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How many times have you heard some urban legend, chain letter or misleading bit of news repeated and immediately found a thorough, fact-based debunking on Snopes? Like every damn day for the last 20 years or so, right? Snopes was there for you when you were looking up fake news and cryptids ? but it?s in trouble, and asking you to return the favor.

The venerable fact-checking site is in the middle of an ownership dispute, and it?s looking for donations to keep the lights on in the meantime. The site?s blog describes the situation thus:

But wading into the lawsuit and counter-lawsuit filed earlier this year, it?s clear things are far from straightforward, even if Snopes appears (warning: I am not a lawyer) to be? well, if not in the right, then perhaps less in the wrong. Here?s the story, as far as I can tell.

Snopes was founded in 1995 by David Mikkelson and Barbara Mikkelson, and ownership formalized in 2003 in Bardav Inc (Get it? Barbara + David = Bardav). Each had one share of the company. But in 2014 the two began divorce proceedings, which would of course necessitate negotiating ownership of their company and Snopes.

In August of 2015, Snopes entered a revenue-share/content and ad management agreement with a company called Proper Media, formed earlier that very year. In early 2016, Proper arranged to buy Barbara?s share of Bardav, replacing her as co-owner of the company. David Mikkelson attempted to kill the contract in spring of 2017 (wouldn?t you?), but Proper resisted, saying the terms of said contract were not fulfilled. In the meantime, it is apparently holding onto the site?s revenue and parts of its infrastructure.

Continued https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/24/sn...ership-battle/

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