We’ve had some trouble recently with posts from aggregator links like Google Amp, MSN, and Yahoo.
We’re now requiring links go to the OG source, and not a conduit.
In an example like this, it can give the wrong attribution to the MBFC bot, and can give a more or less reliable rating than the original source, but it also makes it harder to run down duplicates.
So anything not linked to the original source, but is stuck on Google Amp, MSN, Yahoo, etc. will be removed.
The bot is instituted by the Admins and with good reason.
But yes, this has been the problem that pops up recently. The bot sees “Oh, MSN, they’re reliable…” but the OG source is not.
i think a better bot would be one that shows the financial/managerial ties a publisher has in a tree format so people can make the decision themselves about political bias
When did this happen? The admins instituted it for !politics, and the admins changed their minds about having it for !news and friends, but wanted to keep it in !politics?
What’s the reason?
Heightened misinformation through the election season.
In what way does having the MediaBiasFactCheck bot help with misinformation? It’s not very accurate, probably less than the average Lemmy reader’s preexisting knowledge level. People elsewhere in these comments are posting specific examples, in a coherent, respectful fashion.
Most misinformation clearly comes in the form of accounts that post a steady stream of “reliable” articles which don’t technically break the rules, and/or in bad-faith comments. You may well be doing plenty of work on that also, I’m not saying you’re not, but it doesn’t seem from the outside like a priority in the way that the bot is. What is the use case where the bot ever helped prevent some misinformation? Do you have an example when it happened?
I’m not trying to be hostile in the way that I’m asking these questions. It’s just very strange to me that there is an overwhelming consensus by the users of this community in one direction, and that the people who are moderating it are pursuing this weird non-answer way of reacting to the overwhelming consensus. What bad thing would happen if you followed the example of the !news moderators, and just said, “You know what? We like the bot, but the community hates it, so out it goes.” It doesn’t seem like that should be a complex situation or a difficult decision, and I’m struggling to see why the moderation team is so attached to this bot and their explanations are so bizarre when they’re questioned on it.
Well, for example, just today (or maybe it was yesterday? Things get blurry after a while) somebody posted a Breitbart link.
Now, most of the Lemmy audience is smart enough to know Breitbart is bullshit, and I did remove the link when I saw it, but until I removed it, it was up with the MBFC bot making it clear to anyone who did not know that it was, in fact, bullshit.
We can’t catch everything right away, so it’s good having a bot mark these things.
Wouldn’t the fact that the Breitbart article had – if I recall correctly – a 25:10 upvote-downvote ratio by the time it was removed suggest that the MBFC bot was functionally useless in counteracting a disinformation source? Presumably because most people simply read a headline about Zelensky that wasn’t negative, said “oh cool”, upvoted without reading the article or looking at the source, and continued scrolling? And I can hardly imagine any of the 10 downvoters actually checked the MBFC bot; instead they noticed that it was Breitbart and downvoted because of its notoriety.
We discussed boiling the bot down to a tag on the posts, but apparently there was some technical limitation doing that? Frankly, it’s a little over my head.
Yeah, I’ve heard too that post/user flairs don’t gel with ActivityPub for some reason. 😅
Yeah mbfc really doing heavy work showing how bad it is…
Misinformation like the website MBFC, which equates the level of factual accuracy of The Guardian to Breitbart?
No it’s okay, I checked the rating for MBFC on MBFC and they rated themselves very well.
Don’t forget how highly they ranked Radio Free Asia
I don’t hate Radio Free Asia as much as some people, but even I recognize that MBFC is on crack when talking about it compared to – as I keep bringing up – The Guardian.
The MBFC Credibility Rating for RFA is “HIGH CREDIBILITY”, while for The Guardian, it’s “MEDIUM CREDIBILITY”. For factual reporting, RFA gets “HIGH” while The Guardian gets “MIXED” – which is two ranks down from RFA and is – again – on the same level as Breitbart. Meanwhile, didn’t RFA run an anti-China story using a picture from a Reddit thread as their only source?
Qnr that damn left-leaning, uh, Associated Press.
No, no, you see, they have a left-center bias because they… Report the news factually and dispassionately. Seriously, this article titled “AP exclusive: Before Trump job, Manafort worked to aid Putin” is cited by MBFC as “utiliz[ing] moderate-loaded language in their headlines in their political coverage”.
They specifically cite: “However, in some articles, the author demonstrates bias through loaded emotional language such as this: “PUSHED Ukrainian officials to investigate BASELESS corruption allegations against the Bidens.””
Yeah, no fucking shit it was completely baseless and no fucking shit Trump pushed for this. How dare they present reality the way it actually is instead of fucking both-sidesing an obvious lie. Clearly left-center bias.
MBFC does NOT equate the Guardian with Breitbart:
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-guardian/
Overall, we rate The Guardian as Left-Center biased based on story selection that moderately favors the left and Mixed for factual reporting due to numerous failed fact checks over the last five years.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/breitbart/
Overall, we rate Breitbart Questionable based on extreme right-wing bias, the publication of conspiracy theories and propaganda, as well as numerous false claims.
