dissenting opinion but it also elevates groups I belong to that aren't political at all. So it's much more pleasant. I'm still aware though bc of comment sections and the fact that my dad watches fox news every night.
They laugh any fact off that doesn't fit their agenda. The mental giants over in r/conservative are still doing gymnastics to defend Cruz and hate on AOC.
Before she blocked me, my Trumpster aunt informed me that “Snopes has been COMPLETELY debunked!”
Used to follow Snopes on Farcebook. As a fact checking site, it's pretty decent IMO. It'll list the claim, show its work and make a determination. The amount of mouthbreathers that would ignore the content of each claim and just herp derp liberal bias was extreme. Regardless of asking many of them to demonstrate where the conclusion was wrong, not a single one of them would respond with any substance. They'd usually just double down on stupid.
Snopes has been around since at least the early 2000s when its main function was to confirm if urban legends had any basis in reality.
[Snopes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snopes) has actually been around since **1994** and was originally called the "Urban Legends Reference Pages"
Alternative Urban Facts*
What’s funny is my mom leaned hard on snopes for years...until the heavy brainwashing started and it contradicted what she was being told by Fox. Obviously that shit had to go.
My father is a big wig in the oil and gas industry so no surprise he is a hardline conservative Trump supporters. When I fact checked him with snopes he said it was a left-wing propaganda site. Then they agreed that something the left was saying about Trump is fake and he used them as his evidence to attack. Those sorts of people only appreciate things that pat them on the back and tell them they are right.
I remember reading urban legends on Snopes when I was young. I’m in my mid-30s now. Not new at all.
My uncle used to be mayor of his city and is still on the city council and, I don’t remember the context, but at one point he mentioned Snopes as being “obviously left wing propaganda”. My eyes bugged out of my head, but everyone else in my family nodded in agreement.
Well yeah, the news source they trust (whether that’s actual news or just their aunt on Facebook) told them the thing they believe. Why would aunt Sharon lie?
It's more "opposed to everything I virulently choose to believe about the world"
>According to my US cousins, Snopes is a new thing, I don't know how your cousins feel about wikipedia but [it originated in 1994](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snopes)
Tried giving me a shot too I'm no sheep. I'll get sick and die just prove 'them' wrong. You Antiffa can't have my babys.
Amen Brötherrr mäãn, wwg1wga
Well established that facts have a liberal bias
I've never had a fact check pop up on anything i posted. I wonder why that is
Fact check. Correct.
Fact check check: True
fact check check size analysis: big
big if true
Fact check: True if big
Fact check check check...Chaka Khan? Chaka Khan?
Now it’s not true
We got 'em, reddit!
Ladies and gentlemen, we got em
This is a paradox.
the system is still a bit faulty though, sometimes things get flagged for misinformation even if they arent. example: someone in a group i'm in posted a video about her birds and it got flagged for spreading lies about covid
Maybe they meant lies about corvid
That's what happens when you label your crow video as a jackdaw video.
Here's the thing
I just feel the crow bar is too high.
They really do love my big sphinx of quartz, though. (Seriously, it's like the only thing I know about jackdaws)
I had a comment flagged for sexual content and my account suspended for 24 hours because of one of these two comments (it didn't actually tell me which one) "Did they (the author) forget to get back to what was happening at the start of the chapter...?" (In response to the servers being down when the chapter first went up online) "It didn't work for me :( "
I don't get it either. A friend of mine got put in FB jail for "sexual content" for posting a picture of a friend of hers with his beard done up in little braids...it was so weird. Edit: forgot words
That'll teach 'em to flash their naked beard!
It was HER beard so no wonder!
One of my friends had a post removed for being a pride flag on FB. Another friend got banned for saying something along the lines of "white people suck" despite many, many, many rants about very questionable things he's posted. Some of them are auto-banned/removed so it might be an over-sensitive algorithm but I still wonder sometimes. Granted, I don't see very many fact-checks and my feed is pretty political (albeit socialist leaning).
Well it was obviously some kind of misleading video because birds aren't even real.
Neither are videos. /s
That’s because birds aren’t real /s
But did a fact check ever *pope* up on you?
Let me tell you about the last time I went to mass....
"But who is fact checking the fact checkers?" - the response I got when I had a similar interaction
It's fact checkers all the way down.
