by Curt Anderson on August 14, 2021 10:28 am
Is it really plagiarism if it's written under a fake name?

Plagiarism is the representation of another author's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work.

Anyway, that's an ethical breach of some sort, certainly. That doesn't make Snopes any less authoritative. In fact, that the cleaned their house and were transparent about makes them more credible.

The bottom line is that nobody should simply take Snope's, Wikipedia's or anybody's word that something is true or false. The fact checkers do what I strive to do, namely cite relevant articles or videos in which the politician (or whoever) contradicted themselves or a contemporaneous report refutes a Facebook claim, quote the authors of studies, etc.