There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

Blaze ,

Maybe more fit for !yepowertrippinbastards or !fedidrama rather than here?

Five OP ,

If you’d like to see it discussed elsewhere, you’re welcome to cross-post it.

This is part of culture clash between old social media culture and Fediverse norms. If moderators choose to censor this discussion as well, it’s only going to get bigger.

SoJB ,

ITT: liberals finally choosing to discard their last tether to reality because it doesn’t support their nihilist fascism-supporting warped world view

Lemminary ,

A poorly sourced article from @jimmydoreisalefty ?? No way, I’m shocked!

ampersandrew ,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

This is not just a Lemmy problem, as the same thing exists in Reddit, too, but crowd-sourced news sites like these are so problematic at their core that it got me to buy a news subscription to NYT. No, it is not news that JD Vance told his kid to “shut the hell up”.

gigachad ,

“Siding with Marc Zuckerberg” is a pretty shitty argument. They may be evil but that doesn’t mean I oppose every single of their opinion.

I know MBFC is a controversial tool, but there must be some kind of moderation, otherwise you end up like !worldnews

sunzu2 , (edited )

Lemmy.world news and politics subs are over ran by the same brain dead mods from reddit who are either shiti journalists or other "political/narrative" operatives.

Just block and stop engaging... Don't feed these parasites.

Nougat ,

Failed fact checks: none in the last five years

"Left biased."

Exactly.

Lemminary ,

Wait, are you implying that left-leaning sites are less likely to publish misinformation or that MBFC unfairly favors left-leaning sources? I’m confused.

chiisana ,
@chiisana@lemmy.chiisana.net avatar

Looks like a case where poorly sourced article getting removed, with invitation to repost with a more reputable source… so do so with a better source. Or is the underlying article itself leaning too much towards propaganda that there is no more reputable source? and if that is the case, then is it really !news worthy?

Lemminary ,

Nah, it won’t happen because that user is infamous for posting disinformation on this site. He pretends to be a liberal doing this for the benefit of the Lemmiverse, however that logic works out.

barsquid ,

You can tell from the post title. There’s a collection of little propagandists that do nothing other than post disinformation, immediately lash out at any slightly differing opinions, and then go whining in other communities if any mod takes any action about it.

n2burns ,

And to be honest, I’m not a fan of sources reporting on themselves. Even if I considered this a reputable source (I have no opinion on it either way), I would want a third-party article.

helenslunch , (edited )
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

There’s simply no such thing as “nonpartisan fact-checking”. Everyone has a bias, even the “fact checkers”. It’s why the entire concept of “fact checkers” is stupid. If you don’t trust the source reporting the news, why trust the source who’s checking them?

Carighan ,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

In this particular case, it adds to the problem that naturally if you ask one side of a dispute whether they think it’s fair or not, they might be sliiiiiiightly biased…

Five OP ,

I disagree, and that’s part of the reason I’m so strongly opposed to Lemmy.World’s use of Dave Van Zandt’s site in their bot. Fact-checking is an essential tool in fighting the waves of fake news polluting the public discourse. But if that fact-checking is partisan, then it only acerbates the problem of people divided on the basics of a shared reality.

This is why a consortium of fact-checking institutions have joined together to form the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), and laid out a code of principles. You can find a list of signatories as well as vetted organizations on their website. You can read more about those principles here.

MBFC is not a signatory to the IFCN code of principles. As a partisan organization, it violates the standards that journalists have recognized as essential to restoring trust in the veracity of the news. Partisan fact-checking sites are worse than no fact-checking at all. Just like how the proliferation of fake news undermines the authority of journalism, the growing popularity of a fact-checking site by a political hack like Dave M. Van Zandt undermines the authority of non-partisan fact-checking institutions in the public consciousness.

helenslunch , (edited )
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

that’s part of the reason I’m so strongly opposed to Lemmy.World’s use of Dave Van Zandt’s site in their bot

You’re upset because their bot isn’t saying what you want it to say. That’s the problem. This bot is presenting itself as an authority on “facts”, as any “fact-checking” institution will do.

Partisan fact-checking sites are worse than no fact-checking at all.

Once again, there’s no such thing as nonpartisan fact-checking. Ergo, any fact-checking is worse than no fact-checking.

Want to fact-check? You’re gonna have to do it yourself by collecting facts from a variety of sources, because any single publisher or “fact-checking” authority is going to lie or mislead their audience and omit facts that don’t fit their narrative.

