Comment on The Tesseract Lemmy app shows a news source ranking from MBFC
Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works 5 days agoThese are all valid points but they don’t preclude the existence of an open-source alternative to MBFC, which is what the commenter you replied to was asking.
Eldritch@lemmy.world 5 days ago
I never implied that it did. Go ahead and make one. It will always do as much or more damage than it will ever do good. That’s the point. There’s bias in everything. Trusting someone else’s bias to accurately convey the bias of something else, isn’t making you more informed or a better consumer of media. Not in any meaningful way. Not in the way basic critical thinking skills can. It’s just a game of bias telephone. And if you know how the game telephone goes. It should give you an indication to its efficacy.
It’s not hard. There are some basic steps anyone can take to get started. Do not tolerate those who are intolerant of who someone is. Whether it’s ethnicity or sexuality. If accusations are being made against groups. Especially ones that you have very little experience or contact with. Put yourself in that situation. Think about how you would go about things. Because that’s more than likely how they would as well. And for everything else, especially things that are either hard science or factually based. Simply differ to the people who make it their life to study and understand those things. But never give their opinions outside of that field any weight.
Just those few basic things can illuminate a lot of bias and malintent. Leave you far more guarded and protected against misinformation and bias in the future. Which along with basic intellectual curiosity. Something most people have largely never valued. Will serve you far better than any app. Because the Insidious part about misinformation. Is that there’s often some amount of Truth to it. Whether it’s wrong because of malice or because of bias. Critical thinking and intellectual curiosity will always better serve you.
ArtificialHoldings@lemmy.world 5 days ago
There is too much information to process for any one person to just use their critical thinking skills to fact check a news organization as large as CNN, much less every major news organization. No, it’s not enough to teach critical thinking skills and hope every person is able to discern bias in the media they consume, because you’re asking for extremely domain-specific skills and legwork that a single consumer just isn’t capable of.
Eldritch@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Not really. No more than in the past. The difference is the 24/7 firehose of propaganda and indoctrination. The solution is to step away from the firehouse. Focus on the things that actually impact you. Or that you can influence. If someone is telling you to be afraid of people that you don’t know, have never met, or ever had contact with. Ignore them and tune them out. It’s legitimately that simple.