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…

  • @zazo
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    94 months ago

    So people can just downvote it instead right? That’s literal direct democracy at play - if there’s more people that like the bot they’ll upvote it and it will have a positive score - saying “just bury your head in the sand if you don’t agree with this message” is the reason we’re in this political mess in the first place…

    • Pika
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      4 months ago

      Personally I find the downvote/up vote system to be super unproductive, the only thing it accomplishes is squashing the minority opinion, I keep the score system disabled for the comments section as a whole, it makes life easier and prevents me from being effected by populous/bandwagon bias. It still sorts by score for top-level but, it made navigating so much much peaceful.

      • @Maggoty
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        24 months ago

        Over all and in general sure. But for things like bots it’s really good feedback.

    • @ccunning
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      -44 months ago

      Sure - do whatever you want. There are users on this very instance that I downvote every post they make rather than block.

      I also have comment(s?) in this very thread about when I downvote it.