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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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.
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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.
It’s crucial to note that our bias scale is calibrated to the political spectrum of the United States, which may not align with the political landscapes of other nations.
But what even is this false left-right, liberal-conservative, Democrat-Republican one-dimensional scale? The first thing they state on this page is that all this is inherently subjective. Who is MBFC to determine where the middle of this scale exists? If people want to seek out their opinion, that’s fine, but this is inherently a subjective opinion about what constitutes “left center” vs “center,” for example. I don’t get how MBFC deserves their opinion on every news post.
Also the formatting of the bot is awful as displayed on most Lemmy apps. On mine it’s a giant wall of text. Other posts/bots don’t look bad, just this one.
They cover what they consider left and right. This way you can judge whether it aligns with what you believe. And it allows you to interpret their results even if they don’t follow the same spectrum you do.
And if you know of a way to discuss political spectrum without subjectivity I would love to hear it. Even if you don’t use a 2d spectrum, it’s still subjective. Just subjective with additional criteria.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/left-vs-right-bias-how-we-rate-the-bias-of-media-sources/
And if you know of a way to discuss political spectrum without subjectivity I would love to hear it.
Of course that doesn’t exist, my point is why does this specific subjective opinion get promoted on here?
Why does any opinion get promoted on here? Because somebody posted it. And then there is a voting system and comments for people to express their agreement or disagreement.
I honestly don’t care either way if the bot exists. I just think it’s silly that people are claiming that MBFC is terrible based on basically nothing. You can disagree with how they define left vs right, or what their ratings are, but they are pretty transparent about how their system works. And no one has given any example of how it could be done better.
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.
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.
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Consistently factual is exactly that. Both of those words mean actual things. And they go on to say that they can’t fail fact checks. And prompt corrections likely means that as a story develops, that if there were incorrect things reported, they are corrected as soon as the new information is available.
As for who defines extreme bias, it’s literally them. That is what they are saying they are doing. And they spell out what their left vs right criteria are. And how they judge it. Of course this is subjective. There isn’t really a way to judge the political spectrum without subjectivity. They do include examples in their reports about what biased language, sources, or reporting they found. Which allows you to easily judge whether you agree with it.
As for VOA, they say in the ownership portion that it is funded by the US government and that some view it as a propaganda source. They also discuss the history and purpose of it being founded. And then continue on with the factual accuracy and language analysis. You may not agree with it, but it is following their own methodology, and fully explained in the report.
Again, there isn’t anything saying you have to agree with them. It is a subjective rating. I’m not sure how much more transparent they can be though. They have spelled out how they grade, and each report provides explanations and examples that allow you to make your own judgments. Or a starting point for your own research.
If you can define a completely objective methodology to judge political bias on whatever spectrum you choose, then please do. It’s inherently subjective. And there isn’t really a way around that.
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With your own reply you show that they have given you most of the information needed to make your own assessment. Like I’ve said other places in this thread, you don’t have to agree with them. I have never claimed they are correct. I’m saying that they provide information about how they arrived at their conclusion, you can assess that information and decide whether you agree.
It still stands that it is at least a reasonable place to look to gather basic information about a media source. And provides you with a solid starting point to research and make an assessment about a news source.
I agree that using the US political spectrum pretty significantly skews things since US politics is almost all center to right if you compare it to the wider spectrum globally. But since they gave their information, and what spectrum they are using it makes it pretty simple to get a baseline for most media outlets at a glance if it’s not one I’m familiar with.
And with the number of outright insane news sources people like to share, it’s useful to have a way to get at least a decent snapshot of what to expect.
There is a lot of good stuff there but it’s still opaque when it comes to bias specifically. I mean, am I missing somether here? I genuinely feel like there must be a whole section I’ve missed or something based on some of the other commenters. The bias methodology is no more a methodology than “grind up some wheat, mix some water and yeast before chucking it in the oven for a bit” is a recipe for bread. You rate 4 categories from 0 - 10 and average it, but the ratings themselves are totally subjective.
