No Rest For the Leery
Everyone looks forward to an occasional slow day at the office. But if you work for Snopes (“a hugely popular fact-checking site which debunks urban legends, old wives’ tales, fake news, shoddy journalism and political spin”) there are no slow days anymore. The Internet is too big, the lies and fake stories are too plentiful, and the pace at which falsehoods spread is too rapid. As Snopes founder David Mikkelson explains: “There are more and more people piling on to the internet and the number of entities pumping out material keeps growing. I’m not sure I’d call it a post-truth age but … there’s been an opening of the sluice-gate and everything is pouring through. The bilge keeps coming faster than you can pump.” At this point, Snopes would probably be better off just identifying the few Internet stories that are true.