Why are people downvoting the MediaBiasFactChecker not?

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨otp@sh.itjust.works⁩ to ⁨nostupidquestions@lemmy.world⁩

I know MediaBiasFactCheck is not a be-all-end-all to truth/bias in media, but I find it to be a useful resource.

It makes sense to downvote it in posts that have great discussion – let the content rise up so people can have discussions with humans, sure.

But sometimes I see it getting downvoted when it’s the only comment there. Which does nothing, unless a reader has rules that automatically hide downvoted comments (but a reader would be able to expand the comment anyways…so really no difference).

What’s the point of downvoting? My only guess is that there’s people who are salty about something it said about some source they like. Yet I don’t see anyone providing an alternative to MediaBiasFactCheck…

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FuglyDuck@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

What’s the point of downvoting? My only guess is that there’s people who are salty about something it said about some source they like. Yet I don’t see anyone providing an alternative to MediaBiasFactCheck…

To express dissatisfaction.

There’s a lot of people that view the MBFC reports as themselves being biased, and to be fair, their process for generating the reports are opaque as fucking hell so we have no way to know how biased or not they are.

it’s also kinda spammy, and- IMO- not really all that useful.

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- just2look@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Why do you say they’re opaque? They detail the history of the publication, the ownership, their analysis of bias within their reporting, and give examples of failed fact checks. I’m not sure what else you could want about how a publication is rated? I’m not saying it’s perfect, but they seem to be putting a solid effort into explaining how they arrive at the ratings they give.
  
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  - FuglyDuck@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Because their methodology is nothing but buzzwords:
    
    The primary aim of our methodology is to systematically evaluate the ideological leanings and factual accuracy of media and information outlets. This is achieved through a multi-faceted approach that incorporates both quantitative metrics and qualitative assessments in accordance with our rigorously defined criteria.
    
    Despite apparently having “rigorously defined criteria”, they don’t actually say what they are.
    
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mashbooq@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I lost all confidence in it when it rated Jerusalem Post and Euronews (associated with Viktor Orban) as “highly reliable”. Both push the pro-fascist narratives of their associated governments. It’s better to have no labeling than to label fascist propaganda as “highly reliable”

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- FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Any the branding of anything that is impartial as left center?? Like BBC News, Axios, Yahoo News, Sports Illustrated, left center??
  
  And then the fucking economist which supported the UK conservatives not long ago and supported Bush is branded as left center
  
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  - zazo@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Same reason I don’t trust it - imagine rating fking BBC (the literal pro-state violence, austerity supporting, anti-immigration governmental mouth piece as “left-center”)
    
    It just distorts people’s perception of what political biases are and makes them complacent by relying on an automated bot to do the important work of using your own judgment for what constitutes as moral or justified.
    
    By letting it platform itself on lemmy, it’s basically inserting itself as the de facto expert on the topic - so for example, people overseas might see BBC rated as left-center and highly factual and start believing that wanting to “secure your borders” is a thing that UK leftist want. Well excuse me if I don’t want a privately owned (even if open source) US company deciding what political views others should have.
    
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- PrivateNoob@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Fucking hell even Euronews is controlled by Orbán? Ffs there is truly no free media here other than RTL.
  
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  - PolyLlamaRous@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Any thoughts on TLDR (Youtube channel)?
    
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Hegar@fedia.io ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I down voted, argued against and the blocked it because:

I don't trust its specific analysis of sites. Others detail some examples.

I don't think whole-site analysis is very useful in combatting misinformation. The reliability and fullness of facts presented by any single site varies a lot depending on the topic or type of story.

Other than identifying blatant disinformation sites I don't see what useful information it provides. But even that's rare here and rarely needs a bot to spot.

Why is an open-source, de-centralized platform giving free space to a private company?

Giving permission for a private trust-assesing company to be operating in an open public forum makes it look as if these assessments reflected a neutral reality that most or all readers would agree on or want to be aware of. Really, it's a service that people can seek out of they decide they trust it.

Presenting this company's assessment on each or most articles gives them undue authority that is especially inappropriate on the fediverse.
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- scrion@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Thank you, those are the precise point that summarize my gripes with it. In particular, I feel it encourages people to perceive it as an authoritative source and to form their opinions on sites it rates (often wrongly) without additional thinking / fact checking.
  
  It’s basically a company propaganda tool that can change its own option and ratings any time, influencing others in the process.
  