Story Choices: Does the source report news from both sides, or do they only publish one side.
What does this even mean? If a site runs stories covering the IPCC recommendations for climate action but doesn’t run some right wing conspiracy version of how climate change is a hoax, is that biased story selection?
What did I miss here?
On each page, they describe, in detail, exactly how they come to their conclusions.
While you may disagree with what they have to say, to claim they’re hiding anything or that they aren’t being transparent or arbitrary is just untrue.
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Now you’re just repeating yourself. That doesn’t make it any more true.
And as far as your claims of methodology being arbitrary, just because you use words in an arbitrary manner does not make their methodology arbitrary.
Like I said, just because you don’t agree with them doesn’t make them wrong or you right. Feel free to block them if you don’t like it. But other users here have clearly demonstrated how your argument does not hold water.
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I have used their methodology and worked through it. I find no fault with it.
And finally, you’re the one who makes claims that there is some problem with their methodology, yet you have not demonstrated that at all. All you demonstrated is that you happen to disagree with it and that you don’t like it. If you wish to prove your point, you’re gonna need evidence for that, and all of your carrying on here I have not seen the shred of that.
Just block it and move on already. Your disagreement is hardly worth this crusade.
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
Fucking hell even Euronews is controlled by Orbán? Ffs there is truly no free media here other than RTL on TVs.
Any thoughts on TLDR (Youtube channel)?
I think they’re pretty decent. Some More News is good too.
I consistently watch them. Although sometimes they commit some mistakes, but they output pretty decent and easy to digest videos.
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.
Good summary. I think the first point is the most concerning because it’s actively spreading misinformation and giving the appearance of credibility.
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 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.
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.
Reality has a left wing bias.
It also seems to ignore most of the posts that it could actually be helpful on. Like no-name blogs and Fox News.
Same reason sites like Ground News also upset me. Like “yeah sure I totally needed to read that HUNTER BIDEN is absolutely the reason the Democrats are evil totally makes sense oh yeah”, like nah sometimes we can just say these people are massive hypocrites and their opinions and news are literally not factual or useful or important
I’m not going to be surprised when we find out MBFC and Ground News were actually info ops from corporations.
I’m not going to go that far — they’re just poor implementations of things we all want. When GN was created there was significant pushes from so many other companies to create their best little aggregators and summarizers. I’ve always felt it should be more possible to actually “ground” sources and journalists to the actual truth, than whatever these people deem as center. It’s ironic to call it grounded when its foundation is a political landscape mired in lies and grandiosity.
Yeah probably. But I wouldn’t be surprised.
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.
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.
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.
And because it uses spoilers, when I click it to collapse the comment, it just expands
You can’t block it?
Yes we can. It’s in my blocked users, like any others (using Sync app). I’ve blocked it mostly because the formatting is lazy and word count excessive. It just “gets in the way”. Plus I generally already know the bias of most reputable sources, as do most news junkies.
What client do you use? It looks fine in Thunder. (I agree it’s spammy in general, but not because of the formatting.)
I’m using Sync and this is how it looks:
Like I commented above, I wonder if other spoiler tags work in Sync or if there’s something about the way this bot posts that breaks it.
It’s broken on Eternity as well, it looks like this
I wonder if other spoiler tags work in Eternity or if there’s something about the way this bot posts that breaks it.
Looking at the buttons that they give me when I’m commenting it looks like it does support spoilers when done in the >!text!< syntax, but the other alternative version definitely took over.
I’ve never seen the ::: spoiler text ::: version work
That’s partly Lemmy’s fault for using a custom spoiler syntax. But yeah it sounds like Eternity doesn’t support it yet.
That said, there was an issue in their repo just recently closed, so it sounds like support is coming!
