No comments or anything, just lots of Downvotes.
I take it some people see it as a protest at the way their clients misrender the formatting.
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.
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.
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.
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.
My problem with the downvotes and the criticisms is that they don’t provide any proof or comparison, they simply say that it’s biased and wrong.
At the very least you should be linking examples and comparing against other bias checking sites.
For instance, I immediately disliked biasly.com because the rating system is -100 (Liberal) to 100 (Conservative). I’ve only compared a single site so far but the rating system alone makes me inclined to believe that the site is biased towards conservative views.
I strongly disagree. The burden of proof lies with the one making the claim and this bot has zero transparency regarding its benchmark, database or other criteria. That combined with the fact that it’s usage (apparently exclusively) seems to be highly pushed is enough to stay sceptical.
Personally I just blocked it but I have full understanding for anyone downvoting it, simply to communicate “I disagree with the existence of this bot in this context”
Check out how they rate Guardian and how they rate the Ayn Rand Institute. Then check the fact checking difference between Guardian and NYT. It just gets worse the more you look at it.
Whenever someone gives some good evidence, it gets removed almost immediately. Someone named “Linkerbaan” had two posts about this with actual evidence and it got twice removed.
I tried to search for the one where, I myself commented on and guess? It got removed.
That’s really sketchy. Thanks for sharing.
I’ve seen several replies to the bot pointing out bias. There’s nobody dedicated to writing a bot to follow around the bias bot and replying every time.
That makes sense, I just hadn’t seen a single post. In a comment above it was stated that posts criticizing the bot are removed, which is possibly why I haven’t seen any.
I haven’t observed that, but I didn’t often visit a comment section twice and I’m certainly not clever enough to notice things missing.
Personally my biggest gripe is with the formatting, specifically spoilers tags are a terrible choice when the whole thing could be a single sentence with a link. Spoiler tags aren’t uniformly implemented and when pointed out the stance is it’s the clients fault for not doing spoilers the way the dev wants rather than the devs fault for not using a more standardized approach which just bugs me. If the goal was concise conveyance of information, they missed the mark.
Yes, the posts are absolutely huge and I’m unimpressed with the bot devs response-- dude I am not going to switch Lemmy apps to make your bot less annoying.
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.
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’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.
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.
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.
Because they don’t want to take 3 seconds and block the user.
I wonder if the same clients that don’t correctly render the collapsed paragraphs also don’t correctly render the block button?
Many people disagree with the bot existing. Blocking it is just a surrender, downvotes show that the disagreement continues and lets others know it exists.
So jihad instead of blocking it? Cool, sounds totally worth it.
Jihad, civilised disagreement. Potayto, potahto
Surrender, get weirdly upset about a bot you can block. Toemato, tohmahto.
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.
Ironically, bias fact checkers are also subject to biases so it could be that the bias fact checker was simply not that great in this instance.
However, I think jet explained the most likely situations well
It’s hard to be non-biased. There’s not a single person who does not have a bias of some sort. The way people get bent out of shape over the bot makes me sad. It gives a decent starting point for anyone looking to start learning about the different biases and how different outlets report information. Of course it’s not a perfect bot or website it’s getting the info from, but it’s a valuable tool.
I did block it myself though. Sync gives large previews of links, so it did get a bit spammy. This could be disabled in the app’s settings, but it’s a feature I like so I can easily get to linked articles or videos. Wish I could turn it off for bots
The biased bias fact check bot… LMAOROLFZ…
The bot is crap. This is how it rates Raw Story, a clickbait factory that churns out shallow articles with dramatic, misleading headlines. It just produces slop for liberal Boomers to fill up their Facebook feed, but based on the bot’s reply, you’d think it was the Gaurdian.
Thank you for actually providing an example. I’ve asked and I’ve seen others ask but no one ever actually provides evidence to back their claim, they just downvote or say “bot bad”.
Sure, no problem. Also, I think it would be disingenuous to pretend that at least some of this backlash isn’t from people who don’t like the idea that their beliefs may not be objective facts. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t struggle with that from time to time.
But the real problem I have with these bots is that they can never capture the kind of nuance vetting a source requires. The Raw Story ranks high on credibility because they don’t publish lies, but they don’t publish anything worthwhile either. Most of their, “stories,” are second hand accounts of something someone (who may or may not be credible) said on CNN, or how a politician or pundit got mocked on social media, and then given a title that implies the incident was more significant than it was. It’s difficult to judge something like that with an algorithm that simply looks for, “Credibility,” and, “Bias.”
It actually rates it significantly higher than the Guardian, which it gives a mixed factual rating and medium credibility, which is the same rating they give the Sun. It’s laughable.
Jesus, I knew it was bad, but I didn’t realize it was that bad. That’s insane.
Ooof. If it gives the S*n even a mediocre rating, it’s shit.
Maybe because manh people think it’s useless and stupid and wish it would go away. Trusting a random bot to tell you the political leaning of an information source so you know whether to trust the information is peak stupidity, IMO.
I wish it looked like your screenshot. On Boost, I get everything folded out, occasionally with unclickable links.
The best apps for rendering are: Alexandrite, Connect, Jerboa, Photon, Quiblr, Summit, and Voyager. Sync and Boost are pretty poor at it despite being paid apps.
Boost is free, but yeah.
Sync is free too.
I don’t consider free with ads or buy for no ads on the same level as the rest of the free Lemmy apps. I hate ads, won’t tolerate them.
The spoilers look like crap on connect too. The bot takes a huge amount of screen real estate. I wouldn’t mind it as much if it was like 2 lines instead, but it takes up a whole screen.
That’s weird, I use summit and it renders like the screenshot. I don’t use connect but maybe yours needs to be updated. Only one or maybe two apps had a 10 originally before the post but it has been updated since then to reflect changes devs have made after the post.
I love how the shittiest apps are the paid ones.
Long live Voyager!
Dang. I didn’t realize how bad Sync is at rendering posts. It’s a giant unformatted mess for me as well. That screenshot is a far more tolerable presentation.
