In a rather odd turn of events, David Mikkelson, the owner of the fact-checking site Snopes.com has announced he's partially lost control of the the site
https://www.gofundme.com/savesnopes
More details from the NYT:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/24/business/media/snopes-crowdfunding-proper-media.html
More details here:
https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/24/snopes-seeks-crowdfunding-in-ownership-battle/
The legal dispute seems rather tangled. Snopes already took something of a credibility hit from tabloid coverage of Mikkelson's divorce. It's probable the anti-Snopes crowd will be quick to exploit these new problems.
Documents:
Original Complaint:
https://www.metabunk.org/attachments/snopes-complaint-pdf.27922/
Response from David Mikkelson:
https://www.metabunk.org/attachment...8-17_cross_complaint_1500945341220-pdf.27919/
57 07/24/17 Defendant David Mikkelson's Opposition to Plaintiff's Motion for Preliminary Injunction
https://www.metabunk.org/attachment...position_to_plaintif_1500942570695-pdf.27918/
https://www.gofundme.com/savesnopes
We had previously contracted with an outside vendor to provide certain services for Snopes.com. That contractual relationship ended earlier this year, but the vendor will not acknowledge the change in contractual status and continues to essentially hold the Snopes.com web site hostage. Although we maintain editorial control (for now), the vendor will not relinquish the site’s hosting to our control, so we cannot modify the site, develop it, or — most crucially — place advertising on it. The vendor continues to insert their own ads and has been withholding the advertising revenue from us.
More details from the NYT:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/24/business/media/snopes-crowdfunding-proper-media.html
(lots more detail in the link)
The site, which gets all of its revenue from advertising, created a crowdfunding page on Monday, seeking $500,000 from readers to remain operational indefinitely. It says that Proper Media, the vendor that runs its advertising services, has withheld the site’s revenue and has refused to relinquish control of the site. That leaves Bardav — the company that owns and operates Snopes — with no way of moving the site to a new host or installing its own ads, said David Mikkelson, a founder of the site.
“We have had no income whatsoever for the last several months,” Mr. Mikkelson said in an interview on Monday.
When asked how long the site could last without a successful fund-raising drive or legal victory, Mr. Mikkelson responded: “Not a whole lot longer.”
Proper Media and its lawyers tell a starkly different story. They say that Snopes employees will continue to be paid from the advertising revenue, and that Mr. Mikkelson should be removed from the company because of wasteful spending.
More details here:
https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/24/snopes-seeks-crowdfunding-in-ownership-battle/
What's interesting here is that Mikkelson has already managed to raise $272K in just 10 hours!
I spoke with Snopes’s David Mikkelson about the situation. He contests just about everything alleged by Proper, including the idea that it owns half of Bardav and Snopes.
“The position we were in was, we had this popular website but outdated architecture,” which he hired Proper to help modernize. “It’s not like we were having financial problems, but as long as I was basically running the entire operation there was no way we were going to grow.” 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.
The legal dispute seems rather tangled. Snopes already took something of a credibility hit from tabloid coverage of Mikkelson's divorce. It's probable the anti-Snopes crowd will be quick to exploit these new problems.
Documents:
Original Complaint:
https://www.metabunk.org/attachments/snopes-complaint-pdf.27922/
Response from David Mikkelson:
https://www.metabunk.org/attachment...8-17_cross_complaint_1500945341220-pdf.27919/
57 07/24/17 Defendant David Mikkelson's Opposition to Plaintiff's Motion for Preliminary Injunction
https://www.metabunk.org/attachment...position_to_plaintif_1500942570695-pdf.27918/
Attachments
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