No comments or anything, just lots of Downvotes.
Have you asked yourself who runs the bot and what their bias is?
The responses the admin who added the bot gave to people’s concerns when they announced it, weren’t that great. (Link)
The Lemmy.world admin disregarded all criticism and just said people shouldn’t complain, after just asking for feedback in the post itself
Example:
What a terrible idea.
MBFC is already incredibly biased.
It should be rejected not promoted.
Admin response:
Ok then tell me an alternative we can use in the scale for free.
None? Then pls dont just complain complain complain… And dont suggest improvements.
Ah, common LW mod behavior: act like you are open to discussion, but then get upset when people actually criticize you.
Yeah it happens all too often
A comment there made a very good point. If they only had the American left/right terminology that could be fine but annoying, but they also say left/right lean lowers a site’s score. So they’re giving websites that would be properly described as center right by the rest of the world artificially higher scores.
As if removing it wouldn’t be an improvement. MBFC themselves admit it’s nothing more than pseudoscience. The fact anyone actually takes it seriously is laughable, especially considering some of the sources they consider “highly factual”
Any bot that doesn’t actually use lemmy’s “I’m a bot” protocol (so I can hide it completely) gets downvoted. It’s the only thing I even bother downvoting on Lemmy.
the bot has been marked as bot since the very beginning and is also clearly marked as bot in the screenshot, so your comment does not apply here.
I see you’ve replied this a few times now. Can you please complete this test for me?
I like how you sent a screenshot of a failed attempt
It was a joke but i guess it’s wasted here
Two reasons: It’s a spammy bot, and it has a right-wing bias
Oh no, now we need a Media Bias Checker Bot Bias Checker
I really like the idea of the bot.
If the source was independent; and could be trusted. It would be a great tool; the display could be a lot better but the idea is sound.
As others have pointed out, the source is a black box that may or may not be biased itself.
I’m mostly in favor of leaving the comment-clogging bots back on reddit where they can all talk to each other without me.
Not sure if this is the same on every instance, but on my profile there’s an option for “show bot accounts”
Just uncheck that bad boy and self-identified bot accounts don’t even show up.
It’s a standard lemmy feature, yes.
… that this bot doesn’t respect.
It shows a B in the screenshot and a bot icon on my client next to the username that says it’s a bot so I assume it must be identifying itself as a bot.
the bot has been marked as bot since the very beginning and is also clearly marked as bot in the screenshot as @[email protected] already mentioned.
i also just checked on db0 in case there was some federation issue that would have the account not be marked as bot over there and it’s also clearly marked as bot when viewed on db0.
Ah… I’ve heard more than one person saying they can see it despite having blocked bots and not seeing other bots. Sounds like there’s a technical issue somewhere.
Because many feel that the bot has a bias itself, making it useless at best and actively harmful at worst.
I have no horse in this race and don’t downvote the bot myself, but I have also seen it call sources center left, that are definitely not left of any reasonable center.
Because your average lemming is a wingnut who thinks anyone to the right of Stalin is a fascist.
Because it’s biased itself. They whitewash far right conservative sources while listing anything that tries to remain neutral and fact based as having a left bias. Left center to be exact. Then they put far right stuff in “right center” to make you think it’s equivalent.
Their factual rating is largely subjective as well. With similar amounts of failed fact checks getting different ratings.
So basically the guys who want to be the guardians of fact and bias are themselves acting in a biased manner instead of an objective one.
Because it’s biased itself. They whitewash far right conservative sources while listing anything that tries to remain neutral and fact based as having a left bias. Left center to be exact. Then they put far right stuff in “right center” to make you think it’s equivalent.
Source?
You can check the categories on the MBFC website yourself but a couple choice picks in the “right center” category are the Ayn Rand Institute, advocates for self governance, and American Action Network.
The first two are libertarian and pro Anarcho Capitalism. The second one attempts to masquerade as a non political education tool about politics. And third is a partisan group that runs campaign ads for the GOP.
Meanwhile in left center we have NYT, WAPO, and BBC.
Do you consider the GOP to be “far right”?
I see how that happened. If you check down thread though you’ll see I would rate a campaign organization for the GOP as right, not far right.
You can check the categories on the MBFC website yourself but a couple choice picks in the “right center” category are the Ayn Rand Institute, advocates for self governance, and American Action Network.
The first two are libertarian and pro Anarcho Capitalism. The second one attempts to masquerade as a non political education tool about politics. And third is a partisan group that runs campaign ads for the GOP.
Meanwhile in left center we have NYT, WAPO, and BBC.
Looking through all the sources you mentioned, especially the center-right sources, the ratings tend to be accurate. Did you expect the center right sources to be rated as far right and the center left sources to be rated as right wing?
