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Snopes.com /snoʊps/, formally known as the Urban Legends Reference Pages, is one of the first online fact-checking websites. It is a widely known resource for validating and debunking urban legends and similar stories in American popular culture, receiving 300,000 visits a day in 2010.

History

In 1994, David and Barbara Mikkelson created an urban folklore web site that would become Snopes.com. Snopes was an early online encyclopedia focused on urban legends, that mainly presented search results of user discussions. The site grew to encompass a wide range of subjects and became a resource to which Internet users began submitting pictures and stories of questionable veracity. According to the Mikkelsons, Snopes antedated the search engine concept where people could go to check facts by searches. David Mikkelson had originally adopted the username "Snopes" (the name of a family of often unpleasant people in the works of William Faulkner) as a username in the Usenet newsgroup alt.folklore.urban.

In 2002, the site had become well-known enough that a television pilot called Snopes: Urban Legends, was completed with American actor Jim Davidson as host. However, it did not air on major networks. By mid-2014, Barbara Mikkelson had not written for the site "in several years" and David Mikkelson hired employees to assist him from Snopes.com's message board. The Mikkelsons divorced around the same time, and Barbara no longer has an ownership stake in Snopes.com.

On March 9, 2017 Mikkelson terminated a brokering agreement with Proper Media, the company that provides Snopes with web development, hosting, and advertising support. This prompted Proper Media to stop remitting advertising revenue and to file a lawsuit in May. In late June, Bardav—the company founded by David and Barbara Mikkelson in 2003 to own and operate snopes.com—started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to continue operations. They raised $500,000 in 24 hours. Later, in August, a judge ordered Proper Media to disburse advertising revenues to Bardav while the case was pending.

Main site

Snopes aims to debunk or confirm widely spread urban legends. The site has been referenced by news media and other sites, including CNN, MSNBC, Fortune, Forbes, and NY Times. By March 2009, the site had more than 6 million visitors per month.

Mikkelson has stressed the reference portion of the name Urban Legends Reference Pages, indicating that their intention is not merely to dismiss or confirm misconceptions and rumors but to provide evidence for such debunkings and confirmation as well. Where appropriate, pages are generally marked "undetermined" or "unverifiable" when there is not enough evidence to either support or disprove a given claim.

Lost legends

In an attempt to demonstrate the perils of over-reliance on the internet as authority, Snopes assembled a series of fabricated urban folklore tales that they term "The Repository of Lost Legends". The name was chosen for its acronym, T.R.O.L.L., a reference to the early 1990s definition of the word troll, meaning an Internet prank, of which David Mikkelson was a prominent practitioner.

Accuracy

Jan Harold Brunvand, a folklorist who has written a number of books on urban legends and modern folklore, considered the site so comprehensive in 2004 that he decided not to launch one of his own to similarly discuss the accuracy or various legends and rumors.

Mikkelson has said that the site receives more complaints of liberal bias than conservative bias, but insists that the same debunking standards are applied to all political urban legends. In 2012, FactCheck.org reviewed a sample of Snopes' responses to political rumors regarding George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, and Barack Obama, and found them to be free from bias in all cases. In 2012, The Florida Times-Union reported that About.com's urban legends researcher found a "consistent effort to provide even-handed analyses" and that Snopes' cited sources and numerous reputable analyses of its content confirm its accuracy.

Critics of the site have falsely asserted that it is funded by businessman and philanthropist George Soros, or linked sites, but all of Snopes’s revenue is from advertising on the site. The New York Times has stated:

All of Snopes’s revenue — Mr. Mikkelson says he doesn’t know what it is — come from ads. Facebook is not paying for its services. Nor is the billionaire George Soros funding the site, although that is sometimes asserted in anti-Snopes stories.

Traffic and users

As of December 2017, Snopes.com's web traffic rank in the world stood at 3,798 with approximately 72% originating from the U.S. with web traffic declining from previous months. As of April 2017, Snopes.com's Alexa rating was 1,794. Approximately 80% of its visitors originate from within the United States. In 2017, the site attracted 20 million unique visitors in one month.