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- Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Good summary. I think the first point is the most concerning because it’s actively spreading misinformation and giving the appearance of credibility.
  
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- otp@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Those are some great points. I do wish we had something better. But I find it to be “good enough” for when it’s a source I’m unfamiliar with.
  
  Can’t quite say I have the time or motivation to start reading a bunch of other articles from a given source when I’m concerned about its credibility.
  
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  - Hegar@fedia.io ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    TBH, I just don't think something better is possible - I suspect that there are no valid shortcuts to trust.
    
    Unless something is just obviously bullshit, it will always take some time to develop a sense of how the different sources are treating a new story. Even a trusted source can prove unreliable on a particular topic.
    
    It's uncomfortable living with that uncertainty until you've seen a story from enough angles that you can judge for yourself. But either the story is important enough to me to spend that time, or I just accept that I can't really know.
    
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Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
MBFC itself is biased and unreliable. On purpose or not it’s system has the effect of pushing the GOP narrative that mainstream news is all leftist propaganda while right wing propaganda is normal. It does this by not having a center category and by misusing the center lean categories it does have.

So for example national papers with recognized excellence in objective reporting are all center left. And then on center right, you have stuff like the Ayn Rand Institute. Which is literally a lobbying organization.

Not having an alternative isn’t an excuse to keep using something that provides bad information.

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- PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yeah, the Overton window has been pushed so far right that neutral sources with no added opinion are now considered center-left.
  
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  - Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I think the bigger problem with MBFC is they don’t have a center category. Until they get one they are forcing themselves to present all news as biased one way or the other. Leaving no room for news organizations that are highly objective.
    
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  - davidagain@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Reality has a left wing bias.
    
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- OlinOfTheHillPeople@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It also seems to ignore most of the posts that it could actually be helpful on. Like no-name blogs and Fox News.
  
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- Carrolade@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The Ayn Rand Institute actually is center right. They promote strictly free market capitalism, of the laissez-faire variety. This is distinct from any sort of ethno/religious-nationalist position you’d find on what we’d call the far right, espoused by groups like Praeger.
  
  Regarding the newspapers, if they tend to endorse dems in elections, it’d be difficult to argue that they don’t tend to editorially lean at least slightly left.
  
  Note, a lean does not make something misinformation. If someone thinks that center-left means leftist propaganda, that is their mistake in thinking. That does not mean a bias rating service should recategorize everything to fit a left-is-center perspective, failing to take into account wherever the current national overton window happens to sit.
  
  We should want analysis to be from the perspective of a typical fast food eating, reality tv watching, not-super-engaged American if we can manage that, so we can see the breadth of American perspectives in relation to each other. Not some activist-driven wish to reframe America to fit our own perspectives on the truth, regardless of how we may feel about the current sociopolitical environment. Otherwise we risk simply reinforcing our own media bubbles and steadily weakening our own ability to come up with arguments our opposition may potentially find convincing.
  
  Note, it’s important to remember that center does not necessarily mean good. It just means center-for-America. In our current situation, center is not a very good place to be at all, imo at least. I mean, you’re halfway to Donald Trump if you’re in the center. Not good.
  
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  - Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The libertarian, “drown the government in the bathtub” group are centrists now?
    
    Are you serious? Social issues aren’t the only thing you can swing left and right on. This is a massive pro corporate blindspot if MBFC continues that as a trend.
    
    Nobody is saying lean makes something misinformation. We’re saying the way the categories are used deceives, “a typical fast food eating, reality tv watching, not-super-engaged American” into believing good objective sources are running biased articles.
    
    And the American left is the center in the rest of the world. Playing into the American idea of centrism only makes the project biased, not some high minded goal. That’s some of that good exceptionalism propaganda.
    
    And reframing things to fit our own perspective? From the person defending the end of the federal government as a centrist position.
    
    You put a lot of high minded stuff in there but it comes down to American Exceptionalism trying to force its views on the rest of the world and a shit take on enlightened centrism. The facts on the ground are clear. MBFC plays favorites for conservatives.
    
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  - awesome_lowlander@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    We should want analysis to be from the perspective of a typical fast food eating, reality tv watching, not-super-engaged American
    
    Why? Lemmy is a worldwide site.
    
