Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Snopes funded by Adware - not a hoax

I wrote Snopes a "thank you letter" yesterday, telling them how I appreciate their debunking service, and inquired why they do it? since I've not seen ads on their site. Are they funded by a billionaire or something? I got back a form letter, that basically just had web links to stories praising them - it didn't answer my question. So I started Googling "Snopes funded by" ... and after wading through the BS where Republicans accused Obama of funding Snopes last year (LOL! what a bunch of whining sore losers!) I found several web rants of software / web designer type guys who curse Snopes for their malicious pop-up ads.

Pop-up ads? Huh? Since I installed Ad Blocker Plus on my Mozilla Firefox, I've not seen a pop-up ad in years. So perhaps the Adware accusations are true - link to Snopes's own forum here, where their fans complained. But if you run a capable browser - anything that is not "Internet Explorer" then you're much more immune to the insidious machinations, and still have access to the most comprehensive hoax / urban legends / debunking web database around.

Break The Chain and Hoaxbusters (.com [French] and .org [US]) are ok too... but Snopes usually has more depth, and is easier to search. Also, Politifact and FactCheck.org are mighty handy.

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