catloaf , 5 hours ago (edited 5 hours ago)

It has been helpful and we would like to keep it around in one form or another.

Bull fucking shit. The majority of feedback has been negative. I can’t recall a single person arguing in its favor, but I can think of many, myself included, arguing against it. I hope you can find my report of one particular egregious example, because Lemmy doesn’t let me see a history of things I reported. I recall that MBFC rated a particular source poorly because they dared to use the word “genocide” to describe what’s going on in Gaza. Trusting one person, who clearly starts from an American point of view, and has a clearly biased view of world events, to be the arbiter of what is liberal or conservative, or factual or fictional, is actively harmful.

No community, neither reddit nor Lemmy nor any other, has suffered for lack of such a bot. I strongly recommend removing it. Non-credible sources, misinformation, and propaganda are already prohibited under rule 8. If a particular source is so objectionable, it should be blacklisted entirely. And what is and is not acceptable should be determined in concert with the community, not unilaterally.

Edit: And another thing! It’s obnoxious for bot comments to count toward the number of comments as shown in the post list. Nobody likes seeing it and thinking “I wonder what people are saying about this” and it’s just the damn bot again. But that’s really a shortcoming in Lemmy.