That’s great to hear, I love eternity as a client because none of the other ones that I’ve tried so far have come close to what I’m looking for in a UI and I like the ability to block comments and posts by specific keywords, it really helps when the entire platform as a whole becomes hyper focused on one subject because I can just add that subject to the block list and filter out the flood
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…
That’s what I said and was down voted for it. Oh well, that’s life on lemmy.
Also did that, blocked the bot.
Fuck that…not getting on admins or anything but sites need to get rid of bots unless they pay the site. And also get rid of clickbait shit that I saw on reddit but not here yet.
So, because you don’t like bots, they shouldn’t be made available to others who appreciate them? Fuck that.
The beauty of Lemmy is that you are in control of what you see, but that makes that you have to control it. Stop trying to dictate that I can’t have bots from instances that allow them.
There’s a setting you can toggle on the web UI. I hope it’s supported on mobile apps.
Enabling that option will also have an effect on mobile apps.
The bot is made by the instance admins themselves, so don’t expect the bot to go away.
The bot was literally added by the instance admins. You think they should pay themselves???
I like the converts to metric bot on Reddit
out of personal curiosity, are you seeing this with the bots setting turned off? I thought that setting was a universal setting that just hide all bot posts for the account
Yes I always turn the bots off whenever its offered.
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!”
It’s annoying when they are the first comment.
i’d appreciate a “butt” counter bot way more
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 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
- is this information well-sourced?
- is there any obvious missing context?
- is this information up to date?
- what are the likely ideological biases of this writer or publication?
- 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.
I find it useful at a glance, specifically when I don’t recognize a niche source. There’s a lot of “alt” media under random names. This helps flag them.
For mainstream, you can easily make your own call. You should be exposed to enough of it.
Would you then be posting your conclusions? Like, if you’re gonna do that work on some of these posts anyway… may as well share.
When I was on in Reddit I used to do it all the time, but writing everything out, organizing it and including citations etc. can be rather time-intensive.
These days, I’ll leave a quick comment on a post if I have enough time, but nothing major.
writing everything out, organizing it and including citations etc. can be rather time-intensive.
That’s why I like MBFC. It’s a lot of effort, and even if I don’t agree with them on everything, it gives an idea.
Just don’t take it too seriously, I would say. Not every news piece from the same source is going to be of the same quality or bias.
Yeah, I don’t take it as hard facts, and the bias especially I take with a grain of salt. I think the fact checking reliability part is more important (but also not perfect).
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”.
MSNBC is left wing! I can understand objecting to some of the others but this one is clear as day.
I’m 99% certain you’re from the United States if you think MSNBC is anything beyond center to center left.
Political stances are relative across the globe. You can’t just draw a line in the middle of American political talking points and then apply that generalization to the rest of the world. It’s more useful to describe specific ideologies (although even that gets pretty muddy fast), but that wouldn’t be very practical for a bit either. Imagine if it somehow concluded that Mother Jones has a “minarchist-capitalist” bias. Still, I question the use of this bot, which is probably based on US terms, running this analysis on a site called “lemmy.world”.
Which is why the bot is not useful - it literally tries to standardize political stances when that’s actually impossible.
Originally from Canada, so close enough
We seem to have a different opinion of what is left-wing and what is not. I do not think the Democratic party is left-wing at all. It is centre-right to right (with the Republican party being far-right).
I know of none American left-wing news outlets and the only left-wing bias I know of is truth.
Sure, the Democrats aren’t calling for a literal communist revolution. But there are realistically only two parties in the US and MSNBC is a non-stop, hyper-partisan booster for the party that’s further to the left.
I am not from the US so why should I base my definition of left-wing on the Democratic party (and subsequently arrive upon the wrong conclusion that the Democratic party is leftist)? More importantly, why would you?
If you want to talk relatively, use relative terms. That being said, left of the farthest right is not very useful, which is precisely why I care about the distinction.
