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Why are people downvoting the MediaBiasFactChecker bot?

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…

mashbooq ,

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”

MindTraveller ,

Because fuck Ground News and fuck that spambot

DampSquid ,

Why fuck Ground News?

MindTraveller ,

Their judgement of what’s left, what’s right, and what’s center is arbitrary and misleading.

tilefan ,

I hate bots

TalesOfTrees ,

I hate it because I also hate pretty much all the bots. Automatic postings, pedantic auto-correction bots… all of them absolutely fucking suck and have contributed directly to how shitty the internet has become.

So fuck bots, and double fuck bot creators.

cdf12345 ,

The text needs to be better formatted . I skipped by it a lot at first because it looks like spam.

Make a cleaner way to display the info

HootinNHollerin ,

Yep. I’m not against it at all in theory but had to block as it’s just atrocious to see on every post, taking up way too much space.

leftzero ,

It labels anything left of outright fascism as “left biased”.

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

And it’s spam.

Aatube ,

It hides the most important stuff behind accordions and there are some sources for bias & reliability checking the community favors.

Nougat ,

Because I don’t trust some internet rando’s bot to have my best interests in mind.

BackOnMyBS ,
@BackOnMyBS@lemmy.autism.place avatar

I like that they get downvoted because it puts the comment at the bottom. Knowing it’s there, I can scroll down to check it if I want to see what it says. It’ snot like downvoting it hides it or affects some long-standing karma number.

andyburke ,
@andyburke@fedia.io avatar

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.

Aatube ,

to be fair, metadata would be hard to federate. here at mbin we have attached media with real alt text separate from the post body and lemmy still doesn't have that

DrBob ,

I blocked that annoying piece of shit. It added nothing to discussion.

RightHandOfIkaros ,

Lemmy users are super allergic to bots of any kind, so I would imagine most of them don’t look past the fact that its a bot and don’t care what it does or what it is about. Its a bot and bots are always bad in their eyes.

aleph , (edited )
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

I used to be a fan of it, but in the past couple of 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 attempting to fix an entire news outlet to a single 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

  1. is this information well-sourced?
  2. is there any obvious missing context?
  3. is this information up to date?
  4. what are the likely ideological biases of this writer or publication?
  5. What is the quality of the evidence provided to support the claims made in the article?

And so on. It’s much better this way than outsourcing your critical thinking to a third party who may be using a flawed methodology.

Artisian ,
@Artisian@lemmy.world avatar

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.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

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.

Wrench ,

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.

Toes ,

I really like it, but I can see people being upset if it doesn’t align with their world view.

FuglyDuck ,
@FuglyDuck@lemmy.world avatar

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.

just2look ,

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.

FuglyDuck ,
@FuglyDuck@lemmy.world avatar

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.

just2look ,

They literally publish their methodology and scoring system.

mediabiasfactcheck.com/methodology/

So they do say exactly what their criteria is, and how it is scored. None of that is buzz words, it’s just a summary that fit in a few sentences. You can look at the full methodology if you want more than just that small bullet description.

I’m not saying that you have to agree with their scoring, or that it is necessarily accurate. I just think if you’re going to critique a thing, you should at least know what you’re critiquing.

Artisian ,
@Artisian@lemmy.world avatar

Bravo for bringing the notes. On a first glance, some of these feel like they require subjectivity (like, do we really believe the political spectrum is 1d?), but I agree I could run the computation myself from this.

just2look ,

There is definitely some subjectivity. Language isn’t something that is easily parsed and scored. That is why they give examples on the actual report about the kind of biased language they saw, or whatever other issues led to the score given.

I don’t think they mean for their website to be the end all bias resource. More of a stepping off point for you to make your own judgments.

protist ,

It’s crucial to note that our bias scale is calibrated to the political spectrum of the United States, which may not align with the political landscapes of other nations.

But what even is this false left-right, liberal-conservative, Democrat-Republican one-dimensional scale? The first thing they state on this page is that all this is inherently subjective. Who is MBFC to determine where the middle of this scale exists? If people want to seek out their opinion, that’s fine, but this is inherently a subjective opinion about what constitutes “left center” vs “center,” for example. I don’t get how MBFC deserves their opinion on every news post.