Lemminary ,

the entire concept of “fact checkers” is stupid

I get why partisan fact-checking can be problematic but the rest isn’t making sense to me. I feel like you’re saying we shouldn’t bother with fact-checking because the only thing you need to go on is your gut feeling. Many things are demonstrably false and no amount of bias can change that. Besides, fact-checkers have a reputation to uphold.

helenslunch ,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

we shouldn’t bother with fact-checking because the only thing you need to go on is your gut feeling

No, I’m saying you should do your own research, collecting information from a variety of sources. That’s the only way to get the full picture, because any particular news org or “fact checking” source isn’t going to give you that.

Besides, fact-checkers have a reputation to uphold.

As do the people they’re “fact-checking” but it doesn’t stop those people from publishing lies or misleading their audience.

Lemminary ,

That’s the only way to get the full picture, because any particular … “fact checking” source isn’t going to give you that.

I’m not following. Are you suggesting that fact-checkers are responsible for giving you the news too? That’s not their job.

Individuals don’t have the time, energy, or know-how to do proper fact-checking on an entire news site, let alone hundreds of them, to determine if it’s trustworthy overall. We outsource that to people who can. The process is not simple and most likely requires formal training and at the very least a degree in journalism or equivalent to do a proper job. To give you an idea, fact-checking a single claim can take up to 30 minutes or more and there are many claims in one article and you need to check dozens of articles. It’s a monumental task for any one person for questionable results.

And yes, I agree that one should read more than one source. But make sure that you can trust them because they were vetted by various independent groups. This multiple sources argument also goes for the fact-checkers, where they should mostly agree.

As do the people they’re “fact-checking” but it doesn’t stop those people from publishing lies

No, news sources’ interests are vastly different than the fact-checkers’. MBFC is used in research as a benchmark and isn’t profit-driven. And even if it were like NewsGuard, their value proposition is accuracy.

Carrolade ,

I can’t help but notice that Five singles out “lack of transparency” while ignoring “poor sourcing” and “one-sided reporting”. This is a common tactic.

Any responsible journalistic entity should be confirming their sources, and giving any accused a chance to give their own side of a story.

Five OP ,

Where besides Dave’s assessment are you sourcing your information? Isn’t it one-sided to only listen to Dave M. Van Zandt’s opinion without doing additional investigation?

PugJesus ,

The Cradle is trash though. And a defender of the Russian genocide of Ukraine.

Five OP ,

I support Ukrainians against colonization by Russia, but I’m not threatened by journalists who cover the facts from a different perspective from mine.

Can you demonstrate your claim? I did a perfunctory search, and the stories I found involving Russia seem informative and typically even-handed based on the standards of western journalism.

PugJesus ,

I support Ukrainians against colonization by Russia, but I’m not threatened by journalists who cover the facts from a different perspective from mine.

Running interference for the Ukrainian genocide is a bit more than ‘a different perspective’. Like media that claims Israel is still defending itself in Gaza.

thecradle.co/articles-id/23408

It goes on and on like that. I can dig up more if you like.

During my recent vertiginous journey in Donbass tracking Orthodox Christian battalions defending their land, Novorossiya, it became starkly evident that the resistance in these newly liberated Russian republics is fighting much the same battle as their counterparts in West Asia.

Nearly 10 years after Maidan in Kiev, and two years after the start of Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine, the resolve of the resistance has only deepened.

It’s impossible to do full justice to the strength, resilience, and faith of the people of Donbass, who stand on the front line of a US proxy war against Russia. The battle they have been fighting since 2014 has now visibly shed its cover and revealed itself to be, at its core, a cosmic war of the collective West against Russian civilization.

As Russian President Vladimir Putin made very clear during his Tucker Carlson interview seen by one billion people worldwide, Ukraine is part of Russian civilization – even if it is not part of the Russian Federation. So shelling ethnic Russian civilians in Donbass – still ongoing – translates as attacks on Russia.

He shares the same reasoning as Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement, which describes the Israeli genocide in Gaza as one launched against “our people”: people of the lands of Islam.

Just as the rich black soil of Novorossiya is where the “rules-based international order” came to die; the Gaza Strip in West Asia – an ancestral land, Palestine – may ultimately be the site where Zionism will perish. Both the rules-based order and Zionism, after all, are essential constructs of the western unipolar world and key to advancing its global economic and military interests.

Today’s incandescent geopolitical fault lines are already configured: the collective west versus Islam, the collective west versus Russia, and soon a substantial part of the west, even reluctantly, versus China.

Yet a serious counterpunch is at play.

As much as the Axis of Resistance in West Asia will keep boosting their “swarm” strategy, those Orthodox Christian battalions in Donbass cannot but be regarded as the vanguard of the Slavic Axis of Resistance.