Because MSNBC is an American organization and their coverage is American-focused, their bias relative to American politics is what’s relevant here. It doesn’t matter what their beliefs or policy positions are relative to any particular standard, what matters is whether or not their work presents the news accurately or in a way intended to mislead or influence their viewers in favor of one side or the other, which they clearly do. We don’t even need to agree on whether the Democrats are a ‘real’ left party, only that they’re to the left of the alternative and that MSNBC favors them.
Because MSNBC is an American organization and their coverage is American-focused, their bias relative to American politics is what’s relevant here.
I understand what you are trying to say, but I disagree. They are making claims about a lot of news outlets in other countries, which means they cannot present an American skewed perspective as the truth (unless what they really want is to export political views and exert influence domestically and abroad, now we might be talking here).
It doesn’t matter what their beliefs or policy positions are relative to any particular standard, what matters is whether or not their work presents the news accurately or in a way intended to mislead or influence their viewers in favor of one side or the other, which they clearly do.
All reporting should be held to the highest standard. Anyone seriously attempting to critique and comment on reporting at a meta level, should hold themselves to the same, or even a higher standard, for the same reason. What I am essentially arguing is that the MediaBiasFactCheck falls in line with pretty much all of US news as mass propaganda machines in the interest of capital. If you disagree, why do you think they operate at all?
In any civilised country Bernie fucking Sanders would be considered centre right at best. A vast majority of your politicians are corporate stooges with no political position of their own (though their owners are obviously far right and opposed to any form of human rights), but when it comes to voters most of the democratic party is right to far right, and republicans range from deranged lunatics to fascists and proud of it, in both cases mostly due to ignorance, brainwashing by your extremely biased media, Stockholm syndrome, and probably a good dose of brain damage due to lack of proper health care and regulations.
There are no centre and much less left mainstream political parties or politicians whatsoever in the US. Anything remotely approaching the centre is labelled as communist and socially and mediatically ostracized and or ridiculed.
The US has long devolved into a sad and tragic satire of a fascist dystopia, and any attempt to push its twisted worldviews and standards on the civilised world will naturally be met with hostility, out of sheer principle, self respect, and self defense.
Your bot is extremely biased and obviously ill intentioned. It’s harmful. It’s malware. And it’s spam.
Left of fascism, but not leftist. Bernie frickin Sanders is barely left of center.
As an outsider, the Dem party is in a funky spot politically. Whilst it economically is to the right, many of its social policies it endorses are leftist. Their emphasis on equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity is a large part of that, regulation of expressions and policy of migration.
Where I live, most of our political parties are left of the dems economically (basic welfare is not even a debate), but many would clearly be right of them (though usually not even close to the republicans) in social policy.
Yeah, living in a parliamentary democracy means I have to make an effort to wrap my head around how the US “democratic” institution works. The internal structure of the Democratic Party has more in common with our democratic structure than the structure of their “competing” parties. As a result there is more room for difference within the Democratic Party than within a political party in our system, but the political difference between parties in our system is greater than those within the democratic party.
Whilst it economically is to the right, many of its social policies it endorses are leftist.
My analysis has long been that there is no political will to implement leftist economical policies in the US, i.e. those that really matter in the grand scheme of things, even though there exists a semi-conscious wish for them within the populace. Please do not misunderstand, increasing equity between people of different backgrounds is important, but important single issues such as gay marriage are insufficient if they do not come along with, or better yet, as a product of equity of material conditions. It was all the same with the feminist movement where social advancements were conceded in lieu of increasing their economical statuses, with the division in measurable quantities, such as income or capital ownership still going strong (note I do not advocate changing the ruling elite from one subset of people to another subset of different characteristics, but instead saying that capital ownership should be transferred from the subset to the whole).
Strengthening the political power of the marginalized by increasing the material conditions of their strata is the best way to make social progress, which the ruling elite of the US is painfully aware and which is why they sometimes are willing to skip the first step and reach the inevitable second immediately. The discrepancy between the people’s wants and needs for leftist policies, again conscious or not, and the actual politics of the US, is deeply connected to the Democratic Party’s willingness to concede these social changes without losing the backing of the capital interests that fund them.