If you check their list of questionable sources, Breitbart is listed, the Guardian is not:
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/fake-news/
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/new-york-times/
Really weird it is rated “Reliable” when the New York Times wrote and reported on literal fake news weapons of mass destruction in Iraq which manufactured consent for an illegal invasion and overthrow of Iraq and killing literally MILLIONS OF PEOPLE.
On what planet is the newspaper of the establishment of the New York elite, literally wall street, “Left” I don’t think they support putting all the corporate board members in prison and establishing workers co-ops and replacing the neoliberal status quo with socialism.
You don’t have to go back 20 years. They also committed a fairly big oopsie, not that long ago.
The Guardian: I don’t think this one article about renters from 2020 proves its case very well. Personally, I’m not convinced. MIXED
New York Times: You really think someone would do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies? I don’t think so.
The New York Times is a special class of paper called a “Newspaper of Record” until or unless that changes, nobody will question their reliability.
https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_of_record
Oops?
Jordan, please look at the ‘Factual Reporting’ metric. They consider both of them to be ‘MIXED’, and as @[email protected] correctly points out, the sorts of few-and-far-between “fact checks” performed on The Guardian are complete nitpicks, while Breitbart is outright a disinformation outlet, peddling climate denialism, anti-vaxx, and other things that make it – based on what you said earlier – a source that isn’t credible enough to be posted to this very community.
The Guardian is much more factually accurate than “MIXED”, and Breitbart is much less factually accurate than “MIXED”, yet somehow they elevate Breitbart while dragging The Guardian’s credibility through the mud.
(To be clear, though, I still think what you guys are doing with this change is a huge improvement.)
That’s not the overall rating though, which is why Breitbart is Questionable and the Guardian is not.
Jordan, please elaborate: in what world does The Guardian have “MIXED” factual reporting and have “MEDIUM CREDIBILITY”? I really want to know why you think either of those ratings even remotely comport with reality.
(Also, “Questionable” is way, way too lenient for Breitbart.)
It’s even worse when you compare their final comments/summaries…
I mean, it’s all right there on the page:
“Mixed for factual reporting due to numerous failed fact checks over the last five years.”
With cited examples:
"Failed Fact Checks
The proportion of lung cancer cases only diagnosed after a visit to an A&E ranges from 15% in Guildford and Waverley in Surrey to 56% in Tower Hamlets and Manchester. – Inaccurate
Private renting is making millions of people ill. – False
“The number of children needing foster care has risen by 44% during the coronavirus pandemic, creating a “state of emergency,” a children’s charity said.” – False
915 children admitted with malnutrition in Cambridge hospitals between 2015 and 2020. There were 656 similar admissions at Newcastle hospitals and 656 at the Royal Free London hospitals. – False
Nine percent of parents surveyed say their children have started self-harming in response to the cost of living crisis. – False"
Medium Credibility stems from this:
“In review, story selection favors the left but is generally factual. They utilize emotionally loaded headlines such as “The cashless society is a con – and big finance is behind it” and “Trump back-pedals on Russian meddling remarks after an outcry.” The Guardian typically utilizes credible sources such as thoughtco.com, gov.uk., and factually mixed sources such as HuffPost and independent.co.uk.”
So, yeah, biased headlines, “factually mixed sources”.
Example of a “failed” fact check for The Guardian:
This was an article entirely about stress and anxiety. Ignoring that stress and anxiety have physical effects on the body, the only way someone could conclude that the article was about like, toxic apartments and not stress and anxiety was if they failed to read the article at all and instead just read the headline and made up an article in their head.
Such obviously agenda driven nitpicky bullshit is why people don’t respect the bot.
Correlation is not causation. I had my first heart attack when I was renting. It wasn’t BECAUSE I was a renter. You literally cannot say someone is experiencing stress because they’re a renter, that’s a stretch.
They could be experiencing stress by their overall socio-economic status which is also a reason they are renting, not the other way around.
I had my 2nd heart attack as a home owner. Again, my status as a renter or owner has nothing to do with it.
“Renters experience stress and anxiety over renting to the point of illness” is not code for “and homeowners don’t feel any and are all perfectly healthy.” The only way to read it that way is if you’re trying to manufacture “fact checks” (or defend them, I guess). Same energy:
Oh, do you think that if the article about stress from renting mentioned that financial problems contribute to that then it would make that fact check unfair?
Because it does.
Again, correlation is not causation.
They aren’t stressed because they’re spending 41% of their income on housing, they’re stressed because of their low socio economic status which causes them to spend 41% of their income on housing.
It’s a symptom, not a cause.
Again, they’re putting the cart before the horse and MBFC correctly points out what they’re trying to say is factually false.
So it will be removed after the election, right?
Lol no then it’s shown it’s worth and has to stay
It’s Rooki’s pet project, and so it has to stay.