See also

• TruthOrFiction.com
• FactCheck.org
• The Straight Dope
• The Skeptic's Dictionary
• MythBusters
• List of common misconceptions

References

1. ^ "How the Truth Set Snopes Free". webbyawards.com.
2. ^ Streitfeld, David (December 25, 2016). "For Fact Checking Website Snopes, a Bigger Role Brings More Attacks". The New York Times. Retrieved December 27, 2016.
3. "Snopes.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved April 1, 2014.
4. "Snopes.com: Debunking Myths in Cyberspace]". NPR. August 27, 2005. Retrieved August 27, 2005.
5. Henry, Neil (2007). American Carnival: Journalism Under Siege in an Age of New Media. University of California Press. p. 285.
6. Pogue, David (July 15, 2010). "At Snopes.com, Rumors Are Held Up to the Light". The New York Times. Retrieved July 16, 2010.
7. Brian Stelter (April 4, 2010). "Debunkers of Fictions Sift the Net". The New York Times. Retrieved April 5, 2010.
8. "Frequently Asked Questions". Snopes.com. Retrieved June 9, 2006. What are 'snopes'?
9. ^ Bond, Paul (September 7, 2002). "Web site separates fact from urban legend". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved July 17, 2012.
10. ^ Porter, David (2013). "Usenet Communities and the Cultural Politics of Information". Internet Culture. Routledge. p. 48. ISBN 978-1-135-20904-9. Retrieved September 13, 2016. The two most notorious trollers in AFU, Ted Frank and snopes, are also two of the most consistent posters of serious research.
11. ^ Seipp, Cathy (July 21, 2004). "Where Urban Legends Fall". National Review. Archived from the original on August 12, 2004. Retrieved February 7, 2014.
12. Farhi, Paul (July 24, 2017). "Is Snopes.com, the original Internet fact-checker, going out of business?". The Washington Post.
13. Victor, Daniel (July 24, 2017). "Snopes, in Heated Legal Battle, Asks Readers for Money to Survive". The New York Times.
14. "Snopes Meets $500K Crowdfunding Goal Amid Legal Battle". Bloomberg. July 25, 2017. Retrieved December 18, 2017.
15. Dean, Michelle (September 20, 2017). "Snopes and the Search for Facts in a Post-Fact World".
16. Nissen, Beth (October 3, 2001). "Hear the rumor? Nostradamus and other tall tales". CNN. Retrieved June 7, 2009.
17. "Urban Legends Banned-April Fools'!". MSNBC. April 1, 2007. Retrieved June 7, 2009.
18. "Urban Legends Reference Pages: Who Is Barack Obama?". Snopes. August 24, 2008. Retrieved January 22, 2008.
19. Hochman, David (March 2009). "Rumor Detectives: True Story or Online Hoax?". Reader's Digest. Archived from the original on March 18, 2009. Retrieved March 29, 2016. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
20. "Urban Legends Reference Pages: Frequently Asked Questions". Snopes. Retrieved June 9, 2006. How do I know the information you've presented is accurate?
21. "Urban Legends Reference Pages: Round Rock Gangs". Snopes. July 21, 2011. Retrieved May 3, 2009.
22. "Urban Legends Reference Pages: Lost Legends". Snopes. Retrieved June 9, 2006.
23. ^ "Ask FactCheck: Snopes.com". FactCheck.org. April 10, 2009. Retrieved November 4, 2011.
24. "Fact-checking the fact-checkers: Snopes.com gets an 'A'". Network World. April 13, 2009.
25. Fader, Carole (September 28, 2012). "Fact Check: So who's checking the fact-finders? We are". The Florida Times-Union. Retrieved July 20, 2016.
26. "snopes.com Traffic Statistics". SimilarWeb. Retrieved January 29, 2018.
27. Stelter, Brian (April 4, 2010). "Debunkers of Fictions Sift the Net". The New York Times. Retrieved March 19, 2013.
28. "Snopes.com Audience Insights - Quantcast". www.quantcast.com.

External links

• Official website

• Internet properties established in 1995
• Educational websites
• Webby Award winners
• Skepticism
• 1995 establishments in California
• Fact-checking websites