TrippyFocus , 2 hours ago

Wrote this over on the announcement post for this bot:

Just looking over the methodology it’s clear that it has it’s own biases:

American Bias

The website itself says it’s distinctions of left and right are US based which is very skewed from the rest of the world. There should be a disclaimer or it shouldn’t be used in any world news communities.

Centrist Bias

The website follows the idea of “enlightened centrism” since if it determines a website has a left/right lean (again arbitrary) it affects the factual ratings of the sources.

Examples of this are: FAIR only getting the 2nd highest rating despite never having failed a fact check.

The Intercept getting only a “mostly factual” rating (3rd highest) despite their admittance it has never failed a fact check.

Despite my personal opinions on the pointlessness of using a US based left/right bias criteria I’d feel better if it was at least kept it it’s own section but when you allow it to affect the factual rating of the source it’s just outright wrong. The factual accuracy of the website should be the sole thing that affects this rating.

Questionable Fact Checking

Even just checking some of their ratings raises doubts on the websites credibility.

The ADL is rated as high (2nd highest) and wasn’t found to fail any fact checks.

The ADL was found to be so unreliable on it’s reporting of the Israel-Palestine conflict it is considered an unreliable source by Wikipedia.

“Wikipedia’s editors declared that the Anti-Defamation League cannot be trusted to give reliable information on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and they overwhelmingly said the ADL is an unreliable source on antisemitism.”

Maybe Wikipedia editors are a good arbiter of truth and maybe they aren’t but as people can see there isn’t a consensus and so by choosing Media Bias/Fact Check you’re explicitly choosing to align your “truth” with this websites biases.