Did the fact-checking website Snopes rate as "Mostly False" the claim that pornographic videos of Hunter Biden have been leaked online? No, that's not true: Snopes never wrote that article. The screenshot that makes the claim that Snopes wrote this debunk is doctored.
The claim appeared in a Facebook post (archived here) published by "Iraqveteran8888" on October 25, 2020, with the following caption:
To be completely transparent though...grabbing a woman by the *ussy IS "deviant" behavior though.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Oct 26 14:18:09 2020 UTC)
Snopes staffers confirmed that this article never existed. "No, we did not run any such article," said David Mikkelson, the founder and executive editor of Snopes and the name in the fake byline of the screenshot. "No, we did not publish that article," said Dan Evon, a Snopes reporter who has written about the motivations for these fake Snopes screenshots.
Although the fake screenshot sticks to the Snopes format used in all the site's articles, the veneer of authenticity of the screenshot is betrayed by the "What's False" section which reads:
We consulted with several crack addicts who said the amount of crack Biden was smoking was 'typical' and not 'copious'. Additionally, we at Snopes do not believe there is such a thing as 'deviant' sexual behavior, therefore we rate this claim as mostly false.
Over the last few weeks, there have been multiple threads on the anonymous internet forum, 4chan, encouraging people to spread fake Snopes fact checks, including a thread that features this latest one on Hunter Biden.
This is not the first time fake screenshots of nonexistent Snopes articles have circulated online. Earlier this month Lead Stories debunked a very similar claim about a fake Snopes article on Hunter Biden. These fake Snopes articles are a part of something called "Operation Snopes-Piercer" which is aims to use doctored Snopes screenshots to trick people into thinking that Snopes' authentic fact-checks cannot be trusted.
