snopes.com
Snopes.com is a useful fact-checking website that investigates viral claims, but readers should still inspect its evidence and compare important findings with other trusted sources.
What is Snopes.com?
Snopes is one of the oldest websites built to check rumors, myths, strange stories, scams, photos, and political claims.
David and Barbara Mikkelson started the project in the mid-1990s as the Urban Legends Reference Pages.
The name “Snopes” came from a fictional family in books by American writer William Faulkner.
Early articles focused on stories shared through email, online forums, and everyday conversation.
The site later expanded into politics, health, science, entertainment, disasters, social media, and artificial intelligence.
Snopes now describes its work as fact-checking and original reporting that helps people understand misinformation (Snopes About Us).
How does Snopes check a claim?
A Snopes article normally begins with the exact claim being checked.
The writer then searches for the first known version of the story and studies how it changed while people shared it.
Evidence may include government records, court papers, research studies, archived web pages, public data, interviews, photographs, and direct statements.
Sources are usually listed at the bottom, which lets readers repeat much of the research themselves.
Editors review fact checks before publication, and the site says writers must use reliable evidence and clearly explain uncertainty (Snopes Transparency).
This method is strongest when an article links to original material instead of another news story that only repeats it.
What do the Snopes ratings mean?
Snopes uses common ratings such as True, Mostly True, Mixture, Mostly False, False, and Unproven.
It also uses special labels such as Satire, Scam, Miscaptioned, Outdated, and Legend.
“Mixture” means that important parts of a claim are true while other important parts are false.
“Unproven” does not mean false, because it means the available evidence cannot yet support a firm answer.
These labels matter because online claims often contain a real photograph, quote, or event placed inside a false story.
The rating is only a short guide, so the evidence and explanation are more valuable than the colored label (Snopes Fact Check Ratings).
Is Snopes reliable?
Snopes has a strong record of showing its sources and explaining how a rumor began.
A peer-reviewed study compared 11,639 Snopes checks with 10,710 PolitiFact checks published from 2016 through August 2022.
Only about 6.5% covered matching claims, but the researchers found just one direct conflict after correcting for different labels, timing, and wording.
That result suggests the two organizations usually reached compatible conclusions when they studied the same material (Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review).
However, agreement does not prove that every decision is correct.
Fact-checkers still choose which claims deserve attention, decide which details matter, and interpret words that may have several meanings.
Readers should therefore treat Snopes as a well-researched starting point, not as an authority that can never make a mistake.
Has Snopes made serious mistakes?
Snopes faced a major trust problem in 2021 when an internal review found plagiarism in dozens of articles written by co-founder David Mikkelson.
The site retracted the affected work, removed his publishing access, added notices, and apologized to readers and other publishers.
Snopes staff publicly condemned the plagiarism and said it broke the standards behind their work (Snopes writers’ statement).
The response showed transparency, but the event remains an important reason to judge the evidence in each article instead of trusting the brand alone.
A correction system is valuable because reliable journalism is not work without errors; it is work that exposes and repairs errors.
Who pays for Snopes?
Snopes is a commercial company rather than a government service or university project.
Its current funding comes mainly from automated advertising, paid memberships, reader contributions, and merchandise.
The company says it does not accept political advertising and publishes information about large financial contributions.
Advertising can create pressure to attract clicks, although it does not by itself prove that an article is inaccurate.
Clear funding disclosures help readers look for possible conflicts and judge whether money could shape coverage (Snopes Disclosures).
How should you use Snopes wisely?
Search for the shortest and most exact form of the claim instead of entering a broad topic.
Check the publication and update dates because new evidence can change an old verdict.
Open the listed sources and confirm that they truly support the article’s key points.
For medical, legal, financial, or election claims, compare the result with primary records and another established fact-checker.
Also remember that finding no Snopes article does not make a claim true, because human fact-checkers cannot study every rumor.
Snopes works best as a map to the evidence, while careful readers still make the final judgment.