No comments or anything, just lots of Downvotes.
- People disagree on the bias bot reporting
- People don’t like their biases being made visible
- People don’t realize they have a bias
- People find the bot noisy
Someone just told me that it “labels everything short of fascism as ‘left-leaning’” and “tries to shift the Overton window” even further right than it already is in the US.
And I suppose that is correct if your idea of the spectrum of normal political opinions is restricted to what you see on Lemmy, especially if your instance hasn’t defederated from Hexbear yet.
And yet ultimately, MBFC places their center – by their own admission – based on US politics, which is decidedly right of center within the developed world.
That’s correct. It’s intended for a US audience.
If it were based on the European Overton window and you were American then there’s a good chance you would complain about its centre being centre-left for you.
It’s not wrong; you’re just not in the intended audience.
It’s not really possible to give internationally correct ratings. What an American considers centre-left is different from what a Frenchman considers centre-left, which is different from what a Pole considers centre-left. You can only report one, and the other two will then complain about it being wrong from their perspective.
It should then refrain from from posting on non US-media sources and/or stories and/or communities.
Of course it won’t. It’s purpose is to promote it’s owners US-centric political window.
It’s spamming political propaganda ,dressing it up as ‘facts’, and it’s getting it’s just deserts.
There is no need for regional tone in a “fact checker” bot. Facts are not regional. There is need for political education in the united states so that right wing things are considered right wing things again and not center positions. Respectively, anything leftist isnt communism.
Truthfully the bot gets voted down because it furthers a Zionist agenda, same as the lemmy world administration by pushing it, and many less biased instances and user groups take offense with that.
This needs to die in a fire. It’s not the US Overton window. You can see that by far right sources listed as right center. Like the Ayn Rand Institute.
Just in curiosity, what is an example of a centre-right (by American standards) source for you? I make no comment about the Ayn Rand Institute as I know nothing about it
Sinclair and Fox News stations would be center right. Fox Opinion TV would be Right to Far right depending on the show and Ayn Rand is far right because it’s anarchy-capitalism.
Center, or least biased are your fact based papers of record. BBC, NYT, WAPO, Baltimore Sun, LA Times, etc.
I think you’re right in terms of the American spectrum. Do you have a link to the bot calling the Ayn Rand institute centre-right? I did some more digging into it.
I will happily retract my comment if you can.
So the bias bot is biased, dammit
Where anyone puts the “center” of the political spectrum is arbitrary and ultimately irrelevant. What we should still be able to expect is that it gets the ordering of sources correct—i.e., it doesn’t label Source A as being to the left of Source B if it’s actually to the right. And that relative ordering is still useful, as long as we bear in mind that the actual labels are otherwise arbitrary.
They (MBFC) explicitly state that they rate sources as more credible the closer the sources are to their arbitrarily selected centre.
Which is ridiculous. If Democracy Now or ProPublica take great pains to get all their facts right (which they do), and the New York Post regularly outright makes shit up, they’re marked as equally reliable based on that metric, because they’re supposedly an equal distance away from the centre.
It puts Reuters as the center and that seems pretty accurate, IMO.
Non-US politics is more complicated than “left vs right”.
Definitely—so sources that are close together when projected onto a left-right axis may be far apart in a more multidimensional political space. But the relative ordering along that axis can still be accurate, even if the implied proximity isn’t.
The assumes that the US Democrat-Republican spectrum is indeed a straight line in that space, and they are diametrically opposed.
US politics is too.
Personally I find it worthless because it lends credibility to sources that promoted the Iraq war, afghanistan, libya, syria, etc.
Any source that covered a story where thousands to millions will be/are/were murdered for the profit of the military-industrial complex as anything but an unimaginable crime is instantly non-credible. Yes, that includes 99% of American media.
Same with every media outlet wringing their hands about Hamas instead of the locking of millions of people in a concentration camp for decades that precipitated the attack.
The bot is tuned for US bias. Europe bias: US left is centric here.
The bot isn’t even tuned for US bias. It’s tuned for conservative US bias. The papers of record that work really hard to be objective get listed as “left center”.
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It’s often wrong
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It’s a bot and yet I still see it with the option to hide bots. Someone said it was flagged properly the other day, but since it’s the ONLY self proclaimed bot that isn’t filtered by the “block bot accounts” option in Lemmy, I call bullshit.
I have it blocked so I didn’t notice that it slides past the bot filter. That is interesting, but blocking it works.
I might unblock it just to downvote it tbh.
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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.
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.
Oh so Media Bias is from the USA and believes that anything that isn’t Republican is left 😂
It’s not even on point for American politics. It’s clearly a conservative viewpoint.
How i wish that was true.
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:
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.
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.
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
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.
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”?
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.
Financial times, Newsweek
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.
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.
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.
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.”
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
One should be even more skeptical and demanding of proof for wannabe trust-gatekeepers of the entire Internet, than one should already be for single newsmedia entities - the former place themselves as supervisors of trust in the latter and yet have even less proven trustworthiness than them.
So it’s curious that the !world@lemmy.world mods keep on pushing for people reading posts on that community to use this specific self-annointed trust gatekeeper who has repeatedly shown that they themselves are biased (quite a lot to the Right of the political spectrum and pro-Zionistl) as their trust-gatekeeper.
I keep downvoting it because such action reeks of manipulation and is exactly the kind of thing that State Actors and Political Actors would do to shape opinions in the this day and age when people can read articles from anywhere in the World.
pro-Zionistl)
Would you have examples? Genuinely curious
Pretty much all Israel sites, for one. Jerusalem Post, etc.
