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…
It’s really annoying and I don’t trust it
Because it’s biased, takes up too much space, provides nothing of value, and its posts are by definition low effort.
For me to like a bot requires it provides something of value, be unbiased, and not take up too much space.
MBFC itself is biased and unreliable. On purpose or not it’s system has the effect of pushing the GOP narrative that mainstream news is all leftist propaganda while right wing propaganda is normal. It does this by not having a center category and by misusing the center lean categories it does have.
So for example national papers with recognized excellence in objective reporting are all center left. And then on center right, you have stuff like the Ayn Rand Institute. Which is literally a lobbying organization.
Not having an alternative isn’t an excuse to keep using something that provides bad information.
It also seems to ignore most of the posts that it could actually be helpful on. Like no-name blogs and Fox News.
I wouldn’t call it bad information. As a non-American, I just read it as “American left”.
“Centre-left” combined with “Factual Reporting” basically means “grounded in reality”, lol
The problem is many people aren’t tuned into political ideology. The second they see left or right they sort it by their internal bias. So it’s whitewashing a lot of conservative European sources. It’s also rating American far right positions as center right, so absolutely whitewashing them, even for someone who understands MBFC is an American site with American prejudices.
Honestly I’m surprised they’ve lasted 8 years without this getting called out, it should fairly well jump out at anyone who has studied politics.
I’d be happy if someone wanted to make a better site that had better answers and a more international scale. We don’t have it, though
Bad information is worse than no information. It is actively harmful.
I don’t think it’s bad information. It’s information that needs to be taken in with an understanding of its source…like most information.
That’s not how that works. People stop at the labels. If you want to change that then go after the public education system. That’s just like telling people to watch Fox News with an understanding of its bias. It doesn’t work. And as pointed out elsewhere, MBFC isn’t operating objectively. It whitewashes extreme conservative publications while listing organizations like AP News as biased. It doesn’t label American and international sources differently and it doesn’t tell you it’s labeling everything with their own concept of the American political environment.
For a supposedly objective organization it sure isn’t interested in self reflection.
Are you trying to tell me that it’s a problem to suggest people use critical thinking with the results of MBFCbot in addition to the post, and instead the solution is to suggest there should be no bot and people should use critical thinking skills for the post itself?
We already know how many people stop at the headlines.
As well, you seem to be focusing on the bias component. I think the reliability/fact-checking component is much more important.
Same reason sites like Ground News also upset me. Like “yeah sure I totally needed to read that HUNTER BIDEN is absolutely the reason the Democrats are evil totally makes sense oh yeah”, like nah sometimes we can just say these people are massive hypocrites and their opinions and news are literally not factual or useful or important
I’m not going to be surprised when we find out MBFC and Ground News were actually info ops from corporations.
I’m not going to go that far — they’re just poor implementations of things we all want. When GN was created there was significant pushes from so many other companies to create their best little aggregators and summarizers. I’ve always felt it should be more possible to actually “ground” sources and journalists to the actual truth, than whatever these people deem as center. It’s ironic to call it grounded when its foundation is a political landscape mired in lies and grandiosity.
Yeah probably. But I wouldn’t be surprised.
Yeah, the Overton window has been pushed so far right that neutral sources with no added opinion are now considered center-left.
I think the bigger problem with MBFC is they don’t have a center category. Until they get one they are forcing themselves to present all news as biased one way or the other. Leaving no room for news organizations that are highly objective.
Reality has a left wing bias.
The Ayn Rand Institute actually is center right. They promote strictly free market capitalism, of the laissez-faire variety. This is distinct from any sort of ethno/religious-nationalist position you’d find on what we’d call the far right, espoused by groups like Praeger.
Regarding the newspapers, if they tend to endorse dems in elections, it’d be difficult to argue that they don’t tend to editorially lean at least slightly left.
Note, a lean does not make something misinformation. If someone thinks that center-left means leftist propaganda, that is their mistake in thinking. That does not mean a bias rating service should recategorize everything to fit a left-is-center perspective, failing to take into account wherever the current national overton window happens to sit.
We should want analysis to be from the perspective of a typical fast food eating, reality tv watching, not-super-engaged American if we can manage that, so we can see the breadth of American perspectives in relation to each other. Not some activist-driven wish to reframe America to fit our own perspectives on the truth, regardless of how we may feel about the current sociopolitical environment. Otherwise we risk simply reinforcing our own media bubbles and steadily weakening our own ability to come up with arguments our opposition may potentially find convincing.
Note, it’s important to remember that center does not necessarily mean good. It just means center-for-America. In our current situation, center is not a very good place to be at all, imo at least. I mean, you’re halfway to Donald Trump if you’re in the center. Not good.
We should want analysis to be from the perspective of a typical fast food eating, reality tv watching, not-super-engaged American
Why? Lemmy is a worldwide site.