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- glizzard@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Same reason sites like Ground News also upset me. Like “yeah sure I totally needed to read that HUNTER BIDEN is absolutely the reason the Democrats are evil totally makes sense oh yeah”, like nah sometimes we can just say these people are massive hypocrites and their opinions and news are literally not factual or useful or important
  
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  - Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’m not going to be surprised when we find out MBFC and Ground News were actually info ops from corporations.
    
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- otp@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I wouldn’t call it bad information. As a non-American, I just read it as “American left”.
  
  “Centre-left” combined with “Factual Reporting” basically means “grounded in reality”, lol
  
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  - Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The problem is many people aren’t tuned into political ideology. The second they see left or right they sort it by their internal bias. So it’s whitewashing a lot of conservative European sources. It’s also rating American far right positions as center right, so absolutely whitewashing them, even for someone who understands MBFC is an American site with American prejudices.
    
    Honestly I’m surprised they’ve lasted 8 years without this getting called out, it fairly should fairly well jump out at anyone who has studied politics.
    
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xmunk@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Some people are pissed that the format is spammy? That’s the complaint I’ve heard.

I’d certainly prefer something like post tagging/labels but within the current feature set of lemmy I think it’s about as good as it could be.

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- ShepherdPie@midwest.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  That’s my gripe with it. Its single comment fills the entire screen of my phone when scrolling past and it uses gigantic font, a big separator line (?), and links mixed with text mixed with more links.
  
  Additionally, it fucks with the “new comment” and “hot” sorting, depending on how active Lemmy is at the time, by spamming post after post with a comment even though there is no actual discussion happening.
  
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  - NewNewAccount@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    You should use a client that supports all of the text formatting. On Voyager the bot’s comment is smaller than most when collapsed (which it is by default).
    
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  - idiomaddict@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    And because it uses spoilers, when I click it to collapse the comment, it just expands
    
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  - AnActOfCreation@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    What client do you use? It looks fine in Thunder. (I agree it’s spammy in general, but not because of the formatting.)
    
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- Don_Dickle@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I have never seen a bot that does good. Got sick of them on reddit and other sites. So when I see it here which is my safe haven. I will downvote or report it because it has not place here.
  
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  - mp3@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Or you can just block it to hide it…
    
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  - MindTraveller@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I like the converts to metric bot on Reddit
    
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  - Carrolade@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    !remindme 1 week
    
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  - Pika@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    out of personal curiosity, are you seeing this with the bots setting turned off? I thought that setting was a universal setting that just hide all bot posts for the account
    
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morphballganon@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Because it’s biased, takes up too much space, provides nothing of value, and its posts are by definition low effort.

For me to like a bot requires it provides something of value, be unbiased, and doesn’t take up too much space.

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laughterlaughter@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
To me, bots are just noise if not summoned directly. Like when you’re having a conversation with your friend, then a loud roomba comes in and tries to clean the very space you’re sitting at.

“Hey bot, tell me facts about the article OP posted.”

“Sure! [etc, etc]”

Versus:

“HEY I KNOW YOU HAVEN’T ADDRESSED ME DIRECTLY BUT YOU SAID THE WORD ‘BUTT’ 17 TIMES TODAY!”

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- Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It’s annoying when they are the first comment.
  
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- Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  i’d appreciate a “butt” counter bot way more
  
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- otp@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  That’s fair. I like having this bot as a sort of “auto-tag” thing, even if it’s not being summoned manually each time.
  
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BallsandBayonets@lemmings.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It said MSNBC had a leftist bias. The bot, and by extension its developers, have as much credibility as your Fox News watching uncle who calls everything they don’t like “communism”.

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- ThrowawayPermanente@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  MSNBC is left wing! I can understand objecting to sone of the others but this one is clear as day.
  
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  - StupidBrotherInLaw@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’m 99% certain you’re from the United States if you think MSNBC is anything beyond center to center left.
    
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  - Urist@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    We seem to have a different opinion of what is left-wing and what is not. I do not think the Democratic party is left-wing at all. It is centre-right to right (with the Republican party being far-right).
    
    I know of none American left-wing news outlets and the only left-wing bias I know of is truth.
    
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treadful@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I for one, appreciate it.

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- Lemminary@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Same here, it’s becoming a habit to check every source.
  
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aleph@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I used to be a fan of it, but in the past few years I’ve seen MBFC rate sources as “highly credible” that are anything but, particularly on issues involving geopolitics. That, plus the inherent unreliability of putting a media source at a fixed point on a simple Left <> Right spectrum, has rendered it pretty useless, in my opinion.

