this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2024
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Why are people downvoting the MediaBiasFactChecker bot? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by otp@sh.itjust.works to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
59 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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...

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[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] just2look@lemm.ee 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Why do you say they’re opaque? They detail the history of the publication, the ownership, their analysis of bias within their reporting, and give examples of failed fact checks. I’m not sure what else you could want about how a publication is rated? I’m not saying it’s perfect, but they seem to be putting a solid effort into explaining how they arrive at the ratings they give.

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Because their methodology is nothing but buzzwords:

The primary aim of our methodology is to systematically evaluate the ideological leanings and factual accuracy of media and information outlets. This is achieved through a multi-faceted approach that incorporates both quantitative metrics and qualitative assessments in accordance with our rigorously defined criteria.

Despite apparently having “rigorously defined criteria”, they don’t actually say what they are.

[–] just2look@lemm.ee 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

They literally publish their methodology and scoring system.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/methodology/

So they do say exactly what their criteria is, and how it is scored. None of that is buzz words, it’s just a summary that fit in a few sentences. You can look at the full methodology if you want more than just that small bullet description.

I’m not saying that you have to agree with their scoring, or that it is necessarily accurate. I just think if you’re going to critique a thing, you should at least know what you’re critiquing.

[–] Artisian@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Bravo for bringing the notes. On a first glance, some of these feel like they require subjectivity (like, do we really believe the political spectrum is 1d?), but I agree I could run the computation myself from this.

[–] just2look@lemm.ee 1 points 9 months ago

There is definitely some subjectivity. Language isn’t something that is easily parsed and scored. That is why they give examples on the actual report about the kind of biased language they saw, or whatever other issues led to the score given.

I don’t think they mean for their website to be the end all bias resource. More of a stepping off point for you to make your own judgments.

[–] mashbooq@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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"

[–] FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] zazo@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] otp@sh.itjust.works 2 points 9 months ago

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

[–] PrivateNoob@sopuli.xyz 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Fucking hell even Euronews is controlled by Orbán? Ffs there is truly no free media here other than RTL on TVs.

[–] PolyLlamaRous@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Any thoughts on TLDR (Youtube channel)?

[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 1 points 9 months ago

I think they’re pretty decent. Some More News is good too.

[–] Hegar@fedia.io 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] scrion@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

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.

[–] otp@sh.itjust.works 0 points 9 months ago

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.

[–] Maggoty@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, the Overton window has been pushed so far right that neutral sources with no added opinion are now considered center-left.

[–] davidagain@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

Reality has a left wing bias.

[–] Maggoty@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

I think the bigger problem with MBFC is they don't have a center category. Until they get one they are forcing themselves to present all news as biased one way or the other. Leaving no room for news organizations that are highly objective.

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[–] Adanisi@lemmy.zip 2 points 8 months ago

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 @Rooki@lemmy.world.

[–] SpeakinTelnet@sh.itjust.works 1 points 9 months ago (6 children)

"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.

[–] mp3@lemmy.ca 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] SpeakinTelnet@sh.itjust.works 1 points 9 months ago

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.

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[–] morphballganon@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

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.

[–] laughterlaughter@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

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!"

[–] xmunk@sh.itjust.works 1 points 9 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] ShepherdPie@midwest.social 1 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] idiomaddict@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

And because it uses spoilers, when I click it to collapse the comment, it just expands

[–] NewNewAccount@lemmy.world 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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).

[–] Alteon@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

Yeah, I'm not changing my entire client that I've gotten used to just to deal with a single bot that annoys me.

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[–] PanArab@lemm.ee 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] gigachad@sh.itjust.works 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] PanArab@lemm.ee 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] imPastaSyndrome@lemm.ee 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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

[–] ccunning@lemmy.world 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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

They should block it.

It gets weird when folks start trying to keep everyone else from having it available as a resource.

[–] Maggoty@lemmy.world 0 points 9 months ago (10 children)

Disinformation is dangerous. That's how we got the white "alternative facts" thing in the first place. We shouldn't tolerate it at all.

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[–] bartolomeo@suppo.fi 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] mholiv@lemmy.world 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.
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