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…
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.
Yeah, the Overton window has been pushed so far right that neutral sources with no added opinion are now considered center-left.
Reality has a left wing bias.
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.
I downvoted then blocked it because:
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I don’t trust its specific analysis of sites. Others detail some examples.
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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.
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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.
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Why is an open-source, de-centralized platform giving free space to a private company?
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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.
Thank you, those are the precise point that summarize my gripes with it. In particular, I feel it encourages people to perceive it as an authoritative source and to form their opinions on sites it rates (often wrongly) without additional thinking / fact checking.
It’s basically a company propaganda tool that can change its own option and ratings any time, influencing others in the process.
Those are some great points. I do wish we had something better. But I find it to be “good enough” for when it’s a source I’m unfamiliar with.
Can’t quite say I have the time or motivation to start reading a bunch of other articles from a given source when I’m concerned about its credibility.
TBH, I just don’t think something better is possible - I suspect that there are no valid shortcuts to trust.
Unless something is just obviously bullshit, it will always take some time to develop a sense of how the different sources are treating a new story. Even a trusted source can prove unreliable on a particular topic.
It’s uncomfortable living with that uncertainty until you’ve seen a story from enough angles that you can judge for yourself. But either the story is important enough to me to spend that time, or I just accept that I can’t really know.
TBH, I just don’t think something better is possible - I suspect that there are no valid shortcuts to trust.
That’s why I like MBFC. I understand it’s impossible for them to be perfect and unbiased. But no one else is doing that work, so I’ll take what I can get.
Even a trusted source can prove unreliable on a particular topic.
I like the rule of thumb that good sources are more likely to be biased when reporting things internal to their own country. I usually look for the BBC, but if it’s about the UK, I’ll find another source. Al Jazeera is similar.
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MBFC is ran by a Zionist and rates obvious israeli lobbies such as the ADL as highly credible. Even when MBFC admits they are israeli lobby groups in their description.
MBFC serves no other purpose than to push liberal Zionist narratives which coincidentally happens to be exactly the positions of the Democrats
For more info see https://lemmy.world/post/18245990
exactly the positions of the Democrats
Kinda weird that you’re referring to democrats as a whole as Zionists when there are literally pro-Palestinian democrats in congress, never mind regular people who vote democrat. Their party as a whole isn’t unified on the matter but to equate democrats with zionism isn’t exactly accurate either.
You do know that Democrats receive even more money from israeli lobbies than Republicans right?
AIPAC Demonstrates Its Clout With Defeat of a Second ‘Squad’ Member
And that Joe Biden literally calls himself a Zionist
I refer you to my previous statement friend.
I refer you to my previous statement.
For one, it bases it’s bias assessments on American politics. The UK is less right-wing than the US but when this bot comes along it calls a source which we might call centrist, “left”.
In a way, it’s like an attempt to shift the overton window for other countries closer to the US, and that’s not a good thing.
Of course, don’t expect this to be addressed by @[email protected].
It’s not the bot that makes the judgement
No it’s the person who owns the source.
A pro-Israel American iirc.
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”
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
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!”
That’s fair. I like having this bot as a sort of “auto-tag” thing, even if it’s not being summoned manually each time.
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.
Yeah, or when it says The New York Times is leftist.
Helpful for keeping me honest about checking sources, not always very honest itself.
“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.
the bot formatting just doesn’t work on connect.
That fault lies with the Connect dev though… the formatting used on the webUI works as intended.
Probably, still remains that out of all the bots I’ve seen this is the only one with format issues. I believe a minimalist approach to be preferable for bots since their goal is spreading information over a large userbase with various client, from CLI to native web page.
“Oh, this new post already has a comment, let’s check it out! … Dang it!”
Downvoting doesn’t address this. You can try hiding bots tho.
Downvoting definitely makes your opinion on it known though. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here reading all this.
I don’t think it does. People are explaining all kinds of different reasons why they downvote the bot, so there’s no cohesive reason why it gets downvoted.
In fact, a fair number of people don’t even seem to understand what the bot actually does…lol
I think that’s exactly what it does. It doesn’t matter why they don’t like having it around. They don’t like having it around. And that feedback is important.
