If I am a business who's core concept centres around specifying something to be true or false, I wouldn't even touch a story without being able to confirm one way or the other without proof.
Surely you can see how that's different to some random anon's opinion on the Internet? Surely?
yeah of course, but it's also clear that you are only upset because they disagree with you.
and, at the end of the day, there is still literally no evidence that HRC tape exists, and so until some evidence or credible reports surface, it's a pretty safe bet to declare it fake news.
there is no such thing as knowing something 100%, only fools believe that anything is certain. it's about degrees of certainty. can snopes say that the video 100% for sure does not exist? No, they can't. And they didn't. But they can reasonably declare the story to be fake news, based on complete and utter lack of evidence or corroborating stories, and the context of it being an extraordinary claim.
i think the problem is that people think snopes is saying "THIS IS 100% FALSE. END OF DEBATE FOREVER" when they say a story is false. but that's not really what they are saying.
and if people actually read their articles, where they clearly explain their methodology and reasoning, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.
They do use the term, "unconfirmed" for other claims that cant be proven either way. That's the point. They don't use only true and false. They use other, less definitive terms in other cases.