I for one, appreciate that bot.
Same here, it’s becoming a habit to check every source.
It’s too much noise. Its posts are huge and take up way too much space.
You blocked it or? We reduced the size by over 50% already.
I blocked it a few months back.
From a bot that exists like 2 weeks.
I may be thinking of a different bot then.
Hmmm, nope, I checked my block list and that’s the right account name. I’m 100% sure that I blocked it more than 11 days ago though.
concidering the bot has a creation date listed on its profile as 7-28-24, it can’t be too long ago that you did, I’m not sure what you saw.
The posts are 4 lines unless you are using an AP that fails at displaying spoilers.
The posts are 4 lines but when each comment includes 3 or 4 sources it checks, you end up with a giant block of spoiler text that usually takes up about a full screen (Sometimes less, sometimes more)
That comment you linked is displayed as four lines, and it only gets long if you expand everything.
I can get being upset with the corporation itself or the methodology is uses.
But if you don’t interact with the spoiler tags,
it’s as long as this comment.This is what i see on connect. Maybe its the app, but I’m sure its there’s more people who see this and think its an eyesore.
Edit: yes each article is only 4 lines, but theres 3 entries.
This is what i see on connect.
I’d take this feedback to your app dev. Here’s Voyager and Tesseract.
That’s the app you use failing at displaying text, on a website that is mostly text.
You should submit a ticket to the dev, or use an app that’s out of beta.
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.
The term propaganda makes no implications about true or false. This is not a discussion about truth but bias. Propaganda is when you push your ideology using communicative methods like loaded language.
News agencies like Al Jazeera do exactly this. This is not unexpected as it sits in Qatar and wants to be the mouthpiece of the arab world. Saying they do propaganda is not a bad thing per se, but readers should be aware of this.
It is not propaganda if it is true.
Something can be true and propaganda. If reporting is misrepresenting a situation using purely true information and events, then it’s propaganda. It’s misrepresentation that makes something propaganda, not truthfulness.
Note: This is not a comment on whether I think Lemmy/Al Jazeera is doing propaganda.
They can report only one side over and over again and focus on the emotional impact, include “people say” or qualify rumors or speculations or exaggerations so that it’s still factual reporting, while completely ignore the other side. That is what you see Israel and US MSM doing. Humans have biases and can easily be manipulated.
I suspect that Al Jazeera is still mostly on it’s “best behavior” trying to establish itself but ultimately it’s controlled by Quatar and not free. That still makes it incredibly valuable because it’s not controlled by US empire.
Your link states Israel says they’re a Hamas operative. Al Jazeera says that isn’t true.
I’m gonna err on the side of the journalists that Israel is actively targeting instead.
The Al Jazeera and Fox News comparison is why I don’t trust that site. I don’t think Al Jazeera isn’t a biased organization, but I do consider them somewhat factual. I also think I’m not the only one because you often see people linking to Al Jazeera. However when it comes to Fox News I think most people would agree that Fox news is far from accurate. It’s not exactly Newsmax, but if someone linked Fox News I think most people would definitely question the facts of the article.
And then we get to mediabiasfactcheck where Al Jazeera is considered just as factual as Fox News. It’s one of those situations where you have to question who exactly is in the wrong? Is Al Jazeera really that factually incorrect? Is Fox news more factual than people believe? Or is mediabiasfactcheck wrong? I’m not against being wrong but from my years of being on the web I’d say it’s the last option.
I understand that Fox News has so many subsidiaries that might be muddying the “overall” rating. But I agree with you. I’d trust Al Jazeera over Fox News any day.
They had a children’s channel that unfortunately no longer exists. I was lucky enough to watch it when I had the chance.
Yes, it was THAT Al Jazeera.