There days I’m much more of the opinion that it’s best to read a variety of sources, both mainstream and independent, and consider factors like

is this information well-sourced?

is there any obvious missing context?

is this information up to date?

what are the likely ideological biases of this writer or publication?

What is the quality of the evidence provided to support the claims made in the article?

And so on instead of outsourcing your critical thinking to a third party who may be using a flawed methodology.
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- Wrench@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I find it useful at a glance, specifically when I don’t recognize a niche source. There’s a lot of “alt” media under random names. This helps flag them.
  
  For mainstream, you can easily make your own call. You should be exposed to enough of it.
  
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- Artisian@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Would you then be posting your conclusions? Like, if you’re gonna do that work on some of these posts anyway… may as well share.
  
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  - aleph@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    When I was on in Reddit I used to do it all the time, but writing everything out, organizing it and including citations etc. can be rather time-intensive.
    
    These days, I’ll leave a quick comment on a post if I have enough time, but nothing major.
    
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BradleyUffner@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It’s too much noise. Its posts are huge and take up way too much space.

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- Rooki@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  You blocked it or? We reduced the size by over 50% already.
  
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  - BradleyUffner@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I blocked it a few months back.
    
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- DerisionConsulting@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The posts are 4 lines unless you are using an AP that fails at displaying spoilers.
  
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  - FarFarAway@startrek.website ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The posts are 4 lines but when each comment includes 3 or 4 sources it checks, you end up with a giant block of spoiler text that usually takes up abput a full screen. (Sometimes less, sometimes more)
    
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PanArab@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It suggested Al Jazeera has a leftist bias, despite Al Jazeera being funder by Qatar the furthest thing from being a leftist government.

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- gigachad@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I guess that is also a shortcoming of the left/right scale. Al Jazeera is super popular among leftists on Lemmy, as they do a lot of Anti-Israel propaganda.
  
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  - PanArab@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It is not propaganda if it is true. Al Jazeera has journalists on the ground and many of them have been killed by Israeli forces.
    
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- GoodEye8@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The Al Jazeera and Fox News comparison is why I don’t trust that site. I don’t think Al Jazeera isn’t a biased organization, but I do consider them somewhat factual. I also think I’m not the only one because you often see people linking to Al Jazeera. However when it comes to Fox News I think most people would agree that Fox news is far from accurate. It’s not exactly Newsmax, but if someone linked Fox News I think most people would definitely question the facts of the article.
  
  And then we get to mediabiasfactcheck where Al Jazeera is considered just as factual as Fox News. It’s one of those situations where you have to question who exactly is in the wrong? Is Al Jazeera really that factually incorrect? Is Fox news more factual than people believe? Or is mediabiasfactcheck wrong? I’m not against being wrong but from my years of being on the web I’d say it’s the last option.
  
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  - otp@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I understand that Fox News has so many subsidiaries that might be muddying the “overall” rating. But I agree with you. I’d trust Al Jazeera over Fox News any day.
    
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- Resol@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  They had a children’s channel that unfortunately no longer exists. I was lucky enough to watch it when I had the chance.
  
  Yes, it was THAT Al Jazeera.
  
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  - PanArab@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I didn’t know that. You are not thinking of Spacetoon by neighboring Bahrain? The two countries 🇧🇭🇶🇦 can get easily confused. If Al Jazeera did have a kids channel it is news to me.
    
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rtxn@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
IIRC, it lists a zionist/anti-Palestine news website as highly trustworthy.

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- AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Sites can be biased and tendentious without being factually inaccurate, though.
  
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  - my_hat_stinks@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It’s possible to factually accurate with heavy bias, but since that would require selective reporting to enforce a single worldview I wouldn’t consider that “highly trustworthy”.
    
    Consider the following hypothetical headlines:
    “Teen Killed by Islamic Group During Shooting”
    “Terrorist Shooting at Mosque, 20 Dead”
    
    Both are technically factually accurate ways to describe a hypothetical scenario where a teen shoots up a place of worship before being stopped by one of the victims, but they both paint very different pictures. Would you consider both sources “highly trustworthy”?
    
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  - rtxn@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’m not saying they can’t. I’m referring to a point that was championed in many a post by some .ml figures calling for the bot’s decommissioning. I don’t use the site (can’t even recall its name), and can’t speak for its credibility.
    
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- hddsx@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  What does Zionist mean? It hasn’t affected my life enough to actually look it up but I see it on every other article in the Israel/Palestine conflict.
  