Hm, you do have a good point. For the US news and US politics subs it’s important, but far less important for a global news community.
The libertarian, “drown the government in the bathtub” group are centrists now?
Are you serious? Social issues aren’t the only thing you can swing left and right on. This is a massive pro corporate blindspot if MBFC continues that as a trend.
Nobody is saying lean makes something misinformation. We’re saying the way the categories are used deceives, “a typical fast food eating, reality tv watching, not-super-engaged American” into believing good objective sources are running biased articles.
And the American left is the center in the rest of the world. Playing into the American idea of centrism only makes the project biased, not some high minded goal. That’s some of that good exceptionalism propaganda.
And reframing things to fit our own perspective? From the person defending the end of the federal government as a centrist position.
You put a lot of high minded stuff in there but it comes down to American Exceptionalism trying to force its views on the rest of the world and a shit take on enlightened centrism. The facts on the ground are clear. MBFC plays favorites for conservatives.
The libertarian, “drown the government in the bathtub” group are centrists now?
American centrist. That’s like 3/4 right :-p
The “laissez-faire” part got me. When anyone leaves gov and especially biz to do their thing without steering and criticism, then people are gonna suffer to make someone some shillings.
No, they’re center-right. The center right still believes in representation and voting, where the far right is an authoritarian movement. This is an important distinction.
So, an editorial slant and objective, fact-based reporting are two different things. Your bias comes in with things like article selection, what you are and are not reporting. You can be strongly biased, but still do objective, fact-based reporting. This is why these are two separate categories. This is not a problem, and both of these independent categories most definitely deserve to be reported independently of each other.
It has nothing to do with exceptionalism. It has to do with performing measurements that are calibrated to the local environment. Someone pointed out that it makes less sense for world news, but for US news and politics communities it is definitely useful.
When did I say the end of the federal government is a centrist position?
You’re a very dishonest arguer. This has nothing to do with any form of American superiority. Simply discussion of American affairs from a perspective calibrated to American people. Saying that this has usefulness is not saying it is superior or exceptional, those are things you, not I, are saying.
Lots of what you’re saying smells like bullshit, but I would like to point one specific thing:
The center right still believes in representation and voting, where the far right is an authoritarian movement. This is an important distinction.
That’s not how it works, left/right and libertarian/authoritarian are different axis, because left/right are economic terms, they can be replaced by collectivism/individualism, just like how the other axis can be replaced by Anarchism/Totalitarism. You can have an extreme libertarian-right (e.g. anarcho-capitalist) or an extreme totalitarian-right (e.g. fascism), just like you can have an extreme libertarian-left (e.g. Kibutz) or extreme totalitarian-left (e.g. communism as implemented in the USSR).
Also there’s a third axis of conservative/progressive. Just because you live in a country where conservatives and right wings are the same doesn’t mean everyone else does. For example in the two right wing examples I gave, one (anarcho-capitalist) is extremely progressive while the other (fascism) is extremely conservative.
In the end you can think on the 3 axis according to different questions:
- How should money be split? This is left/right or collectivism/individualism
- Who should rule? This is libertarian/totalitarian or anarchism/totalitarism
- How to deal with new ideas? This is conservative/progressive
For example, taxes and where to use them are (in general ) a left/right debate, whereas security is (usually) a libertarian/totalitarian debate, and abortion, drugs and most things related to new ideas are (again, usually) conservative/progressive.
Yes, that’s fair. I was trying to remain within the oversimplified standard US perspective on these things, which does boil all of that down to one, single axis, largely as a result of our two party system. I agree it is a poor and inaccurate method though.
You absolutely do not have to be authoritarian to be far right. And the Ayn Rand Institute is libertarian. Their goal is to effectively end all governance in favor of corporations. So yes you are defending that.
And someone like MBFC presenting that as a centrist position of any kind is a giant problem.
You say I’m dishonest but you keep saying obvious things but then slipping in ridiculous stuff. Like saying MBFC should be more conservative because it’s American. But then ignoring that it rates international papers.
Is Al Jazeera doing endorsements now? BBC? Whose the British government backing?
You cannot have this both ways. It cannot be an American scale, available globally, rating globally.
No, libertarians advocate for small government, not no government. Someone still has to provide for the common defense, uphold laws, things like that. And far right is always authoritarian in some way, shape or form. I cannot think of a single government in history we would describe as far right that was not authoritarian. Also, there is a difference between seeking accurate classification of something from a certain perspective and defending it. You are not very accurate at describing things, including my arguments. Again, center does not equal good. Center just means center, and is often bad.
It does not matter if it rates international sources or not, if doing so for an American audience as an American organization, it should do so from an American perspective. There is nothing wrong with explaining to Americans how international sources fit into their established worldview.
Note, I never said MBFC should be more conservative. If anything they should be shifting slightly leftward as Trump’s popularity wanes, to track with the attitudes of the country. Not a lot though, the race is still close to even.
