Snopes is debasing itself by "fact-checking" satire websites that are obviously satire.

Snopes is really stooping low and losing some of its respectability by “fact-checking” parody articles that are obviously satire to begin with:

Did CNN really buy laundry machines to “spin the news?”

This is so wildly nonsensical that it should have been obvious that this wasn’t even worth fact-checking. A story like “CNN buys laundry machines to spin the news!” is so blatantly obvious a joke that it is beneath the dignity of Snopes to try to investigate or fact-check it. The *Babylon Bee *is a spoof satire website, like The Onion. It would be like Snopes trying to “fact-check” a story, “is the Moon really made of cheese?”

The job of Snopes should be to investigate and fact-check only things that are plausibly believable enough that people would mistake falsehood for truth, or think something is actually real.

There are a lot of Americans who, for some reason, can’t tell “fake news!” from news, so maybe Snopes is providing an unfortunately necessary service.

Except these days people are passing around obvious satire articles as a fact on social media.

From Babylon Bee:
Snopes Issues Pre-Approval Of All Statements Made During Tonight’s Democratic Debate
Love that site.

There were seve4ralstories on The Onion that were (and are still) believed to be true by The Gullible Right and Religious.

Yes, and there are Babylon Bee articles that are plausible enough to be believed by people not familiar with the Bee - for instance, their recent spoof article claiming that Jessie Smollett was offered a job at CNN. That’s something that could be believed if not debunked.
But “CNN buys washing machines to spin the news” is a laughably obvious joke. It’s pointless, and beneath the dignity of Snopes, to try to fact-check something like that.

It’s also not new. Here’s one about an Onion article from 2015:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/false-42-million-dead-in-bloodiest-black-friday-weekend-on-record/

I could probably find more but the Snopes search is terrible.

Snopes, from the article you linked to:

My bold. According to Snopes, they are doing what you say they should.

There are people who genuinely believe that there was some kind of sex ring involving prominent US politicians run from a pizza place.

There is a great overlap between those who can’t tell “fake news” and those that believe Snopes is just a tool of the liberal media and nothing on the site can be trusted.

What? It’s easy. Any news that I don’t agree with or I disapprove of is “fake news”

In which case, Snopes is performing a worthwhile service for the more incredulous who come across such “facts” via social media or email and go looking for verification.

I had always understood that Snopes decides what to fact check based on submissions from readers, unless that’s changed recently. So if they fact checked a story that to you is obviously satire, it’s because a lot of people emailed them asking them if it was true.

Snopes has been going down the drain for the past five years, especially when they started pumping out fake news themselves. There were a few articles that used outdated or wrong facts and figures to prove something “True” or “False” and when I emailed them with the correction they ignored it.

They kind of lost me when they started making their own fake stories, and presenting them as real. Or, “real”. The pages still looked as real as actual debunking pages. WTF, Chucks? As if there isn’t enough confusion already (hence this thread) did they really need to start making their own?

This is what (cached version due to the live one possibly trying to download malware):

I can beat that. For some reason, in the left column of Google News it keeps offering me “fact check” articles from India, usually about fake stories that I’ve never heard of and “famous” people I’ve never heard of. Right now there is a fact check from Africa being suggested to me, explaining that certain photos aren’t of a returned Jesus touring Africa.

I wonder if some sort of link sharing is going on. Snopes links to the BB and the BB links to Snopes.

The other side of this coin is that to many of the people on the Right, Snopes is an irredeemably biased left-wing source, that can’t be trusted.

It must be left-wing - it keeps pointing out that things that right-wingers believe without question are false.