Who owns Snopes? Fracas over fact-checking site now front and center

Culture
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If only there were a way to separate the facts from the speculation. Perhaps someone should set up a website…

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Perhaps there are also valuable lessons for a small, fledgling website, looking to set up an LLC?

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My thoughts exactly.

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Snopes isn’t a small, fledgling website. It has been around since 1994. That’s longer than both Netscape Navigator and AltaVista… which is both a positive and negative thing.

Also, as an aside, Snopes predated Politifact, FactCheck.org and other similar sites, only it wasn’t originally about fact checking. It’s really about folklore and its reflections of morality, and is also about giving people the skills they need to develop a bullshit detector, rather than answering “OMG is [XYZ] really true!?!” over and over and over again. The folkloric aspect is kind of a niche interest, but there aren’t any websites out there that really help their readers strengthen their bullshit detectors. It’s not enough to say that something is true or false. One should say why it’s true or false, as in, which aspects of the story telegraph that it’s trustworthy or that it’s complete bullshit?

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I believe @MalevolentPixy was referring to this small, fledgling website and what lessons we could learn on how to structure the business end of things so that Ars doesn’t write about the messy ownership situation 20 years from now.

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I think Snopes’ problems have more to do with the Mikkelsons’ divorce than anything else… although the thing with the two feuding parent companies does sound like a bit of a fustercluck.

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Right, which is a direct result of the divorce. The 5 additional owners wouldn’t be a factor if half of the organization hadn’t been sold to begin with.

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I’ve already dressed up a team of CHUDs in business suits and put them through business school. They passed with flying colours because ovbiously. We’ll be making our bid for ownership soon.

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I’d imagine that at the moment, they’re rather busy with their positions on Trump’s cabinet.

Fortunately, he will fire them next week and replace them with other CHUDs, freeing them up to work on special projects and spend time with their CHUD families.

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Please excuse the newbie questions, but are CHUDs classified as mutants? Would gaining ownership of this site make you happy? If so, I see no problem.

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CHUDs are mutants, but they seem far from happy.

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