I don’t understand what you’re getting at with AJ and BBC endorsements, can you elaborate?
No. Small government sounds nice but it’s only ever meant two things. Privatization or deregulation and strict social laws. Depends on whose saying it. And libertarians are in the privatization group. No matter how you cut it, that’s a radical position. The center is occupied by the regulated market and public services the vast majority of Americans enjoy and like.
And it very much matters that it rates international sources. That makes it inaccurate by design everywhere outside the US. A disinfo op, meant to confuse people and whitewash conservative sources.
They shouldn’t be tracking any one country. There are objective definitions for political ideology.
Well, I’m with you that libertarianism is an impractical and harmful idea, most right-leaning positions are. This does not make it far off from our center, though, when the vast majority of things we interact with in the US already are privatized. Many prisons and schools, businesses, land, etc etc. All in the private sector. So, an ideology that wants privatization of what little we have left, like say, the post office, is not a particularly extreme position for our culture. A far more extreme position would be wanting to do away with our voting and implementing an authoritarian government, as Trump seems to want.
So, there actually is no such thing as some grand, objective scale, no matter what scale you use, attitudes can shift over time and different positions can be adopted or dropped by different points on the scale due to changing technologies, attitudes and situations. The most important thing is that the scale is consistently applied, and provides useful information to the audience. I would argue that the most useful information is provided when the scale is balanced between the various positions that its audience is familiar with. So, again, since its an American organization doing work for an American audience, I think it behoves them to remain accurate to American perceptions.
It should not be trying to change anyone’s mind, or change how they view the world, simply scale everything that’s out there in a way its audience can find approachable and understandable. It’s not intended to be a reform mechanism, but a service to the culture as the culture exists. This is not whitewashing anymore than the US itself is very whitewashed. But again, it’s not MBFC’s job to fix us, that’s what education is for, not news media or fact/bias checking. It is not an education tool.
Thanks everyone for your comments and information. Thank you OP for making this thread. I will now begin downvoting MediaBiasFactCheck bot
deleted by creator
Trash. Bot. Is trying to take control of the narrative on Lemmy.
Those are my 3 reasons.
the spoiler tags it uses are fucked up on my client and i can’t click any of its links or make any use of it
It said MSNBC had a leftist bias. The bot, and by extension its developers, have as much credibility as your Fox News watching uncle who calls everything they don’t like “communism”.
MSNBC is left wing! I can understand objecting to some of the others but this one is clear as day.
I’m 99% certain you’re from the United States if you think MSNBC is anything beyond center to center left.
Originally from Canada, so close enough
Political stances are relative across the globe. You can’t just draw a line in the middle of American political talking points and then apply that generalization to the rest of the world. It’s more useful to describe specific ideologies (although even that gets pretty muddy fast), but that wouldn’t be very practical for a bit either. Imagine if it somehow concluded that Mother Jones has a “minarchist-capitalist” bias. Still, I question the use of this bot, which is probably based on US terms, running this analysis on a site called “lemmy.world”.
Which is why the bot is not useful - it literally tries to standardize political stances when that’s actually impossible.
We seem to have a different opinion of what is left-wing and what is not. I do not think the Democratic party is left-wing at all. It is centre-right to right (with the Republican party being far-right).
I know of none American left-wing news outlets and the only left-wing bias I know of is truth.
Sure, the Democrats aren’t calling for a literal communist revolution. But there are realistically only two parties in the US and MSNBC is a non-stop, hyper-partisan booster for the party that’s further to the left.
Left of fascism, but not leftist. Bernie frickin Sanders is barely left of center.
In any civilised country Bernie fucking Sanders would be considered centre right at best. A vast majority of your politicians are corporate stooges with no political position of their own (though their owners are obviously far right and opposed to any form of human rights), but when it comes to voters most of the democratic party is right to far right, and republicans range from deranged lunatics to fascists and proud of it, in both cases mostly due to ignorance, brainwashing by your extremely biased media, Stockholm syndrome, and probably a good dose of brain damage due to lack of proper health care and regulations.
There are no centre and much less left mainstream political parties or politicians whatsoever in the US. Anything remotely approaching the centre is labelled as communist and socially and mediatically ostracized and or ridiculed.
The US has long devolved into a sad and tragic satire of a fascist dystopia, and any attempt to push its twisted worldviews and standards on the civilised world will naturally be met with hostility, out of sheer principle, self respect, and self defense.
Your bot is extremely biased and obviously ill intentioned. It’s harmful. It’s malware. And it’s spam.
I am not from the US so why should I base my definition of left-wing on the Democratic party (and subsequently arrive upon the wrong conclusion that the Democratic party is leftist)? More importantly, why would you?
If you want to talk relatively, use relative terms. That being said, left of the farthest right is not very useful, which is precisely why I care about the distinction.
