No Stupid Questions

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…

To express dissatisfaction.

There's a lot of people that view the MBFC reports as themselves being biased, and to be fair, their process for generating the reports are opaque as fucking hell so we have no way to know how biased or not they are.

it's also kinda spammy, and- IMO- not really all that useful.

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"

I downvoted then blocked it because:

• I don't trust its specific analysis of sites. Others detail some examples.

• I don't think whole-site analysis is very useful in combatting misinformation. The reliability and fullness of facts presented by any single site varies a lot depending on the topic or type of story.

• Other than identifying blatant disinformation sites I don't see what useful information it provides. But even that's rare here and rarely needs a bot to spot.

• Why is an open-source, de-centralized platform giving free space to a private company?

• Giving permission for a private trust-assesing company to be operating in an open public forum makes it look as if these assessments reflect a neutral reality that most or all readers would agree on or want to be aware of. It's a service that people can seek out of they decide they trust it.

Presenting this company's assessment on each or most articles gives them undue authority that is especially inappropriate on the fediverse.

Some people are pissed that the format is spammy? That's the complaint I've heard.

I'd certainly prefer something like post tagging/labels but within the current feature set of lemmy I think it's about as good as it could be.

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.

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.

To me, bots are just noise if not summoned directly. Like when you're having a conversation with your friend, then a loud roomba comes in and tries to clean the very space you're sitting at.

"Hey bot, tell me facts about the article OP posted."

"Sure! [etc, etc]"

Versus:

"HEY I KNOW YOU HAVEN'T ADDRESSED ME DIRECTLY BUT YOU SAID THE WORD 'BUTT' 17 TIMES TODAY!"

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

1. is this information well-sourced?
2. is there any obvious missing context?
3. is this information up to date?
4. what are the likely ideological biases of this writer or publication?
5. 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.

It's too much noise. Its posts are huge and take up way too much space.

It suggested Al Jazeera has a leftist bias, despite Al Jazeera being funded by Qatar the furthest thing from being a leftist government. It is biased against any non-Western sources.

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".

I for one, appreciate that bot.

"Oh, this new post already has a comment, let's check it out! ... Dang it!"

After the third or fourth time it's just spammy, and the bot formatting just doesn't work on connect.

Trash. Bot. Is trying to take control of the narrative on Lemmy.

Those are my 3 reasons.

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.

Thanks everyone for your comments and information. Thank you OP for making this thread. I will now begin downvoting MediaBiasFactCheck bot

I downvote it when its opinion is clearly wack. Like when it tries to give Washington Post a highly trusted rating after all the inflammatory, biased shit they've been putting out.

So that bot claims fact already in it's name. I learned to check facts myself. I will never trust automation to do that for me. Also bias and fact are two things that don't go well together. One is measurable the other not at all. And the downvote is for anything I want to see less of.

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.

Too long, doesn't work right in most apps, makes me think someone commented on the article while there's only this bot's post.

It’s biased.

Because I don’t trust some internet rando’s bot to have my best interests in mind.

IIRC, it lists a zionist/anti-Palestine news website as highly trustworthy. I can't tell which side is right, I have it blocked.

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.

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.

Because fuck Ground News and fuck that spambot

Other people clearly don't think it's a helpful resourcem

You don't have to have an alternative in order to disagree.

That's not how life works.

Just because I don't know the formula of Hydrochloric acid doesnt mean I can't disagree with someone saying it's Barium and Oxygen

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.