SIGforum.com    Main Page  Hop To Forum Categories  The Lounge    Facebook Threatens Satire Site Babylon Bee over CNN Story That Snopes Rated 'False'
Go
New
Find
Notify
Tools
Reply
  
Facebook Threatens Satire Site Babylon Bee over CNN Story That Snopes Rated 'False' Login/Join 
Get my pies
outta the oven!

Picture of PASig
posted
I love this site and check it out frequently on FB and never have I mistaken their satire for "news". It's very much like The Onion, but with more of a Christian perspective. Apparently some offended SJW type reported one of their recent posts to FB and they were given a stern warning:
Roll Eyes

I actually remember seeing this post and the FB "fact check" warning underneath it.

And these people STILL wonder why Trump was elected? WTF!

quote:

Christian satire site The Babylon Bee received a terse warning from Facebook this week after the "independent fact-checkers" at Snopes reported that one of the site's humor articles was "false."

Adam Ford, who runs The Babylon Bee, was warned by Facebook that a recent satire article about CNN "contains information disputed by (Snopes.com) an independent fact checker." Repeat offenders, Ford was told, "will see their distribution reduced and their ability to monetize and advertized [sic] removed."



The story in question pokes fun at CNN with the headline: "CNN Purchases Industrial-Sized Washing Machine To Spin News Before Publication." Anyone with even a sliver of a funny bone tucked away behind their appendix would know that it wasn't a serious news piece, but, alas, the humorless dolts at Snopes had to spell out the obvious.

Claim: CNN invested in an industrial-sized washing machine to help their journalists and news anchors spin the news before publication.
Rating: False

"Although it should have been obvious that the Babylon Bee piece was just a spoof of the ongoing political brouhaha over alleged news media 'bias' and 'fake news,'" Snopes explained, "some readers missed that aspect of the article and interpreted it literally."


Is that so? Are we to believe there are people who really accepted at face value the claim that CNN bought a literal washing machine to literally "spin" their news? Highly doubtful. What more likely happened is that some trigger-happy activists who don't appreciate Christian and conservative satire reported The Babylon Bee to Facebook, setting off an investigation by Snopes.

Snopes conceded that "the site’s footer gives away the Babylon Bee’s nature by describing it as 'Your Trusted Source For Christian News Satire,'" and explained that the site "has been responsible for a number of other (usually religious-themed) spoofs that have been mistaken for real news articles."



Babylon Bee's Adam Ford told PJM that this isn't the first time Babylon Bee has been "fact-checked" by Snopes. (You can read the other instances here.) "But this is the first time Facebook has used that to threaten us with reduced reach and demonetization," Ford said. "Also it seems that anyone who clicked on the article got a notice that it was 'disputed.'"

He said they also reduced the image size on the Facebook card after it was flagged, which "probably stamped out the reach" of the article.

While on the surface this may seem like nothing more than a silly misunderstanding or overreaction on the part of Snopes and Facebook, it's important to view the warning in the context of conservative groups and individuals being removed from Facebook and other social media outlets at an alarming rate. Facebook claims that they're in the process of hiring thousands of fact-checkers along with "professional" fact-checking organizations that oh, by the way, happen to lean left.

This past December PolitiFact discussed its partnership with Facebook and explained how it works. "Our partnership with Facebook is part of a push by the social media company to clean up its news feed and become a more trustworthy platform," PolitiFact's Aaron Sharackman wrote. "Facebook introduced a new tool after the 2016 campaign that allows users to mark a post as a 'false news story,' and if enough do, the post is sent to fact-checkers like PolitiFact, Snopes and Factcheck.org."

Sharackman continued:

If the fact-checkers find the story to be "false," a warning label is attached to the original post in Facebook’s news feed, and Facebook’s algorithm makes it more difficult for the disputed post to spread virally.
PolitiFact has been doing that work for a year now, and we have attached that false label to at least 1,722 individual URLs. That’s nearly five articles debunked a day, every day for a year.

Factcheck.org, PolitiFact, and Snopes all have reputations for being biased in favor of liberals, so it's no wonder Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, a flaming liberal himself, is relying heavily on these organizations to be arbiters of truth in the Facebook universe. The company that utterly failed at keeping Russian bots from interfering in the 2016 election now has apparently set its sights on conservative websites.

***

UPDATE: March 2, 11:47 p.m. EST: The Daily Caller is reporting that Facebook has apologized, claiming the whole thing was a "mistake."

“There’s a difference between false news and satire,” Facebook told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “This was a mistake and should not have been rated false in our system. It’s since been corrected and won’t count against the domain in any way.”



Link


 
Posts: 35168 | Location: Pennsylvania | Registered: November 12, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
The Joy Maker
Picture of airsoft guy
posted Hide Post
They didn't show this part on Star Trek.

Kinda want to bring my grandfather back to life and show him stuff like this, so that he knows that it was a good idea to check out when he did, because the future is weird.



quote:
Originally posted by Will938:
If you don't become a screen writer for comedy movies, then you're an asshole.
 