Because MSNBC is an American organization and their coverage is American-focused, their bias relative to American politics is what’s relevant here. It doesn’t matter what their beliefs or policy positions are relative to any particular standard, what matters is whether or not their work presents the news accurately or in a way intended to mislead or influence their viewers in favor of one side or the other, which they clearly do. We don’t even need to agree on whether the Democrats are a ‘real’ left party, only that they’re to the left of the alternative and that MSNBC favors them.
Because MSNBC is an American organization and their coverage is American-focused, their bias relative to American politics is what’s relevant here.
I understand what you are trying to say, but I disagree. They are making claims about a lot of news outlets in other countries, which means they cannot present an American skewed perspective as the truth (unless what they really want is to export political views and exert influence domestically and abroad, now we might be talking here).
It doesn’t matter what their beliefs or policy positions are relative to any particular standard, what matters is whether or not their work presents the news accurately or in a way intended to mislead or influence their viewers in favor of one side or the other, which they clearly do.
All reporting should be held to the highest standard. Anyone seriously attempting to critique and comment on reporting at a meta level, should hold themselves to the same, or even a higher standard, for the same reason. What I am essentially arguing is that the MediaBiasFactCheck falls in line with pretty much all of US news as mass propaganda machines in the interest of capital. If you disagree, why do you think they operate at all?
As an outsider, the Dem party is in a funky spot politically. Whilst it economically is to the right, many of its social policies it endorses are leftist. Their emphasis on equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity is a large part of that, regulation of expressions and policy of migration.
Where I live, most of our political parties are left of the dems economically (basic welfare is not even a debate), but many would clearly be right of them (though usually not even close to the republicans) in social policy.
Yeah, living in a parliamentary democracy means I have to make an effort to wrap my head around how the US “democratic” institution works. The internal structure of the Democratic Party has more in common with our democratic structure than the structure of their “competing” parties. As a result there is more room for difference within the Democratic Party than within a political party in our system, but the political difference between parties in our system is greater than those within the democratic party.
Whilst it economically is to the right, many of its social policies it endorses are leftist.
My analysis has long been that there is no political will to implement leftist economical policies in the US, i.e. those that really matter in the grand scheme of things, even though there exists a semi-conscious wish for them within the populace. Please do not misunderstand, increasing equity between people of different backgrounds is important, but important single issues such as gay marriage are insufficient if they do not come along with, or better yet, as a product of equity of material conditions. It was all the same with the feminist movement where social advancements were conceded in lieu of increasing their economical statuses, with the division in measurable quantities, such as income or capital ownership still going strong (note I do not advocate changing the ruling elite from one subset of people to another subset of different characteristics, but instead saying that capital ownership should be transferred from the subset to the whole).
Strengthening the political power of the marginalized by increasing the material conditions of their strata is the best way to make social progress, which the ruling elite of the US is painfully aware and which is why they sometimes are willing to skip the first step and reach the inevitable second immediately. The discrepancy between the people’s wants and needs for leftist policies, again conscious or not, and the actual politics of the US, is deeply connected to the Democratic Party’s willingness to concede these social changes without losing the backing of the capital interests that fund them.
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.
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
FWIW, there’s a reason I prefer mbin instances.
I feel like some amount of variation among fediverse software is exactly how we should try to suss all this out.
I just vote to keep comment sections for humans.
(I realize I can block and I do and I will, still want to shout my opinion into the storm for a second.)
It’s like a guy showing up in every thread to say ‘this source is left-wing and/or unreliable!’. He’s right, of course, but as a general rule people are either blind to their own bias, or trying to influence others without it being noticed.
I think it’s nice to have, since it’s a consistent source. It’ll give the same answer every time, and probably won’t start as many fights, lol
We added the bot BECAUSE there are those guys that DO that. And to have a third opinion doesnt do any harm.
Agreed, it was a good move
So because spammers exist you created an eveng greater spammer?
What does “third opinion” mean? That its supposedly “neutral” or “unbiased”?
What does “third opinion” mean?
Enlightened centrism. Far right and or fascist propaganda disguised as an unbiased and intelligent middle ground.
It’s biased.
I’m inherently distrustful of anything that tries to tell me if a source is biased or not. Who verifies that the bot isn’t also programmed to have an agenda?
I think I’ll just stick to plain old critical thinking skills and evaluate things for myself.
Because I don’t trust some internet rando’s bot to have my best interests in mind.
The opinions don’t come from the bot or its creator though
I for one, appreciate that bot.
Same here, it’s becoming a habit to check every source.
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.
Honestly I was originally against the whole downvoting thing as well, but I do agree this has made it super easy to just scroll all the way down when I needed to see the Bot
On the one hand yes, but on the other hand, it’ll often be at -5 as the only comment…lol
The first voters are doing their part! lol jk
