Was Snopes entirely funded by Facebook or was that just one part of their operating budget? $100k/year for 16 people is not even minimum wage.
On one hand it’s basically paying them for what they were already doing, but it sounds like Facebook make it kind of a pain for them to actually do the job and refuse to play nice with the rest of the Internet. On the other hand $100k is way less than the bad actors people are paying to promote their agenda on Facebook. Theoretically Facebook could use the information to make the troll’s more difficult by shutting down their web of accounts, but it sounds like they weren’t really commited with the partnership with Snopes, and probably worried about backlash from the “legitimate” sharers that just happen to be ideologically in-line with the messages that were being pushed. You would definitely see articles about how Facebook is targeting freedom loving Americans and shutting down their accounts for no apparent reason (other than of course the constant shares of disinformation that they 100% believe).