I see, thanks
I downvote it everytime because of its rightwing bias.
If you say the mainstream corporate news is center left, you’re either stupid or you have a right wing agenda.
And to think, this quote is almost 20 years old! Things have changed a lot since then.
We still make fun of conservatives, but it’s much less funny that they’re actually in power. Conservatives are living up to the satire.
It’s like the aliens in Galaxy Quest who think their Star Trek show is a documentary, only it’s conservatives watching The Colbert Report
I’ve had to block it because it takes up two screens of my phone as my client doesn’t support spoiler tags properly. I’m not going to change my client over one noisy bot.
Also MBFC seems to be a bit biased (it’s definitely not correct on a few in the UK), as most bias rankings are, it’s why services like Ground News use several of these services to make up their ratings. At the end of the day only using MBFC data isn’t much better than listening to one guy tell you “yeah they’re totally fine”
Finally from what little discussion I’ve seen with the owner of the bot, they don’t seem to be very collaborative with the rest of the community and just shut down criticism.
What app are you even using? In Voyager it’s always collapsed in a spoiler and if you click on it, it’s just some text.
Probably Sync. I’m waiting for the next update too.
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.
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”
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.
So the answers in this post are mostly that people are downvoting the bot because it is often wrong and then others defending it by saying “it’s not wrong it’s just based on American politics”.
If the bot reported from a range of sources that reflect a number of different political perspectives I’m sure it’d be more useful outside of the scope of American politics, and therefore wouldn’t get downvoted.
As far as I’m concerned the vote system is working as intended.
The internet is not American. There are no nations on lemmy ✌️
Agreed. NYT is center-right from my point of view, and I think it’s a pretty neutral assertion. The bot says it’s center left. That’s the same discrepancy as if they would call Fox News Center.
In my opinion the bot tries to shift the overtone window to the right. Just because Trumpists call everything leftist media doesn’t make it that.
This may have just been an autocorrect issue, but it’s Overton Window
I asked in another thread complaining about MBFC if anyone knew of alternatives and nobody shared anything. Anyone got any?
Edit: Fuck me for asking I guess…
Here’s an analogy:
The alternative to drinking bleach is not drinking bleach. As opposed to drinking “diet bleach,” or something equally ridiculous.
Why do you feel it would need to be replaced?
Because not everyone has strong media literacy. I may have the means to assess the quality of a source on my own but that’s not the case for everyone. This problem will hopefully solve itself with more users on Lemmy who can call out bad sources but right now it’s not uncommon to find posts with zero comments minus the bias bot.
But the bot is biased itself. That’s worse than no information.
Which is why I just asked if anyone knew of any alternatives. I will say, I’m at a minimum that the bot has people talking about how news should be vetted, at least.
Some people have mentioned https://ground.news. I haven’t tried it, this is not a vouch for their credibility.
They are using MBFC’s bias rating too, with some additional ratings from other sources for a few publishers. Seems to have a strong US-centric view as well.
Thanks for the reply! Ground.news is used by the bot to show potential alternative sources for the story which I’ve found useful.
That part actually is useful. It wouldn’t be getting down voted if it was just that.
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 @blackn1ght@feddit.uk 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.
If it’s trying to tell people that CNN is center-left, who knows wtf else is questionable (or outright wrong).
It’s getting it’s info from Media Bias Fact Check so explain to me how their method is wrong? You prefer All Sides. Or Ad Fontes Media? Both of which also say leaning left.
Who cares where it’s getting its info from? The methodology is crap and I don’t need a bot or self-appointed gatekeeping organization telling me which something is biased. It’s not that the bias isn’t there, but I’d rather decide it for myself.
Ah so you have a methodology, which is experience based, uses your individual knowledge? Can you explain how you judge political bias, so others can use it?
I applaud your interest in self-reliance, but how do you determined you are not being manipulated by either side?
CNN isn’t left by any stretch. It’s corporate friendly that pays lip service to some liberal culture war issues.
In general I don’t disagree that CNN a corporation which has a fiduciary bias to it’s peers in the news it promotes. That is a bias of corporate person hood.
Many other issues there, but I’m curious on a spectrum in the US and in comparison to other similar organization in the US, how you would place CNN? Right leaning? Center? Far right?
The point being made is that “where does it sit on the current US political spectrum” doesn’t matter. Why should I care is CNN sits slightly left or right of the current American Overton window? Why is a news organisation more credible if one guy judges it to be in the centre of that window? How does Judging the BBC or NHK based on where they would sit if they were American do anything other than cement the ridiculous idea that the current US status-quo is an inviolable constant of the universe?
Have you asked yourself who runs the bot and what their bias is?
Because it reports sources known to be unreliable (like Jerusalem Post and EuroNews) as Highly Trustworthy
It definitely doesn’t or shouldn’t. MBFC rates it as “mostly” trustworthy on their site. Definitely not highly
And do you have examples of either the source being untrustworthy or another service rating it more towards your perspective of the source?
From your link:
So then you’re referring to “Credibility” on MBFC rather than “Factuality” which is what I was referring to.
I personally don’t put much stock in that category. The “Credibility” is based on several factors including the age and popularity of the publication, the bias, and the factuality.
By MBFC system, it has a credibility score of, by my estimate, 6 points which is the minimum threshold for the high credibility rating.
Their scoring and our interpretation aside, I would still love to see sources and reasons on why you think the Jerusalem Post should be rated lower
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.
