“Fake news” is so much a part of the current lexicon, it’s hard to remember when the truth was just – the truth. And truth is what the fact-checking site Snopes has been wrestling with for years. Before smartphones, before Twitter, before Google – Snopes has been calling out apocryphal stories and alternative facts since the Worldwide Web was born.
Twenty plus years later, the San-Diego based Snopes admits that despite the hunger today for actual truth, the company might not be around much longer. On Monday, Snopes posted on its site that because of a legal dispute with an “outside vendor,” it may be closing its virtual doors. And it asked readers for donations.
Paul Farhi, media reporter for the Washington Post, debunks Snopes’ legal dispute, financial health and whether the original fact checker may be going out of business.
Written by Taylor Jackson Buchanan.