I expect the fact based objective sources to be rated as center/not biased. And sources calling for a complete destruction of liberal democracy to be far right, yes. The campaign site should be listed under Right as it’s transparently a partisan organization.
The comparison with leftists here would be if they listed Anarcho-Communists as “left center”. But then your response tells me everything I need to know. You’ve gone right into exaggerated rhetoric meant to paint me as someone from the far left.
You’ve gone right into exaggerated rhetoric meant to paint me as someone from the far left.
Your response tell me everything I need to know, that you’re the average far left Lemming that sees everyone you disagree with as a far right incel.
You’ve got an accurate username at least.
I only ever hear people mention “far right” (not familiar with this bot).
Are there any sources that you, yourself, would consider “right center”?
Financial times, Newsweek
Bloomberg, Forbes, and Fox News jump to mind.Edit - you know looking at Bloomberg’s site again I think you could make an argument for it but it does appear to be mostly concerned with fact based news centered on the finance industry. I’m just used to seeing shit guest opinion articles from them.
Edit edit - in their place I offer up CNBC with their personal finance propaganda perpetually trying to convince Americans they just aren’t budgeting well enough.
For me it’s because the bias rating specifically is opaque and can be just plain wrong.
I could block it but if everyone who thought it was a bad idea just blocked it then it wouldn’t get downvoted which might lead people to think everyone generally agreed with it.
At least when it’s downvoted people take a step back and are less likely to just accept what it says.
EDIT: Also worth pointing out in my case at least I did go to the effort of actually trying to provide some constructive feedback on the bot through the proper channels rather than just downvoting and moving on.
deleted by creator
If you need a bot to tell you a source is or isn’t biased, then you shouldn’t be reading the news in the first place.
This comment seems rather ableist.
The Media Bias Fact Checker bot helps people who have autism understand biased language which may not be readily apparent without an outside source warning us about the biases.
The problem is that the intentions of the bot author aren’t fair and unbiased. They purposely label sites and articles that tilt in favor of their zionist opinions as reliable and trustworthy without regard to the reality of whether they are or are not.
Then it should at least be accurate.
Because it’s literally advertising spam. I can’t believe this person would want to ruin the entire good will of Lemmy by pushing their trash.
It simply serves no purpose.
Wait, I haven’t seen this bot around?
Since you asked:
- The bot provides little “value” vs the noise it creates.
I don’t need a bot to tell me that the BBC is a legit news source. Maybe if you flip it around and only publish a message if it’s a known scammy website, this might be less spammy. However, this “threshold for scamminess” would be very subjective.
- This bot is everywhere. This is closely related to the first point (“value” vs noise). It just sprang up one day and I saw it in every single thread, I’d read.
Fortunately, most Lemmy clients allow blocking users - which I’ve done and I’m much happier with my Lemmy experience.
Worse it lists BBC as “left-center”. Which is weird in itself since the designation is usually lean left or center left. Political scientists don’t stress the loaded word first. So much about MBFC exposes the site as a biased amateur project it’s hard to imagine how it got as much traction as it did.
And 3., the blurb it posts is gigantic compared to what you’d actually want to know.
Also 4. The media bias website has its own bias in that centre right outlets like CNN are classified as left.
I’m sorry but CNN being center right is definitely an indication of your own bias in our Lemmy echo chamber. Relative to the masses, it’s about center left but still shows significant pro-left coverage.
Say what you want about there being a former no-kidding US communist party or that other country’s police systems make the whole US system right wing, but relative to the US (which mediabiasfactcheck is designed for) it is left. I was so impressed by the site many years ago when all the things I thought were centrist turned out to be biased toward my political beliefs. That’s what truth feels like
Apology accepted
The blurb being gigantic is my main gripe. I use Sync, which includes a thumbnail of each link. The bot is wordy as fuck and links 5 different things. So every time I go the comments section, it looks like this:
You can disable the big block previews in the sync settings. Or just block the bot. Or use the Lemmy option to just not show you bot accounts.
Genuinely not trying to be an asshole, those are all options. I like the bot but I understand how not everyone might. These are options to prevent dealing with it without yanking it out of everyone’s hands.
Yeah, I get those are options. I just like having thumbnails for most everything else, since I hate clicking little text links on mobile. I used to use RiF back in the day and that was always painful for me.
That looks like a terrible app. Voyager shows it as a collapsed post with like 1-2 lines of text unless you click on it.
It’s configurable. I personally think Sync is the best Lemmy app out there. I started with Jerboa then Voyager, and feel that Sync is by far the most polished. It’s not FOSS though, so I get that it has a bad rep here. Personally I’m happy to pay a bit to the dev to support his awesome work for something I use for far too many hours every day.
Oh so Media Bias is from the USA and believes that anything that isn’t Republican is left 😂
How i wish that was true.
It’s not even on point for American politics. It’s clearly a conservative viewpoint.