I didn’t know that. You are not thinking of Spacetoon by neighboring Bahrain? The two countries 🇧🇭🇶🇦 can get easily confused. If Al Jazeera did have a kids channel it is news to me.
No, it’s not Spacetoon. Everyone and their dog knows that by this point.
Just put jcctv.net in the Wayback Machine (find an archive before 29 March 2013) and you’ll see what I mean.
I believe Baraem was one of its sister channels?
TIL, thanks
Always glad to help.
IIRC, it lists a zionist/anti-Palestine news website as highly trustworthy. I can’t tell which side is right, I have it blocked.
Sites can be biased and tendentious without being factually inaccurate, though.
It’s possible to factually accurate with heavy bias, but since that would require selective reporting to enforce a single worldview I wouldn’t consider that “highly trustworthy”.
Consider the following hypothetical headlines:
“Teen Killed by Islamic Group During Shooting”
“Terrorist Shooting at Mosque, 20 Dead”Both are technically factually accurate ways to describe a hypothetical scenario where a teen shoots up a place of worship before being stopped by one of the victims, but they both paint very different pictures. Would you consider both sources “highly trustworthy”?
I’m not saying they can’t. I’m referring to a point that was championed in many a post by some .ml figures calling for the bot’s decommissioning. I don’t use the site (can’t even recall its name), and can’t speak for its credibility.
I guess I didn’t make it clear that it was second-hand information and not my personal informed opinion. In my defense, I was running on 4 hours of sleep.
What does Zionist mean? It hasn’t affected my life enough to actually look it up but I see it on every other article in the Israel/Palestine conflict.
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What? Wasn’t Israel originally the Palestine before a part of Palestine was designated Israel?
No, but that’s a common misconception. Palestine has never previously been a country, but was a region of the Ottoman Empire, then a part of the British Empire that more or less consisted of modern day Israel, Palestine, and Jordan.
Under the Ottomans and the British, there was a Jewish minority, mostly in the region of Palestine, but also in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, etc.
Starting in the 1800s, Jews living in Europe began to move to the region in larger numbers (as well as Jews living in other parts of the Middle East and Africa). This was primarily motivated by antisemitic events in Europe, but also similar to the national movements that led to Prussia becoming Germany, the pan-Arab movement, re-establishing Poland, etc.
Here is a photo of the 1931 Palestinian football team that included Palestinian Jews as well as Palestinian Arabs.
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Precisely. Wtf.
Zionism is an ideology that believes in a Jewish state consisting of mainly Jews and which claim the land of Palestine. So Zionists want to take over Palestine to extend their Jewish state as they believe that land to be theirs.
(Correct me if I am wrong)
“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.
“Oh, this new post already has a comment, let’s check it out! … Dang it!”
That’s pretty much my gripe. One time I saw a post with maybe six, seven comments, opened it up, and they were all either the bot, or replies to the bot.
And even if you block the bot the post still shows up as having comments. So you’ll open up a post boasting the aforementioned six or seven comments expecting to find a lively debate, or at least a wisecrack about global affairs, and leave with a bunch of tumbleweeds and the lingering knowledge that somewhere, two or more people are arguing with a machine about whether or not it thinks the newspaper is any good.
It would be nice if bot comments weren’t counted, at least as an option.
I’d love that
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.
I down vote it and like it. I just like it as the last comment. I’m doing my part! 🪲🦵
People downvote it as a placement strategy.
People downvote it not because it makes bad comments, but because they don’t realize they could block a bot.
You downvote a comment because you don’t like what that user said, not because you never want to see any of their comment ever again.
Some people downvote it because they know how Lemmy works and want to find MBFCbot at the bottom of a post’s comments. Other people downvote it because they don’t get how Lemmy works and don’t realize they could block it.
…and yet both of them often leave the MBFCbot as the top comment, lol
Trash. Bot. Is trying to take control of the narrative on Lemmy.
Those are my 3 reasons.
