Snopes On Brink Of Collapse As CEO Vows To Shut Down Alt. Media

Snopes are trying to sue alternative media websites out of existence, while their CEO David Mikkelson runs the company into the ground.

Snopes was tapped by Facebook as one of its approved fact-checking groups, given the ability to mark stories on the site as “true” or “false”. While this idea sounds good in theory, in practice it has had a chilling effect on free speech, limited the ability of independent sites to make a living, and enabled the powers that be to retain control.

Granted the right to declare news “true” or “false”, Snopes regularly twist words and intentionally misrepresent headlines in order to “debunk” them. Snopes hold grudges against certain sites, as admitted by CEO David Mikkelson in an early interview, and repeatedly go after anyone who dares to criticize the powers that be, essentially accusing them of thoughtcrimes.

When Your News Wire addresses these concerns in an article of our own, or publish an article that criticizes a Snopes article, they launch legal action to silence us.

George Orwell would be rolling in his grave.

As one of the biggest news websites on the planet, Snopes have a five figure daily income. They keep a legal team on retainer. While presenting themselves as neutral arbiters of truth, far above petty squabbles, the truth is that behind the scenes Snopes bully smaller sites into submission by issuing expensive legal threats.

The dystopia outlined in 1984 by Orwell is here.

Snopes are one of the biggest news sites in the world, regularly promoted by mainstream media. Revenue is conservatively estimated at being over five figures per day – not bad for a site who employs a handful of bloggers/investigators who never leave the office (and admit they sometimes work while laying in bed, stoned.)

So where did all the money go? Why are they begging for money to #SaveSnopes?

Apparently the team at Snopes know everything about everything, except how to run a business.

Here’s a breakdown, put together by CNET, of what’s been going on:

• Snopes signs a contract with Proper Media to utilize their IT/advertising software.
• Founders Barbara and David, go through a bitter divorce and each walk away with 50% of the Snopes parent company, Bardav.
• Five major shareholders at Proper Media covertly purchase Barbara’s shares at an exorbitant price.
• CEO of Snopes, David, immediately revokes Proper Media’s contract and cuts them out of various different parts of the companies daily routine. (“Mid-contract, Proper made an aggressive bid for control, paying what Mikkelson said was an “exorbitant” price for the other half of the company. The contract with Proper was one that could be canceled at any time by either party, and that’s what Mikkelson says he did, as part of his everyday job as President of the company. Even if Proper’s owners were on the Bardav board (they aren’t, he noted), their permission wouldn’t be necessary because it’s not a board-level decision, and anyway, they would have to recuse themselves for conflict of interest.” 1)
• Proper Media retaliates by freezing Snopes access to all of their advertising revenue and their servers.
• Then, Vincent Green (a former minor shareholder at Proper Media) leaves them and goes to work at Snopes. Proper Media responds by filing a suit claiming that Green and David conspired to somehow short the other shareholders at Proper Media, out of their ownership of the Snopes parent company.
• Snopes pleads for $500,000 dollars to keep running.
• Proper Media asks for a fact check to be run on Snopes’ fundraising plea: “Today’s post only confirms Proper Media’s allegations that Mr. Mikkelson has drained the company’s bank accounts and is unable to operate Snopes profitably without Proper Media’s expertise and management.”

Not for the first time in Snopes’ history, David Mikkelson’s extracurricular activities have been called into question by those closest to him.

As our friends at The Free Thought Project write,

“Snopes, as a business — is not broke. David Mikkelson — who’s been accused of defrauding the website to pay for prostitution — is broke.

Snopes’ estimated value is in the tens of millions, with a daily revenue intake around five figures — a day. They are currently ranked in the top 2,600 websites globally as well as being in the top 700 domestically. The behemoth ‘fact-checker’ is nowhere near being broke.

However, thanks to a dirty divorce between David Mikkelson and his ex-wife Barbara Mikkelson, the company has turned into a glorious shit show.”

2 + 2 = 5

Mainstream media outlets including The Guardian urged readers to help Snopes raise the money. These mainstream media outlets present Snopes as an independent arbiter of truth. In reality, Snopes are fused to the machine. They are a cog employed in the daily production of groupthink. They exist solely to preserve the established status quo – in all it’s duplicitous and corrupt glory.

[Snopes Caught Lying For Hillary Again, Questions Raised]

Snopes are George Orwell’s Thought Police in action. The Ministry of Truth is using Snopes HQ to control the narrative. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Welcome to a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public manipulation.

On the one hand, Snopes are hapless armchair investigators who keep getting it wrong and don’t know how to run a business. But they are also promoted by huge mainstream media outlets, and given special rights by Facebook and Google. These jumped-up amateurs with an agenda are a danger to our society.