Badger's Law



Badger's Law states that the content of any website which contains the word "truth" in its name or URL contains anything but that. The law states:

Websites with the word "Truth" in the URL have none in the posted content.

In practice, this means that websites with this word in their name and/or URL can be considered webshites. Citing such webshites as a credible source is in turn a violation of Scopie's Law. WorldTruth.TV is a prime example of this.

Badger's Law can less-reliably be applied to book and film titles, for example yes to the book The Truth About Hillary and yes to Alex Jones' film The 9/11 Chronicles Part One: Truth Rising, but no to the film An Inconvenient Truth and no to the book Truth: A Brief History of Total Bullsh*t.

Origins
The law was named for a badger meme that was posted in April 2016 on Facebook by the admin of the page "Genetically Modified Humans for Monsanto" and has since quickly been taken over by other pro-science pages.

Extension
Badger's Law also seems to apply in the cases of certain other words:
 * Variations and derivations of the word "truth", as in Rick Wiles' TRUNEWS.com, or the Latin "Veritas", for example in Project Veritas.
 * "Natural", as in NaturalNews.com.
 * "Freedom", "Patriot", and "liberty", as in the American Freedom Coalition, Patriot Mobile, or Liberty Counsel.

Prevalence in the clogosphere
A scan of the questionable sources presented at Media Bias/Fact Check reveals many examples of Badger's Law. These webshites are all noted for extremist viewpoints and employ a full range of tactics typical of extremism: clickbait headlines, hate speech, lack of transparency, pseudoscience, political propaganda, conspiracy theories, and fake news. Examples include:


 * American Truth Today: A hyper-partisan extreme right conservative webshite that completely lacks transparency. Appears to be a personal blog run by someone named Jim Hayek.


 * Americans for Truth About Homosexuality: A far-right extremist webshite that "seeks to apply the same single-minded determination to opposing the radical homosexual agenda and standing for God-ordained sexuality and the natural family as countless homosexual groups do in promoting their harmful agenda."


 * Blunt Force Truth: A blog hosted by long-time game show host Chuck Woolery. Extreme far-right bias, promotion of propaganda and conspiracy theories, republishes news from other hyper-partisan conservative sources.


 * Grain of Truth: A far-right conservative news and opinion blog based somewhere in Canada. This webshite completely lacks transparency, as there isn’t an about page, authors are not named, and ownership is not disclosed.


 * Gozilla of Truth: An extremist pro-Trump radio show featuring Trump talk and lots of commercials for supplements, woo, and junk cell phone service, targeting paranoid right wingers.


 * Stone Cold Truth: Roger Stone's personal blog. Content is poorly sourced, marginally factual, and oozes conspiracy theories. Clearly, it is the brain-faeces of a paranoid moron.


 * The Truth Voice: An extreme-right anti-Islam webshite, part of a network of webshites that all publish negative stories toward Islam and attempt to paint a picture of Muslims as murderous and violent.


 * Truth and Action: An extreme right wing webshite that caters content to preppers, gun nuts, and survivalists with healthy doses of conspiracy theories and pseudoscience.


 * Truth Examiner: A far-left sensationalized "news" and opinion webshite full of clickbait headlines and poorly sourced information. Now offline.


 * Truth in Media: A webshite owned by American television personality Benjamin Swann, that specializes in pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. Promoted the Sandy Hook and Pizzagate conspiracies, and spread false information related to the COVID-19 pandemic.


 * Truth Social: The social media site by Donald Trump that crumbled badly when it launched in February 2022. If it ends up anything like every single thing Donald Trump has ever done, it's safe to say that it won't contain much truth.


 * Truth Uncensored: An extreme far-right webshite featuring clickbait headlines, propaganda, and regurgitating crap from other questionable sources. Earned a misleading claim from Snopes.


 * TruthGPT: A ChatGPT competitor dreamt up by Elon Musk that "tries to understand the universe", which he mentioned after criticising the perceived "wokeness" of AI chatbots like ChatGPT. Given the basic nature of GPT in general as a type of large language model, Musk's description is nonsensical technobabble, as an LLM has no mind, no agency, and no concept of truth vs. falsehood.
 * As of 2023, the website has a mascot that could be described as vaguely looking like a robo-badger, and seems to be built primarily around trading cryptocurrency (including "$TRUTH") and NFTs, rather than providing information (truthful or otherwise).

Examples of Badger's Law have a big presence in alternative media. One can easily spin the dial of a shortwave radio and come across such examples as:


 * Beacon of Truth: Evangelistic religious organization with a large footprint on shortwave radio.


 * Beautiful Truth: A 9/11 truther that spent hours on end babbling about 9/11 conspiracy theories.


 * Herald of Truth: Thinly veiled white supremacy screeds masquerading as Christian religious content.


 * Radio Free Truth: A pretentious blowhard foisting his fundamentalist viewpoints onto the airwaves.


 * Stairway Truth: An obscure preacher from Tennessee.


 * Table of Truth: "Brother Ben" presents a weird take on oddball religious fundamentalism. Seems to be weirdly fixated on Brother Stair.


 * Truth, Light, and Life: An "international" ministry using radio to bore the hell out of people.

Possible exceptions
Note that Badger's Law has exceptions; in particular, it does not apply recursively (for example, "example.com/blog/my-experience-with-foobartruth-dot-org" is probably an acceptable primary source about "foobartruth.org"). It applies less strongly when the URL is in the form of a question ("example.com/blog/is-frank-telling-the-truth-about-his-encounter-with-mr-badger"), as many such cases fall under the scope of Betteridge's law.

Exceptions to the rule


More seriously, there are actually some exceptions to the rule.


 * The Truth About Guns (except their pro-gun position).
 * Exposing the Truth (in spite of their silly name).
 * The Elkhart Truth.
 * Citizen Truth.
 * Truthdig.
 * Truth Initiative (U.S. anti-tobacco advocacy charity)