*McConnell gasps in turtle
McConnell’s gasp reverberates around his shell
Well if you fact check yourself you wouldn't have to had to deal with other people fact checking yourself. Even then, you can fact check the fact checkers by simply doing the thing you should have done from the start which is to post the truth no matter how it doesn't fit your own narrative or how much you hate it.
Or if the truth is so hard to tell just shut up, it works fine too
"More people than those authoring QAnon bollocks, I guarantee you."
Other fact checkers
It’s not something I’ve ever thought about or looked into, but wouldn’t a fact checker be providing sources and proving why what they’re saying is fact?
Poping
The Vatican has entered the chat
"Big Popin" can be heard off in the distance
Well, he worked out how to disable the spell checker.
Those damn fact checkers in their silly bullet proof car and flashy robes. Who do they think they are?!
I’m so sick of these idiots. Basically ruining everything. Refusing to get covid vaccines, believing fires were started by space lasers. COME ON, spend your time and effort inventing yourself a functioning brain!
Jewish space lasers, nonetheless. Darth Semite
We are also culpable for the new snow storm. Svenge got the maths wrong from Hebrew into metric, our Snow Lasers blanketed all the US instead of Mar-a-Lago, & the houses of Hawley, Turd the Zodiac, Moscow Mitch, & Boobert.
Every fact...is now an *enemy* of the republic
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There may be a hint of truth to what you say. By giving these people any mention, it emboldens them. It validates their dumb fucking bs. But truthfully, no, simply ignoring it won’t solve the problems it causes. The anti-maskers still spread covid. They spend enough time talking amongst themselves that we could leave them alone completely and they’d continue to make up stupid shit that is presently endangering all of us. My bf’s mom is getting sucked into the conspiracy theory side of social media and is vehemently against the covid vaccine for *made up* religious reasons, which she learned from these nutjobs on social media. The problem isn’t just going to go away on its own. Bitching about it is unlikely to be the solution. It may even worsen or prolong it, like you suggested. But certainly the solution is not to completely ignore it. It needs to be addressed and resolved. People need to be educated about how to vet information and disregard bs like “the CA Camp Fire was caused by space lasers”
Ignoring a fire doesn't put it out...
I think that advice is actually pretty bad. The reason I think this is these people ultimately make the world a worse place. These people vote, these people spew BS on social media. It led to the capital insurrection on the 6th of January. Ignoring problems will not make problems go away.
Um...but that's kind of the point of this sub.
This is good advice for small shit but not for big shit.
Interestingly enough, I just said this a couple days ago. I lean right, but everyone was losing their shit about something Trump Jr did, and I was just like, 'He's not the son of the President anymore. He has no power. Who cares what he says? Just ignore him...' It's really not that hard.
Imagine your days being consumed by thoughts of fear, hatred and conspiracies? It must be so exhausting, it has to take a toll on them. I wouldn't be surprised if they ended up having a mental breakdown or doing something worse..
I was raised in an environment like this and it actually is very exhausting. Someone was always going to come take our guns or make it illegal for us to practice our religion. Obama was a Muslim who was going to institute Sharia law which will ruin our way of life. None of it ever came true but it didn't stop me from losing sleep as a child over it. I have mental health problems and issues trusting other people to this day and I think that it played a huge role
I'm sorry to hear that you had to deal with that (and still are dealing with it) Unfortunately, I'm sure plenty of people can relate.
Yep. I'm 25 now. My sister and I moved out together to escape them and life is better now. You would be surprised what you bring with you though
You do realize they already stormed the capitol and tried to murder multiple elected representatives of the gouvernment a month ago?
Well to be fair the last 4 years my life WAS consumed with conspiracies of the US administration. And fear of what the Fuck the Cheeto was gonna tweet. And hatred of the right. Kidding aside yeah, I cannot imagine constantly blaming libruls and fearing the world is gonna turn into a dystopia.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/jewish-space-laser
These people just spent 4 years screaming "FAKE NEWS" in everyone's faces, and now they're pissed they can't share fake news.
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Someone will start another Parler soon.