When mentioning this Shia–Orthodox Christianity connection to two top commanders in Donetsk, only 2 kilometers away from the front line, they smiled, bemused, but definitely got the message.

After all, more than anyone else in Europe, these soldiers are able to grasp this unifying theme: on the two top imperial fronts – Donbass and West Asia – the crisis of the western hegemon is deepening and fast accelerating collapse.

NATO’s cosmic humiliation-in-progress in the steppes of Novorossiya is mirrored by the Anglo–American–Zionist combo sleepwalking into a larger conflagration throughout West Asia – frantically insisting they don’t want war while bombing every Axis of Resistance vector except Iran (they can’t, because the Pentagon gamed all scenarios, and they all spell out doom).

Scratch the veneer of who’s in power in Kiev and Tel Aviv, and who pulls their strings, and you will find the same puppet masters controlling Ukraine, Israel, the US, the UK, and nearly all NATO members.

Five OP ,

I agree, Pepe Escobar’s take in that opinion piece is complete garbage. It should be noted that it is an opinion piece with the sub text “The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.”

Shutting down the entire journal because one columnist is a Putin apologist isn’t what the concept of a free press is about. I’d be less alarmed by mods shutting down a post of that columnist for genocide apology. It looks like it’s only one featured columnist out of five occasionally posting garbage like that, and the bulk of their focus is on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Alan Dershowitz, famous for his shit takes, has apologized for torture and genocide and continues to be frequently featured in The Boston Globe, Haaretz, and The Wall Street Journal. Since those sources are posted freely, it would be inconsistent to ban The Cradle over Pepe Escobar.

PugJesus ,

How many articles by how many authors since the beginning of the war need to be posted before you would regard the site as knowingly pushing Russian propaganda?

Five OP ,

How do you distinguish between opinion and propaganda? Its entirely credible that Pepe Escobar sincerely believes the positions he holds.

Should the corpus of every news source that includes opinion pieces that serve the interests of a war criminal state be banned?

PugJesus ,

How do you distinguish between opinion and propaganda? Its entirely credible that Pepe Escobar sincerely believes the positions he holds.

Oh, so if he sincerely believes in genocide, it’s fine.

Should the corpus of every news source that includes opinion pieces that serve the interests of a war criminal state be banned?

If they continuously make naked apologia for that war criminal state’s war crimes, especially ongoing ones, and parrot the propaganda points pushed by that state which clearly and directly contradict reality, yes, absolutely.

Five OP ,

Oh, so if he sincerely believes in genocide, it’s fine.

Regardless of our conflict, we can agree that Pepe Escobar is a shithead.

There’s an old joke that goes:

Two people, a Hexbear and a Solarpunk were arguing. One said,

“On my server I can reply to an admin and say “I don’t like how you’re running things on this instance!”

“I can do that too!”

“Really?”

"Yes! I can reply to an admin and say, “I don’t like how the SLRPNK admins are running things on their instance!”

My concern is that the criteria you are using to justify banning The Cradle would also ban most United States media as well. I value the principle of a free press, and what you’re proposing is inconsistent with those values. It’s easy to call for the ban of information that disagrees with us, but unless we develop a more nuanced approach to combating propaganda, we risk replicating the values of the authoritarian systems we oppose.

PugJesus ,

My point is just that banning The Cradle is not inherently an illegitimate move. You may not agree with it, and I honestly wouldn’t see the point unless someone was spamming The Cradle’s articles or editorials, but it is a legitimate point to consider that they carry water for Russian propaganda, and in allowing that source, misinformation multiplies and makes the mods’ jobs harder.

ganksy ,
@ganksy@lemmy.world avatar

Yikes! This is the first time I’ve come across The Cradle. It’s the last time too.

LibertyLizard ,

Here’s one: thecradle.co/…/syrian-president-assures-russia-of…

I dunno, seems pretty biased to me. Even if it’s mostly quoting politicians, uncritically repeating their propaganda without any caveats is questionable at best.

Five OP ,

Yeah, that’s not great, but it’s not outside the bounds of what you’d typically find in the uncritical reporting of Western politicians in periodicals like Reuters.

The issue isn’t that The Cradle is biased, all journalism is biased. The issue is that they’re being treated with the tools that should only be used for conspiracy mills and AI fake news farms. I find that alarming.

LibertyLizard ,

I’m not sure I agree. For comparison, here’s a recent article on Gaza from Reuters: reuters.com/…/blinken-warns-israel-hamas-best-las…

Yes, it’s written from a western perspective, but there’s a clear attempt to include opposing perspectives including Hamas and ordinary Gazans. You see no such attempts from the Cradle’s reporting.

