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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…

imPastaSyndrome ,

Other people clearly don’t think it’s a helpful resourcem

You don’t have to have an alternative in order to disagree.

That’s not how life works.

Just because I don’t know the formula of Hydrochloric acid doesnt mean I can’t disagree with someone saying it’s Barium and Oxygen

ccunning ,

Other people clearly don’t think it’s a helpful resourcem

They should block it.

It gets weird when folks start trying to keep everyone else from having it available as a resource.

Carrolade ,

Unless your goal is to spread misinformation. Anyone that knowingly wants to spread propaganda is going to severely dislike it and be forced to come up with some excuse to be against it, that is more acceptable than “it keeps telling me my russian propaganda is bullshit”.

We do have a small pro-Russian contingent on here after all. We also occasionally get a MAGA type.

Personally I do appreciate it, the wikipedia and Ground News links are convenient, I would occasionally manually google those anyway. News consumption is one of the main reasons I’m on here in the first place though, so I might be an outlier in that regard.

ccunning ,

Unless your goal is to spread misinformation

EXACTLY
This is why anyone vehemently opposed to it is an instant 🚩for me

ShepherdPie ,

Can you even point to a post where the bot calls the source out as propaganda (in whatever choice of words it would use to indicate this) or highly untrustworthy? I’ve literally never seen it say anything but left, left center, or center on any source and usually always highly trustworthy or trustworthy.

Carrolade ,

No, it will not specifically identify propaganda. Could just check their entry for RT if you wanted, I’ve never bothered to look. That’s a Kremlin funded publication though.

Rottcodd ,

The alternative is to use your own brain.

The fact that people are so often so ignorant and/or ideologically blinkered that they can’t see plain bias when it’s staring them in the face is the problem, and relying on a bot to tell you what to believe does not in any way, shape or form help to solve that problem. If anything, it makes it even worse.

SteveFromMySpace ,

If you think you’re “immune” to the influence of biased sources you’re wrong.

imPastaSyndrome ,

I don’t think that’s what they’re saying at all, but I’d say if you think the bot’s source is then I don’t know what to tell you

SteveFromMySpace ,

No I think MBFC is very questionable at times

Rottcodd ,

Of course I’m not “immune” - nobody and nothing is perfect.

But I pay attention and weigh and analyze and review and question, which beats the shit out of slavishly believing whatever I read.

SteveFromMySpace ,

So you have a very high opinion of your own discretion but assume everyone else is trash or what?

Where would you put yourself as a percentile? Let’s get granular here.

Rottcodd ,

The only competition here is between relying on ones own judgment vs. relying on a third party.

SteveFromMySpace ,

I didn’t say it was a competition or anything remotely like that. Please show me where I did if you believe otherwise.

I am just asking for an honest assessment of how you perceive your own judgment. So are you going to answer or not?

Rottcodd ,

I didn’t say it was a competition or anything remotely like that. Please show me where I did if you believe otherwise.

Okay

So you have a very high opinion of your own discretion but assume everyone else is trash or what?

Where would you put yourself as a percentile?

Right there. Obviously. In fact, that’s the exact point of a percentile - it’s a ranking system, which is to say, a competition.

So are you going to answer or not?

No.

14th_cylon ,

But I pay attention and weigh and analyze and review and question

and you do all that based on facts.

you can analyze, review and question facts and then form an opinion, but first step is to be able to trust the facts you read and that is where the rating of the source may be useful (if you are not already familiar with said source).

unless “using your own brain” is euphemism for discarding facts which doesn’t fit your opinion, then you indeed don’t need to know anything about trustworthiness of the source 😂

Rottcodd ,

No - actually I do the bulk of it based on presentation.

“Facts” fall into two categories - ones that can be independently verified, which are generally reported accurately regardless of bias, and ones that cannot be independently verified, which should be treated as mere possibilities, the likelihood of which can generally be at least better judged by the rest of the article. In neither case are the nominal facts particularly relevant.

Rather, if for instance the article has an incendiary title, a buried lede and a lot of emotive language, that clearly implies bias, regardless of the nominal facts.

That still doesn’t mean or even imply that it’s factually incorrect, and to the contrary, the odds are that it’s technically not - most journalists at least possess the basic skill of framing things such that they’re not technically untrue. If nothing else, they can always fall back on the tried and true, “According to informed sources…” phrasing. That phrase can then be followed by literally anything, and in order to be true, all it requires is that somebody who might colorably be called an “informed source” said it.

The assertion itself doesn’t have to be true, because they’re not reporting that it’s true. They’re just reporting that someone said that it’s true.

So again, nominal facts aren’t really the issue. Bias is better recognized by technique, and that’s something that any attentive reader can learn to recognize.

14th_cylon ,

In neither case are the nominal facts particularly relevant.

Double facepalm.

14th_cylon ,

It sounds like if the bot did not like your favorite source…

Rottcodd ,

No it doesn’t. That assumption just fits the strawman living inside your head.

Eutent ,

Bias can be subtle and take work to suss out, especially if you’re not familiar with the source.

After getting a credibility read of mediabiasfactcheck itself (which I’ve done only superficially for myself), it seems to be a potentially useful shortcut. And easy to block if it gets annoying.

Rottcodd ,

The main problem that I see with MBFC, aside from the simple fact that it’s a third party rather than ones own judgment (which is not infallible, but should still certainly be exercised, in both senses of the term) is that it appears to only measure factuality, which is just a tiny part of bias.

In spite of all of the noise about “fake news,” very little news is actually fake. The vast majority of bias resides not in the nominal facts of a story, but in which stories are run and how they’re reported - how those nominal facts are presented.

As an example, admittedly exaggerated for effect, compare:

Tom walked his dog Rex.

with

Rex the mangy cur was only barely restrained by Tom’s limp hold on his thin leash.

Both relay the same basic facts, and it’s likely that by MBFC’s standards, both would be rated the same for that reason alone. But it’s plain to see that the two are not even vaguely similar.

Again, exaggerated for effect.

just2look ,

MBFC doesn’t only count how factual something is. They very much look at inflammatory language like that, and grade a media outlet accordingly. It’s just not in the factual portion, it is in the bias portion. Which makes sense since, like you said, both stories can be factually accurate.

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.

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.

treadful , (edited )
@treadful@lemmy.zip avatar

I for one, appreciate that bot.

Lemminary ,

Same here, it’s becoming a habit to check every source.

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.

Toes ,

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

ccunning ,

Some folks are just angry it exists and downvote it no matter what.

I’ll downvote it sometimes, early in the discussion, to get other comments above it and get it out of the way, but only if the source is a reliable one. I only ever really upvote it if I think the source needs attention called to it.

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