Posts: 17158 | Location: Washington State | Registered: April 04, 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Peace through
superior firepower
Picture of parabellum
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by airsoft guy:
They didn't show this part on Star Trek.
 
Posts: 110088 | Registered: January 20, 2000Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of TigerDore
posted Hide Post
"(Snopes.com) an independent fact checker"

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha



.
 
Posts: 9125 | Registered: September 26, 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Drill Here, Drill Now
Picture of tatortodd
posted Hide Post
I'm a big fan of the Babylon Bee. They're 2 years old and have 382k FB followers.

It's 100% satire, and fact checkers will find doozies like:
  • Calvinist Dog Corrects Owner: ‘No One Is A Good Boy’
  • Chris Pratt Latest To Leave Hollywood In Shame After Inflicting Prayer On Others
  • Oscars Introduce Prestigious New ‘Most Tolerable Christian Movie’ Award
  • Exposed: CNN Is Run By Russian Bots


    EDIT Notes: Turned titles into links to the Bee's website.

    This message has been edited. Last edited by: tatortodd,



    Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity

    DISCLAIMER: These are the author's own personal views and do not represent the views of the author's employer.
  •  
    Posts: 23956 | Location: Northern Suburbs of Houston | Registered: November 14, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
    Get my pies
    outta the oven!

    Picture of PASig
    posted Hide Post
    quote:
    Originally posted by tatortodd:
    I'm a big fan of the Babylon Bee.


    And they seem pretty fair in laying down the satire, giving it to both Trump and Hillary.

    These were actual posts:
    Big Grin
    Nation That Calls Trump ‘Hitler’ Demands He Take All Guns Away
    U.S.—Sources across the United States confirmed Friday that the cross-section of citizenry which has been comparing President Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler for two years has begun to demand that he take guns away from all citizens at once.

    Passionate protests and rallies recently all demanded the “dangerous madman” confiscate everybody’s firearms.

    “Trump is a dangerous tyrant, so he should be the only one with deadly weapons!” one woman screamed at an anti-gun protest. “People obviously can’t be trusted with them. Instead, we need to entrust them only to the most powerful man on the planet, who has proven time and time again he’s no better than history’s most violent dictators and has the potential to become an iron-fisted totalitarian!”




    Hillary Clinton Rehearsing Convention Speech In Dozens Of Different Dialects
    PHILADELPHIA, PA—After hiring a plethora of speech coaches to assist her in preparing for her big Thursday night address, sources confirmed Tuesday that Hillary Clinton is practicing her Democratic National Convention speech in dozens of different U.S. dialects.

    “Normally I just adapt my drawl to mimic whatever pitiful populace I’m currently addressing,” she explained to her team of trainers. “But listen, this is the biggest speech of my life and the entire country will be watching—I have to be able to nail every significant accent in the land, at will, so these [expletive] people will think I’m authentic.”

    Blending a distinctive Appalachian note with a northern Montana timbre, she reportedly informed the room full of professionals that they will all be “dead by Friday” if she can’t “alter [her] voice like Frank Caliendo come Thursday.”

    Sources reported Clinton was having the most trouble with the South Boston accent, and after dismissing her original, world-renowned coach by hurling a large book at his head, she told aides to “call in Ben Damon or whatever his [expletive] name is—I don’t care how much it costs.”


     
    Posts: 35168 | Location: Pennsylvania | Registered: November 12, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
    I have lived the
    greatest adventure
    Picture of AUTiger89
    posted Hide Post
    I follow the Babylon Bee on Twitter. They are hilarious.

    Two from Friday:

    "Snopes Launches New Website To Fact-Check Snopes Fact Checks"

    and

    "Mark Zuckerberg Finishes Another Long Day Of Deciding What People Should Believe"




    Phone's ringing, Dude.
     
    Posts: 6203 | Location: Upstate SC | Registered: April 06, 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
    Drill Here, Drill Now
    Picture of tatortodd
    posted Hide Post
    quote:
    Originally posted by AUTiger89:
    I follow the Babylon Bee on Twitter. They are hilarious.

    Two from Friday:

    "Snopes Launches New Website To Fact-Check Snopes Fact Checks"

    and

    "Mark Zuckerberg Finishes Another Long Day Of Deciding What People Should Believe"
    Those are great examples. I turned the titles into links to their website (actual website not FB or Twitter) in case anybody wants to read for themselves.



    Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity

    DISCLAIMER: These are the author's own personal views and do not represent the views of the author's employer.
     
    Posts: 23956 | Location: Northern Suburbs of Houston | Registered: November 14, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
      Powered by Social Strata  
     

    SIGforum.com    Main Page  Hop To Forum Categories  The Lounge    Facebook Threatens Satire Site Babylon Bee over CNN Story That Snopes Rated 'False'

    © SIGforum 2024