It’s true that all media is biased but that does not mean it’s equally biased. There is a big difference between the unavoidable bias of your own unconscious views on a topic and actively spreading misinformation. I am not very familiar with the cradle beyond these few articles but they appear to fit the latter category while Reuters and similar publications fit into the former.

Overall I think the assessment by the bias ranking seems fair, and the post removal even encouraged you to post another source on the same topic, so it’s not saying that this issue cannot be discussed. While I don’t necessarily agree with the mod’s action, it doesn’t seem like it’s an attempt to silence Palestinian voices either.

Carrolade ,

You do have a valid point. When I encounter something they are reporting that interests me, it would behove me to do further checking. There are other fact checking and news comparing services, and wikipedia usually has some good background information.

Additionally, I could check an article myself to make sure they actually do include an IDF statement in addition to any pro-Palestinian sources’ statements.

helenslunch ,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

responsible journalistic entity

Where do you find those?

Carrolade ,

It’s true they’re getting very hard to find these days. I was very disappointed that even NBC the other day, reporting on the House investigation into Biden, had the gall to simply say that “the White House has not yet had a chance to comment”.

There’s a small handful of good ones still, though, depending on the niche you’re looking for. ProPublica is still an example of responsible journalism for instance.

helenslunch ,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

I’ll check out ProPublica, thanks

sunzu2 ,

Check the farm... I think that's where all of them went to.

breadsmasher ,
@breadsmasher@lemmy.world avatar

Looks more like you posted a garbage source?

edit - for example. Do you consider Fox News to report a balanced view? Or GBNews? Zerohedge?

wildbus8979 ,

Thecradle seems like a fine source, even MBFC doesn’t actually have arguments against it other than “left leaning”.

“Balanced” is some bullshit American view of media that isn’t related to factuallity.

ShinkanTrain ,

Here at News Inc we offer only the most balanced views. After the break, our main story on why there are two sides to the Mai Lai Massacre, then we analyse the benefits of burning puppies for fuel.

NateNate60 ,

For what it’s worth, English Wikipedia editors reached a consensus to deprecate (ban) it for unrealiability last year: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…/Archive_424#RFC:_The_Crad…

The following notes are present:

The Cradle is an online magazine focusing on West Asia/Middle East-related topics. It was deprecated in the 2024 RfC due to a history of publishing conspiracy theories and wide referencing of other deprecated sources while doing so. Editors consider The Cradle to have a poor reputation for fact-checking.

Cephalotrocity ,

That’s besides the point. Censorships on Lemmy is rampant and borderline oppressive. Posting an inoffensive news article in a forum that automatically allows the community to evaluate a 3rd party’s criticism(s) of that agencies credibility should be more than sufficient.

These non-experts declaring themselves the arbiters of truth is an embarrassment for the platform and need to be dealt with before it gets abandoned.

I even agree that Cradle is shit, but to end any possibility of discussion, in flagrant opposition to Lemmy’s ENTIRE PURPOSE just creates empty echo chambers

Carighan ,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

Censorships on Lemmy is rampant and borderline oppressive.

[citation needed]

These non-experts declaring themselves the arbiters of truth is an embarrassment for the platform and need to be dealt with before it gets abandoned.

Luckily then they’re not the “arbiters of truth” for the platform, eh? Just for the instance they own themselves. You are free to disagree with them, and not go to their garden parties any more. Doesn’t change that it’s their garden, and their party.

in flagrant opposition to Lemmy’s ENTIRE PURPOSE

Hrm… no. I tried, and nothing about the Lemmy site says that instance owners aren’t free to moderate their sites as they see fit. In fact that they can is cited as a benefit of the system, since everyone is also free to run their own instance.

(edit)
Look, I don’t even disagree, but no need to make shit up to call admins out for. The subject matter of the topic is enough to call them out for if you’re so inclined.

Cephalotrocity ,

Really, I need citations for a post that already provides an example? Just pick a server and look at the modlogs keyword: misinfo. Here’s a salient example:

https://biglemmowski.win/pictrs/image/6fb12a56-5493-43e9-a3e5-bf1f7ffc78c8.webp

Luckily then they’re not the “arbiters of truth” for the platform…

That’s actually a part of the problem. The complete lack of responsibility or accountability for anyone on here. Like it or not all it takes is a handful of self-righteous admins to ruin it for the entire platform. What you tout as a Good is quite the opposite in the long run.

queermunist ,
@queermunist@lemmy.ml avatar

Notice how TheCradle never failed a fact check? All those sources you listed have failed fact checks. That’s the difference.

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