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…
I for one, appreciate that bot.
Same here, it’s becoming a habit to check every source.
I used to be a fan of it, but in the past couple of years I’ve seen MBFC rate sources as “highly credible” that are anything but, particularly on issues involving geopolitics. That, plus the inherent unreliability of attempting to fix an entire news outlet to a single point on a simple Left <-> Right spectrum, has rendered it pretty useless, in my opinion.
There days I’m much more of the opinion that it’s best to read a variety of sources, both mainstream and independent, and consider factors like
- is this information well-sourced?
- is there any obvious missing context?
- is this information up to date?
- what are the likely ideological biases of this writer or publication?
- What is the quality of the evidence provided to support the claims made in the article?
And so on. It’s much better this way than outsourcing your critical thinking to a third party who may be using a flawed methodology.
I find it useful at a glance, specifically when I don’t recognize a niche source. There’s a lot of “alt” media under random names. This helps flag them.
For mainstream, you can easily make your own call. You should be exposed to enough of it.
Would you then be posting your conclusions? Like, if you’re gonna do that work on some of these posts anyway… may as well share.
When I was on in Reddit I used to do it all the time, but writing everything out, organizing it and including citations etc. can be rather time-intensive.
These days, I’ll leave a quick comment on a post if I have enough time, but nothing major.
writing everything out, organizing it and including citations etc. can be rather time-intensive.
That’s why I like MBFC. It’s a lot of effort, and even if I don’t agree with them on everything, it gives an idea.
Just don’t take it too seriously, I would say. Not every news piece from the same source is going to be of the same quality or bias.
Yeah, I don’t take it as hard facts, and the bias especially I take with a grain of salt. I think the fact checking reliability part is more important (but also not perfect).
I do because I shouldn’t even see bots due to my Lemmy settings. Whoever controls it needs to actually flag the fucking thing as a bot. I’m pretty sure not doing so is against the rules of some instances, like Lemmy World.
I also have only seen it posting clearly right-wing bs and claiming the source is a left-leaning outlet.
Because I hate all bots.
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.
Extremists hate being fact checked. The reality is that you can fact check the fact checking but that can also be fact checked.
It’s biased.
It’s really fucking annoying. I blocked it so I don’t have to see it anymore.
I lost all confidence in it when it rated Jerusalem Post and Euronews (associated with Viktor Orban) as “highly reliable”. Both push the pro-fascist narratives of their associated governments. It’s better to have no labeling than to label fascist propaganda as “highly reliable”
Any the branding of anything that is impartial as left center?? Like BBC News, Axios, Yahoo News, Sports Illustrated, left center??
And then the fucking economist which supported the UK conservatives not long ago and supported Bush is branded as left center
Same reason I don’t trust it - imagine rating fking BBC (the literal pro-state violence, austerity supporting, anti-immigration governmental mouth piece as “left-center”)
It just distorts people’s perception of what political biases are and makes them complacent by relying on an automated bot to do the important work of using your own judgment for what constitutes as moral or justified.
By letting it platform itself on lemmy, it’s basically inserting itself as the de facto expert on the topic - so for example, people overseas might see BBC rated as left-center and highly factual and start believing that wanting to “secure your borders” is a thing that UK leftist want. Well excuse me if I don’t want a privately owned (even if open source) US company deciding what political views others should have.
imagine rating fking BBC (the literal pro-state violence, austerity supporting, anti-immigration governmental mouth piece as “left-center”)
I believe it uses the American standard where anything based in reality is left of “center”, lol
Fucking hell even Euronews is controlled by Orbán? Ffs there is truly no free media here other than RTL on TVs.
Any thoughts on TLDR (Youtube channel)?
I think they’re pretty decent. Some More News is good too.
I consistently watch them. Although sometimes they commit some mistakes, but they output pretty decent and easy to digest videos.
I blocked it because bots are stupid. I hated on reddit that every post always had junk comments from the automod and hope that doesn’t carry over to here.
That’s a great point. Why are the others downvoting when they can simply block it instead? Lol
It’s too much noise. Its posts are huge and take up way too much space.
You blocked it or? We reduced the size by over 50% already.
I blocked it a few months back.
From a bot that exists like 2 weeks.
I may be thinking of a different bot then.
Hmmm, nope, I checked my block list and that’s the right account name. I’m 100% sure that I blocked it more than 11 days ago though.
concidering the bot has a creation date listed on its profile as 7-28-24, it can’t be too long ago that you did, I’m not sure what you saw.
The posts are 4 lines unless you are using an AP that fails at displaying spoilers.
The posts are 4 lines but when each comment includes 3 or 4 sources it checks, you end up with a giant block of spoiler text that usually takes up about a full screen (Sometimes less, sometimes more)
That comment you linked is displayed as four lines, and it only gets long if you expand everything.
I can get being upset with the corporation itself or the methodology is uses.
But if you don’t interact with the spoiler tags,
it’s as long as this comment.This is what i see on connect. Maybe its the app, but I’m sure its there’s more people who see this and think its an eyesore.
Edit: yes each article is only 4 lines, but theres 3 entries.
This is what i see on connect.
I’d take this feedback to your app dev. Here’s Voyager and Tesseract.
That’s the app you use failing at displaying text, on a website that is mostly text.
You should submit a ticket to the dev, or use an app that’s out of beta.
Actually, downvotig it has interesting benefits. If I want to know the bots’ evaluation, I can scroll to the end to find it.
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
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.
It’s interesting to me how many people commenting here seem to not know that the labels are not being decided by the bot or its creator.
(Unless the creator of the bot is the creator of the website, but I doubt it…lol)
Lemmy users don’t care, being completely honest. Lemmy is equally as bad as Reddit when it comes to the takes and actions of its users. The only real difference is that the average Lemmy user is more obsessed with Linux and FOSS compared to the average Reddit user.
Thanks everyone for your comments and information. Thank you OP for making this thread. I will now begin downvoting MediaBiasFactCheck bot
