Exactly this. And who specifically owns the half that Barbara sold is the crux of the current legal debate as I understand it.
Who’s left and what they are doing there is also a concern. For all the good the site does, it looks like they have some process problems at a minimum…
I actually did notice the conspicuous absence of her name around then, but I don’t think she’d been very active at the site for a while at that point.
By the way, this sounded a bit nasty toward BigT, and I didn’t mean it to. I intended “you” to mean something more general, and I should have said something like “we” or “anyone.” Apologies for my tone.
What exactly can and can’t the current Snopes staff do with their site? The quote in the OP says they can’t update or maintain the site at all?
Here’s a brand new page, dated July 24, 2017 that I just came across there – it’s something about Justine Damond, the Australian killed by cops in Minneapolis. Definitely something fairly new and current.
So somebody is doing on-going work on the site, including adding new pages.
Was a Holistic Doctor Killed by Police for Working Against Big Pharma?
I think it means that they can’t access the underlying code; to fix bugs, change the layout, etc.
They can still use whatever administrative tools are part of the existing code to add, delete, and edit articles.
It seems to be slightly more complex than a simple “who owns snopes.com”
As I understand it:
[ul]
[li]Snopes (more correctly Bardav) engaged Proper Media to manage the advertising side of Snopes[/li][li]Somewhat later, the Mikkelsons divorced acrimoniously.[/li][li]Barbara sold her 50% share of Bardav to Proper Media[/li][li]However, because of the structure of Bardav, the shares could not be owned by Proper Media (the corporate entity), so the shares were notionally split between five shareholders of Proper Media [/li][li]One of those shareholders left Proper Media and joined Mikkelson, and allegedly took staff members and equipment from Proper Media[/li][li]This would leave Mikkelson controlling a majority of Bardav shared, and thus the company[/li][/ul]
Proper Media have claimed misuse of company funds by Mikkelson and that the staff that left Proper Media were not legally able to do so (particularly the Bardav shareholder), and that equipment was improperly transferred. They sued several months ago. Because they control the site advertising, they still collect the ongoing income.
Mikkelson is counter-suing, and is raising funds for the legal fight because he is not getting any income from the site. He can still update the site content, but cannot manage the domain and hosting and the advertising.
That’s a very overwrought article. Almost operatic in tone.
Emphasis on the latest buzzword ‘fake news’, the wretched Daily Mail, and the suspicious tone to Mr. Mikkelson may obscure rather than elucidate.
*It was with incredible surprise therefore that I received David’s one-sentence response which read in its entirety “I’d be happy to speak with you, but I can only address some aspects in general because I’m precluded by the terms of a binding settlement agreement from discussing details of my divorce.”
*
*This absolutely astounded me. Here was the one of the world’s most respected fact checking organizations, soon to be an ultimate arbitrator of “truth” on Facebook, saying that it cannot respond to a fact checking request because of a secrecy agreement.
*
Well, yeah. Legal barring orders do have that effect.
The most worrying is here:
**When I first read through the Daily Mail article I immediately suspected the story itself must certainly be “fake news” because of how devastating the claims were and that given that Snopes.com was so heavily used by the journalistic community, if any of the claims were true, someone would have already written about them and companies like Facebook would not be partnering with them. **
The journalistic community relies on Snopes, which is just a website with opinions not the Holy Office of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ? They don’t consult their own fact-checking departments ?
I sent them twenty bucks. Last night they were at about twenty percent of their goal. Now they are almost there.
Apparently David left his wife for a younger model who also works at Snopes. She sold her shares to people who are now fucking him over.
I want Snopes to continue operating, but I’m not sure who the “good guy” is here. If Mikkelson really did misuse funds and try to stiff his partners, then I don’t necessarily want to give him money to defend himself. His plea for money made it sound like he was being bullied by some hosting company that wouldn’t give him control of the site because they were big greedy meanies. Instead it looks like it’s just squabbling with some other small company over ownership and control, and possible unethical conduct. For someone whose fact-checking I really value, his misleading plea for money is really disappointing.
Or maybe he’s fucking them over. Their allegations include substantial mismanagement of company funds and assets for personal expenses and other shenanigans.
Sorry, I find this confusing - when you say “Mikkelson” I am not sure whether you mean the husband or wife. Could you repost referring to David and Barbara?
Every time you read “Mikkelson” as singular in the above post, that’s David.
Snopes lost most of its credibility when it went over the edge during the election and tilted left further than the Tower of Pisa. They’re good for tracking down urban legends but not much else.
If they go under, no real loss.
Yep. A single explicit reference to Barbara, the rest are to David.
Sent from my SM-G900I using Tapatalk
I know this is futile, but could you provide some links to actual incidents?
Have you factored in reality’s known liberal bias?
What you’re not understanding is that anything not leaning to the right has a liberal bias. There are no facts. It’s all opinions.
And the opinions on Snopes are funded by George Soros. How that particular “fact” fits with Snopes’ current situation is beyond me, but reality is hard to understand if you think too much.
Snopes is the username of the site’s creator from USENET. The name predates the website. Snopes was well known for disproving urban legends, and so turned it into a site with his name on it. He co-owned the site his wife. I assumed everyone here knew the history of the site.
David Mikkelson is Snopes. That’s his name.
And no worries about the tone. Apologies if mine sound bad?
