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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…

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

I for one, appreciate that bot.

Lemminary ,

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

xmunk ,

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.

Don_Dickle ,

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.

mp3 ,
@mp3@lemmy.ca avatar

Or you can just block it to hide it…

Don_Dickle ,

Fuck that…not getting on admins or anything but sites need to get rid of bots unless they pay the site. And also get rid of clickbait shit that I saw on reddit but not here yet.

mp3 ,
@mp3@lemmy.ca avatar

The bot is made by the instance admins themselves, so don’t expect the bot to go away.

Bob_Robertson_IX ,

So, because you don’t like bots, they shouldn’t be made available to others who appreciate them? Fuck that.

The beauty of Lemmy is that you are in control of what you see, but that makes that you have to control it. Stop trying to dictate that I can’t have bots from instances that allow them.

Lemminary ,

There’s a setting you can toggle on the web UI. I hope it’s supported on mobile apps.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/75ff4159-b691-41aa-adee-41c5f4df22e5.png

mp3 ,
@mp3@lemmy.ca avatar

Enabling that option will also have an effect on mobile apps.

tyler ,

The bot was literally added by the instance admins. You think they should pay themselves???

Crazyslinkz ,

That’s what I said and was down voted for it. Oh well, that’s life on lemmy.

Also did that, blocked the bot.

Carrolade ,

!remindme 1 week

MindTraveller ,

I like the converts to metric bot on Reddit

ShepherdPie ,

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.

NewNewAccount ,

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).

idiomaddict ,

And because it uses spoilers, when I click it to collapse the comment, it just expands

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.

SteveFromMySpace ,

I knew the % for my height and weigh growing up as it charted my growth, pretty basic stuff when going to the doctor. I wasn’t competing against anyone, it was just information. It seems you’re the one who is just narrow minded here. If you’re not going to answer then I’ll just default to the obvious: you think you’re special and that everyone else is an idiot/sheeple/etc.

Bye

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.

rtxn ,

IIRC, it lists a zionist/anti-Palestine news website as highly trustworthy. I can’t tell which side is right, I have it blocked.

hddsx ,

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.

FuglyDuck ,
@FuglyDuck@lemmy.world avatar

wikipedia has a fairly neutral article 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.

hddsx ,

What? Wasn’t Israel originally the Palestine before a part of Palestine was designated Israel?

Lemminary ,

Precisely. Wtf.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/3966c698-c155-401a-9a68-cf270503790b.png

FuglyDuck , (edited )
@FuglyDuck@lemmy.world avatar

How far back do you want to go?

If we’re talking Bronze Age, then the exodus didn’t happen. Or rather, only a small handful of refugees showed up and their story eventually became assimilated into Judaea’s and Israel’s cultural narrative.

Tracing ancestry back that far is problematic, but both cultures have equally valid and long standing claims to the region.

It’s like the Hatfield and McCoy feud, except it’s existed since the start of the Bronze Age (or earlier,)

In more modern history, Palestine was a British colony taken during ww1 as the leftovers of the Ottoman Empire, when the Palestine Mandate was done in an attempt to back out, and Jewish militants attacked everyone involved eventually leading to the creation of the current State of Israel.

gedaliyah ,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

No, but that’s a common misconception. Palestine has never previously been a country, but was a region of the Ottoman Empire, then a part of the British Empire that more or less consisted of modern day Israel, Palestine, and Jordan.

Under the Ottomans and the British, there was a Jewish minority, mostly in the region of Palestine, but also in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, etc.

Starting in the 1800s, Jews living in Europe began to move to the region in larger numbers (as well as Jews living in other parts of the Middle East and Africa). This was primarily motivated by antisemitic events in Europe, but also similar to the national movements that led to Prussia becoming Germany, the pan-Arab movement, re-establishing Poland, etc.

Here is a photo of the 1931 Palestinian football team that included Palestinian Jews as well as Palestinian Arabs.

warm ,

Zionism is an ideology that believes in a Jewish state consisting of mainly Jews and which claim the land of Palestine. So Zionists want to take over Palestine to extend their Jewish state as they believe that land to be theirs.

(Correct me if I am wrong)

AbouBenAdhem ,

Sites can be biased and tendentious without being factually inaccurate, though.

my_hat_stinks ,

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”?

rtxn ,

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.

I guess I didn’t make it clear that it was second-hand information and not my personal informed opinion. In my defense, I was running on 4 hours of sleep.

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