Disinformation campaigns are expected to be just as pervasive in 2020 as they were in the 2016 presidential election, and potentially more insidious because of the media spotlight on them. That’s according to fact-checking organizations like Seattle-based Snopes.
They say it’s more important than ever to have reliable fact-checkers, but it’s also more difficult than ever to run a fact-checking business.
That’s why Snopes launched a membership program and crowdfunding platform this month. Snopes supporters can now become members by donating $30 a year to help the organization stay afloat and grow.
Snopes had once hoped to scale with financial support from Facebook but the partnership between the two withered. Snopes CEO and founder David Mikkelson says Facebook was unresponsive to the fact-checking organization’s concerns and allowed the partnership to fizzle out earlier this year with little communication.
“It wasn’t really a partnership in any real sense of the word and caused, for us, more problems and potential liabilities than it was worth to us to participate,” he said.
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Source: Snopes on the state of news, Facebook and the 2020 election: ‘It’s going to be a mess’ – GeekWire