Their first few debunkings of our political fantasies were thorough and neutral in nature, which made them quite amusing. They started with our story about how Rosie O'Donnell tattooed the black flag of ISIS on her butt to protest American imperialism. Snopes's professional journalistic investigation into this subject matter made a fascinating read. A few more similar debunkings of our political parodies followed, which one might call "over-debunking." Naturally, we responded with more spoofs about how the Snopes.com CEO was arrested on charges of fraud and corruption, and how Snopes denied visiting the White House during the White House visit.
For one reason or another, these Snopes spoofs remained undebunked. Instead, Snopes changed its tone. It still continued to debunk our satires, but it stopped providing the link to the source or even referring to our site by name. Finally it stopped mentioning the fact that the debunked stories were, indeed, political satires. We call that under-debunking.
Facebook has announced plans to check for 'fake news' using a series of organizations to assess whether stories are true
One of them is a website called Snopes.com which claims to be one of the web's 'essential resources' and 'painstaking, scholarly and reliable'
It was founded by husband-and-wife Barbara and David Mikkelson, who used a letterhead claiming they were a non-existent society to start their research
Now they are divorced - with Barbara claiming in legal documents he embezzled $98,000 of company money and spent it on 'himself and prostitutes'
In a lengthy and bitter legal dispute he is claiming to be underpaid and demanding 'industry standard' or at least $360,000 a year
The two also dispute what are basic facts of their case - despite Snopes.com saying its 'ownership' is committed to 'accuracy and impartiality'
Snopes.com founder David Mikkelson's new wife Elyssa Young is employed by the website as an administrator
She has worked as an escort and porn actress and despite claims website is non-political ran as a Libertarian for Congress on a 'Dump Bush' platform
Its main 'fact checker' is Kimberly LaCapria, whose blog 'ViceVixen' says she is in touch with her 'domme side' and has posted on Snopes.com while smoking pot
