Snopes, debunker of fake news, is locked in a nasty legal dispute

David Mikkelson, founder of Snopes, the site that tracks fakery on the web, in his home office in a nearly 100-year old home in Tacoma, Wash. on Sept. 25, 2018. (Greg Gilbert/Seattle Times/TNS)

After more than two decades battling Internet hoaxes, retouched photos, and other fake news, David Mikkelson, co-founder of Snopes, faces a much larger and more existential adversary. 

Since 2017, Mikkelson has been locked in a nasty legal dispute with former business associates over control of Snopes, the pioneering fact-checking website that Mikkelson launched with a former wife in 1994 and which he now runs with his current wife from their house in Tacoma, Wash.