It’s really annoying and I don’t trust it
You could block it, no?
I think it belongs at the very bottom of the page.
I actually meant to start a thread one of these days if we can’t ban it! Glad you started the conversation!
My main concern is that by attributing a tactfulness and political rating to them, we’re attaching weight to that. But who does these ratings? Especially when a pop/mainstream mag like the Rolling Stone is classified as “left” the same that explicitly politically left publications like Jacobin are also “left”. That just strikes me as odd.
But who does these ratings?
That information is available on the website, no? Along with their methodology
yes, I know. I meant it more along the lines of whoever comes up with a method for standardizing bias in media puts their own bias in the methodology.
For example, I feel it is a political statement in itself to have a “bias spectrum” from left to unbiased to right. This implies that both left an right are “biases”, while only the center is truly neutral and therefore an arbiter of truth and facts. Enlightened centrism, anyone?
Also, I disagree with parts of their methodology. The headline “Habitual liar and convicted felon to seek US presidency again” would probably be classified as loaded language, whereas “Donald Trump wants to become president again” would be considered more neutral.
I would argue that the former example is, in fact, more truthful than the latter because it doesn’t omit major reasons why this is newsworthy. But since the mbfc is founded on the
illusionidea that there is such a thing as truly neutral common ground, it conflates perspective and bias.Judging by headlines alone, I’d agree about your assessment of bias.
“World-renowned businessman Donald Trump runs for president” would be biased in favour of Trump (so, Right-biased).
Bias isn’t inherently a bad thing if it’s telling the truth. Yeah, there’s propaganda, but an astute reader can figure it out. Or if you don’t want to read media with a certain bias, then you can skip those publications.
Bias also includes what stories to publish. Right-leaning (and beyond) media probably doesn’t publish a whole lot about the bad things and mistakes Trump did. Yet with completely neutral-sounding headlines, they could still be a biased publication based on the things they choose to publish (or not) and highlight (or not).
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.
It promotes the existing power structure, which some people think is no bueno.
For example, if you post this:
https://edition.cnn.com/2002/US/01/30/ret.axis.facts/
the bot will say it is a highly accurate source with highly factual reporting so people will tend to believe with certainty that the U.S. should invade Iraq.
If you actually read the article it seems pretty factual. It lists Bush’s claims and then has a response. Seems to merit the rating.
The reporting of the Bush administration’s position and the response seems fair.
**IRAQ:** STATUS: Since 1998, the Iraqi government has barred U.N. weapons inspectors from examining sites where some suspect that nuclear, chemical or biological weapons are made and stored. The United Nations has said it will lift sanctions against the Middle Eastern country -- in place since Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and the ensuing Gulf War in 1991 -- only if inspectors can verify that Iraq has dismantled all its weapons of mass destruction. In an editorial this month in a state-run newspaper, Iraq again denied it has or is developing such weapons. RESPONSE TO BUSH'S SPEECH: "This statement of President Bush is stupid and a statement that does not befit the leader of the biggest state in the world," Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said Wednesday.Narratives are created by more than just that, including what is reported on, how frequently it is reported, and what is not reported on. See Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent” to learn more.
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.
I guess that is also a shortcoming of the left/right scale. Al Jazeera is super popular among leftists on Lemmy, as they do a lot of Anti-Israel propaganda.
It is not propaganda if it is true. Al Jazeera has journalists on the ground and many of them have been killed by Israeli forces.
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.
That’s my gripe with it. Its single comment fills the entire screen of my phone when scrolling past and it uses gigantic font, a big separator line (?), and links mixed with text mixed with more links.
Additionally, it fucks with the “new comment” and “hot” sorting, depending on how active Lemmy is at the time, by spamming post after post with a comment even though there is no actual discussion happening.
And because it uses spoilers, when I click it to collapse the comment, it just expands
You should use a client that supports all of the text formatting. On Voyager the bot’s comment is smaller than most when collapsed (which it is by default).
Yeah, I’m not changing my entire client that I’ve gotten used to just to deal with a single bot that annoys me.
I have never seen a bot that does good. Got sick of them on reddit and other sites. So when I see it here which is my safe haven. I will downvote or report it because it has not place here.
Or you can just block it to hide it…