Also the formatting of the bot is awful as displayed on most Lemmy apps. On mine it’s a giant wall of text. Other posts/bots don’t look bad, just this one.

just2look ,

They cover what they consider left and right. This way you can judge whether it aligns with what you believe. And it allows you to interpret their results even if they don’t follow the same spectrum you do.

And if you know of a way to discuss political spectrum without subjectivity I would love to hear it. Even if you don’t use a 2d spectrum, it’s still subjective. Just subjective with additional criteria.

mediabiasfactcheck.com/left-vs-right-bias-how-we-…

protist ,

And if you know of a way to discuss political spectrum without subjectivity I would love to hear it.

Of course that doesn’t exist, my point is why does this specific subjective opinion get promoted on here?

just2look ,

Why does any opinion get promoted on here? Because somebody posted it. And then there is a voting system and comments for people to express their agreement or disagreement.

I honestly don’t care either way if the bot exists. I just think it’s silly that people are claiming that MBFC is terrible based on basically nothing. You can disagree with how they define left vs right, or what their ratings are, but they are pretty transparent about how their system works. And no one has given any example of how it could be done better.

tyler ,

Also if you actually read and understand their system, then even if you dont agree with it, you can recalibrate the ratings based on what you know their system works like.

superkret ,

It shouldn’t be done on Lemmy at all, which is why I downvote the bot every time I see it.

FuglyDuck ,
@FuglyDuck@lemmy.world avatar

Oh look. You copied my link!

Sorry. No they don’t.

That’s not “rigorously defined”. It’s a bunch of weasel words and vagaries.

For example. In “factual reporting”, to get a “very high” score:

A source with a “Very High” rating is consistently factual, relies on credible information, promptly corrects errors, and has never failed any fact checks in news reporting or opinion pieces.

What does “consistently factual” mean? What qualifies as “a credible source”? What does “prompt” mean?

Those are all nice sounding words, but they don’t really tell you anything. Prompt could be anything from seconds to weeks. (And let’s be honest, probably varies from researcher to researcher.)

Oh they go into more detail….

A questionable source, for example:

Questionable sources display extreme bias, propaganda, unreliable sourcing, or a lack of transparency. They may also engage in disseminating fake news for profit or influence. Such sources are generally unreliable and require fact-checking on an article-by-article basis. A source lacking transparency in mission, ownership, or authorship is automatically categorized as questionable. Additionally, sources from countries with significant government censorship are also deemed questionable.

Who defines their extreme bias? What is propaganda?

Voice of America is literally a government ran propaganda service yet they assign it high factual, least-biased and high credibility.

Sorry, but their methodology isn’t a methodology, and the only thing that’s inherently reproducible is their fact check rating. Everything else relies on what their subjective analysis.

just2look ,

Consistently factual is exactly that. Both of those words mean actual things. And they go on to say that they can’t fail fact checks. And prompt corrections likely means that as a story develops, that if there were incorrect things reported, they are corrected as soon as the new information is available.

As for who defines extreme bias, it’s literally them. That is what they are saying they are doing. And they spell out what their left vs right criteria are. And how they judge it. Of course this is subjective. There isn’t really a way to judge the political spectrum without subjectivity. They do include examples in their reports about what biased language, sources, or reporting they found. Which allows you to easily judge whether you agree with it.

As for VOA, they say in the ownership portion that it is funded by the US government and that some view it as a propaganda source. They also discuss the history and purpose of it being founded. And then continue on with the factual accuracy and language analysis. You may not agree with it, but it is following their own methodology, and fully explained in the report.

Again, there isn’t anything saying you have to agree with them. It is a subjective rating. I’m not sure how much more transparent they can be though. They have spelled out how they grade, and each report provides explanations and examples that allow you to make your own judgments. Or a starting point for your own research.

If you can define a completely objective methodology to judge political bias on whatever spectrum you choose, then please do. It’s inherently subjective. And there isn’t really a way around that.

finley ,

On each page, they describe, in detail, exactly how they come to their conclusions.

While you may disagree with what they have to say, to claim they’re hiding anything or that they aren’t being transparent or arbitrary is just untrue.

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