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  - FuglyDuck@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    wikipedia has a fairly neutral argument on it.
    
    Today, it usually refers to one of two groups- the far right political faction in Israel that believe there can be no peace with a two state solution (i.e. no Palestine,) and that it’s their god-given right to murder all palestinians to acheive peace…
    
    Or the christian zionists that support them because their own faith says their god won’t come to save them until they- the jews- rebuild their temple. or something. Fundies get weird.
    
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Randomgal@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Trash. Bot. Is trying to take control of the narrative on Lemmy.

Those are my 3 reasons.

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Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I do because I shouldn’t even see bots due to my Lemmy settings. Whoever controls it needs to actually flag the fucking thing as a bot.

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- Pika@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  it is flagged as a bot, it has the bot tag on the account if you look at its profile
  
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- corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  So it gets it wrong sometimes. It’s gonna.
  
  I agree that it needs to be flagged as a bot if it’s not already though. Excellent point.
  
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SpeakinTelnet@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
“Oh, this new post already has a comment, let’s check it out! … Dang it!”

After the third or fourth time it’s just spammy, and the bot formatting just doesn’t work on connect.

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- goldteeth@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  “Oh, this new post already has a comment, let’s check it out! … Dang it!”
  
  That’s pretty much my gripe. One time I saw a post with maybe six, seven comments, opened it up, and they were all either the bot, or replies to the bot.
  
  And even if you block the bot the post still shows up as having comments. So you’ll open up a post boasting the aforementioned six or seven comments expecting to find a lively debate, or at least a wisecrack about global affairs, and leave with a bunch of tumbleweeds and the lingering knowledge that somewhere, two or more people are arguing with a machine about whether or not it thinks the newspaper is any good.
  
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  - mp3@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It would be nice if bot comments weren’t counted, at least as an option.
    
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- mp3@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  the bot formatting just doesn’t work on connect.
  
  That fault lies with the Connect dev though… the formatting used on the webUI works as intended.
  
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  - SpeakinTelnet@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Probably, still remains that out of all the bots I’ve seen this is the only one with format issues. I believe a minimalist approach to be preferable for bots since their goal is spreading information over a large userbase with various client, from CLI to native web page.
    
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gothic_lemons@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Thanks everyone for your comments and information. Thank you OP for making this thread. I will now begin downvoting MediaBiasFactCheck bot

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Raffster@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
So that bot claims fact already in it’s name. I learned to check facts myself. I will never trust automation to do that for me. Also Bias and fact are two things that don’t go well together. One is measurable the other not at all. And the downvote is for anything I want to see less of.

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Linkerbaan@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
MBFC is ran by a Zionist. For more info see lemmy.world/post/18245990

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Routhinator@startrek.website ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I downvote it when its opinion is clearly wack. Like when it tries to give Washington Post a highly trusted rating after all the inflammatory, biased shit they’ve been putting out.

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leftzero@lemmynsfw.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It labels anything left of outright fascism as “left biased”.

It’s misinformation malware intended to shift the overton window even further right than it already is in the US.

And it’s spam.

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ThrowawayPermanente@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It’s like a guy showing up in every thread to say ‘this source is left-wing and/or unreliable!’. He’s right, of course, but as a general rule people are either blind to their own bias, or trying to influence others without it being noticed.

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fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Everyone down voting should read this: mediabiasfactcheck.com/methodology/

And then laugh at this.

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Furbag@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’m inherently distrustful of anything that tries to tell me if a source is biased or not. Who verifies that the bot isn’t also programmed to have an agenda?

I think I’ll just stick to plain old critical thinking skills and evaluate things for myself.

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Nougat@fedia.io ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Because I don’t trust some internet rando’s bot to have my best interests in mind.

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frog_brawler@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It’s biased.

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MindTraveller@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Because fuck Ground News and fuck that spambot

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BestTestInTheWest@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I blocked it because bots are stupid. I hated on reddit that every post always had junk comments from the automod and hope that doesn’t carry over to here.

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andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Too long, doesn’t work right in most apps, makes me think someone commented on the article while there’s only this bot’s post.

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andyburke@fedia.io ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Comment sections are for comments.

This is the fediverse. I feel like these kinds of bots should be emitting something other than a comment, just a generic "metadata" might be good. Then work to get that adopted by the various platforms.

Because comment sections should be a place for people.

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