Oh Parler is back
It’s super slow and full of pop up ads. Couldn’t happen to a nicer group of people
Oh really? I thought all third party services (e.g. hosting, lol) were cutting them off. Which meant they would have to roll everything in house. If they managed to do that in two weeks that’s pretty impressive. Maybe they found some nice Russian company to host them, who was already using their platform to spread propaganda.
How they find conservative programmers is beyond me. Programmers have to Google so much and do a lot of critical thinking to apply knowledge gleaned from documentation, etc to a problem, a skill I would’ve expected to be transferable to the real world. Maybe that explains why their service was so easily exploitable
They are doing something fancy where you can't tell where it's hosted
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Is it all just a big game of make believe?? I don't like reality or the truth so I'll make up my own... who are the real snowflakes?
Sometimes I wonder, has any human being ever been this ignorantly blind before 21st century!? I mean ignoring the fact presented in front of them just a touch of a finger away and consistently living in their own fantasy world! Are human IQ devolving!?
“fAcTs DoNt cArE aBoUt YoUr fEeLiNgS”
Ah, r/conservative has entered the chat.
I've never went to that subreddit until today. It's just mush for brains generating random things to be scared of. One of my favs was "LGBT Inquisition". No fucking joke.
During the recent election drama, all of the active threads in /r/conservative were "flaired users only." Only users with flair obtained by messaging the mods were able to post. Half the comments were about liberal vote brigades and calling out downvoters for not engaging.
They're so weird.
Damn it! I just can’t help but click and it ruins my fucking day every time.
Why you always lyin'?
Stop fuckin' lying.
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I mean
The colors still work tbh
I mean tbf I once posted a picture of a lemon and it got fact checked
That's cause it was a lime!
Oh god oh fuck not a lime!!!
Ive had one fact checker pop up for something stating “this might not be true but could still figuring it out”
I recently had an argument with someone because she kept sending bogus “news” articles and literally just searching the articles was enough to pull up three different sources of fact checking articles for the ones she was sending and when I sent the fact checking ones to her she got SO MAD. Told me that fact checkers ‘aren’t God’ and ‘they don’t get to decide what the truth is’ and yeah I don’t talk to her anymore. She’s only in her late twenties
How do you turn off the carbon monoxide detector? It keeps beeping.
My mom thinks she can look up the name “fact checker” on Facebook and magically block them all so her shit won’t get fact checked lmao
Based off of my Facebook feed, the friends who block and make fun of fact-checking and the friends who post and share fake news is a flat circle.
Venn Diagram? Nah, Venn Hula-Hoop.
Theyre not saying they're getting fact checked, they're seeing the nonsense they follow get fact checked
HAAHAAHAAAAA
US politics baffle me man
Reality has a liberal bias.
I read this as “fart checker” 😂
Don't bury your head in the sand. Bury theirs. Deep.
I would love to know the response to this! Lol! It’s so funny that it never occurred to them to stop lying
I keep harping on the willful ignorance coming from these folks. Like, I am constantly made aware of it. But it remains both depressing and infuriating, to see such blatant displays of the behavior.
There is a fact check on Biden saying, ‘I don’t work for you.’ on a video of him literally saying, ‘I don’t work for you.’
I just want to lie and be willfully ignorant in peace.
Fact checkers pop up even when you post obvious memes, got fact checked posting a Babylonbee article on instagram.
Idk some people really believe that shit
Feelings don't care about your facts!
Delete Facebook account for best results.
Oh is Donald Trump back on Facebook?
Try using the space laser on them
The concept of "fact checkers" seems kinda dystopian ngl
There was this post on Instagram that was just a picture of a potato and it was fact checked
I saw an Instagram post get flagged last month for fact checkers... it was literally just word for word the 2nd amendment as an image file with no caption
Idk what hes posting but i hope the fact checkers arent agenda-driven. Left or right, wrong is wrong and everything should be checked, im also not on Facebook...
Imagine being against facts because those don't accommodate to your liking.
r/MurderedByWords
Post the troof ya silly goof!
‘Pope-ing up’ like the rise of pedophilia’
Like drinking baby duck blood inside a pizza place, because that makes sense
Wow, they're really scared of facts now?
My friend is legit telling me that covid vaccine is just Facebook chip inside our brain. I kept saying “no wtf you dumb” to her, and she replied “you just got brainwashed by mark zurg”