All lies lead to the truth. For over 20 years, Snopes.com has been the Web’s primary bullshit detector and debunker, from death by Pop Rocks to political lies. We need Snopes more than ever. For a Webby Awards exclusive feature, I commissioned talented journalist Rob Walker to explore the history of Snopesand founder David Mikkelson’s relentless obsession with, of all things, the truth. From the article:
This morning’s Observer column:
My eye was caught by a Kickstarter campaign for a gizmo called a SWON, described as “a connected conservation device for your shower”. You unscrew the shower head, screw on the SWON and then screw the head back on to it. From then on, water goes through the SWON before it reaches you. The Kickstarter campaign needs $50,000 to be pledged before the product can be made. Last time I checked, it had 75 backers and had raised pledges of $4,798.
Before consigning it to the “leading-edge uselessness” bin, I clicked on the link…
Imagine receiving a phone call from your aging mother seeking your help because she has forgotten her banking password. Except it’s not your mother. The voice on the other end of the phone call just sounds deceptively like her. It is actually a
Silicon Valley is still fuming over Facebook board member (and PayPal co-founder) Peter Thiel’s $1.25 million donation to the Trump campaign this week. Just yesterday, Project Include — a non-profit that works tirelessly to improve diversity in tech — cut ties with the valley’s most successful incubator, Y Combinator, because Thiel served as a part-time partner. Peter Thiel seems determined to piss people off these days. As if suing Gawker into oblivion wasn’t enough, the PayPal co-founder then went on an affront that can only be described as Trump-esque in nature. Since the lawsuit, Thiel has declared war on journalism, funded a company…
Answering questions at the Internet Association’s Virtuous Circle conference last week, Secretary Kerry presented the U.S. Department of State’s effort to prioritize global digital economy issues abroad in order to reflect the growing importance of these issues in both economic and foreign policy. The State Department has made real progress on this initiative in the last year and hopes to continue our momentum going forward.
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