The fact checking I've looked at starts with something like a claim, then dives into context, then lists supporting evidence of either verifying that claim or disproving it, leaning on that supporting evidence.
For fact checking not to be valuable, either the supporting evidence is wrong, the reasoning leading from that to the conclusion is wrong, or something third is wrong.
If that is the case in fact checking, that should absolutely be criticized, and any fact checker with integrity would put up a correction.
For all the vague critique against "fact checking" I've heard, I've never actually seen anyone give examples.
If the critique instead is "they selectively only fact check this and not that", the conclusion should not be that fact checking is bad, but that more is needed.
Surprisingly few things are solid facts. Many of them are opinions, especially in politics, culture and celebrity reporting.
Snopes is one of the most beloved fact checking services, yet I have seen them make questionable claims. I remember they tried to say once many years ago that snuff videos don't exist. How could they make such a blanket claim? It would have been more honest to say that most of them are fake. Not only would it be possible to make such a video, there is considerable evidence that some have been made. Saddam Hussein and his son are said to have enjoyed watching videos of executions. Now that may be propaganda against Hussein, but he would have been capable of sourcing such material and watching it. At least one murder was streamed on Facebook Live and someone was arrested for it. I'd say that counted as such.
Snopes excluded itself from archiving. I let you guess why.
My favorite was their check on masks in early 2020 - they said that masks do nothing to the airborne viruses and the government will never force you to wear one, people who are walking around with masks are dangerous lunatics who deprive medical workers of much needed PPE. Imagine if it was archived and available now?
How can I link it if they are excluded from the time back machine and they pulled that "fact" since then? I have no clue if someone wrote blog post about it. I also don't read all checks currently on their site so cannot answer your question about them. I have only read the one about masks because someone at work sent a mail about masks available and another person responded with an angry critique, complete with a link to snopes ( I am sure that couple of weeks later the same guy had been driving around with a double mask and reported unmasked to the police)
I did read your original post and pointed out that there is no archive of Snopes "checks" because Snopes excluded itself from the service. Do you have any ideas why would they do that? As far as I know, it's opt-out, the Wayback Machine indexes everything by default so Snopes not being indexed required some action from them.
> Did someone write a blogpost/tweet/reddit post/take a screenshot of it at the time?
For a claim you are making, you seem to not be able to find a single piece of evidence. How did you ever find out there was an original article that they edited? Is this purely from personal experience?
The claim I am making is that Snopes excluded itself from the Wayback Machine during 2020, here is the evidence: https://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000*/snopes.com
Apparently they enabled indexing only from the end of 2021.
No, you also claimed Snopes edited an article about masks, and claimed something about the contents it was edit from and to:
> My favorite was their check on masks in early 2020 - they said that masks do nothing to the airborne viruses and the government will never force you to wear one, people who are walking around with masks are dangerous lunatics who deprive medical workers of much needed PPE.
The fact checking I've looked at starts with something like a claim, then dives into context, then lists supporting evidence of either verifying that claim or disproving it, leaning on that supporting evidence.
For fact checking not to be valuable, either the supporting evidence is wrong, the reasoning leading from that to the conclusion is wrong, or something third is wrong.
If that is the case in fact checking, that should absolutely be criticized, and any fact checker with integrity would put up a correction.
For all the vague critique against "fact checking" I've heard, I've never actually seen anyone give examples.
If the critique instead is "they selectively only fact check this and not that", the conclusion should not be that fact checking is bad, but that more is needed.