Hello World, As many of you have probably noticed, there is a growing problem on the internet when it comes to undisclosed bias in both amateur and professional reporting. While not every outlet can be like the C-SPAN, or Reuters, we also believe that it’s impossible to remove the human element from the news, especially when it concerns, well, humans.
To this end, we’ve created a media bias bot, which we hope will keep everyone informed about WHO, not just the WHAT of posted articles. This bot uses Media Bias/Fact Check to add a simple reply to show bias. We feel this is especially important with the US Election coming up. The bot will also provide links to Ground.News, as well, which we feel is a great source to determine the WHOLE coverage of a given article and/or topic.
As always feedback is welcome, as this is a active project which we really hope will benefit the community.
Thanks!
FHF / LemmyWorld Admin team 💖
The amount of people that can’t handle a super basic rating of a news outlet is chilling.
I know and accept that I rely on biased media, because all of it is biased. It’s media, not scientific papers (which are also often biased btw.). Having a bias does not automatically make it bad.
I care a lot about factual reporting tho. And I want to see the same news from different POVs, with different biases, because they will highlight different things. If you don’t, mute the bot, get your daily dose of whatever propaganda you like so much and stfu.
And no, this is not ‘centrism’. I’m pretty sure most people who use that word don’t even know what it means. Historically, centrism describes a moderate left-wing view. Centrists are the center of left.
The only bias in my scientific papers is in the data! But we compensate for it and if you approve our next grant we totally promise we’ll be able to reduce that bias. So give us more funding pretty please!
The authority that is given to this one bot to determine “Facts” is more the issue I think.
Bot: Hmm this article reflects reality, thus it is biased to the left.
Using charged language like that constitutes disinformation and is reprehensible. Imagine if viewers started disregarding a source on account of your bot declaring it biased.
Shameful.
That’s not how the bot works.
You’re right, it just copies a right-wing human’s opinion, and blurts it out in a format that takes way too much space, and pretends to be without bias.
You know, ban material.
I hate this and have already blocked the bot.
Comments are obscenely long, and I see no reason to trust your source.
Thats yours, we endoresed every to block it when you dont like it.
Awesome addition!
Thank you for putting this into place!
Love this! There are a couple of extensions that do similar around the web but something similar for social circles was missing. Great solution.
This is awesome!
I think the bot is crap based on this: The Guardian Media Bias Fact Check Credibility: [Medium]
The guardian is one of the best newspapers on the planet and published content exposing such as the Panama Papers.
Thats your opinion. Thats the whole reason we added the bot. To give people a second opinion, if they need to trust it or even read it. Is on your own responsibility.
okay, , how does website/bot reach its conclusions on Fact Check Credibility?
People like quick answers and barely even read the articles. All you are doing is giving ammunition to those types to easily dismiss anything and drag the conversation because of a private credibility rating.
It’s a bad idea.
Agreed, just came back to Lemmy and I see some wannabe Snopes spamming every post with Authority
Seriously people seem built on the idea that authority to make claims about anything confidently comes from looking at a Wikipedia article or ai breakdown for 5 seconds. It’s making me think they need to be deplatformed just like any other conspiracy theories on the right.
I think this is so stupid.
I swear it’s a “centrist” libertarian idealism that you are gonna find all the biases of the publication so that you feel superior for not falling for any of them.
To a degree things should make you feel an emotional response and to not and think yourself better for not, makes you falsely superior.
I get it for making sure that propaganda isn’t posted but that’s more of what general community moderation is for is it not?
I dunno, I definitely don’t think it should be so prominent. I barely think it’s needed. Maybe people could call to the bot to check for them? But putting privately decided political leaning on every post just seems like needless segregation that allows for people to immediately ignore that and the conversation that can be had from it.
Very cool. I would also recommend Wikipedia’s perennial news list as a source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources
It will be a little bit difficult to automate fetching that list.
It’s an interesting suggestion, however, I can see a few potential challenges:
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The methodology is determined by Wikipedia editors’ consensus alone. It’s unclear what the ultimate basis for inclusion/exclusion may be, or whether there is a uniform standard applied.
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The list is far less comprehensive than MBFC and other rating sites.
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The scope/purpose of the Wikipedia list is very different from ours. Although we are both ultimately interested in factual, verifiable truth, news/current event aggregation is not the same purpose as encyclopedic archiving.
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The list is sometimes too granular, and sometimes too broad to be useful for live content moderation. For example, some sources are categorized differently based on the type of content, and others are grouped together.
We would want to discuss and navigate these issues prior to incorporating this list into our communities.
Atleast the consensus of wikipedians is more open and checkable than a closed door analysis like MBFC
I was not aware of that. Can you please share a link to their methodology so I can update my comment?
It looks like you shared the same information page above. Unfortunately it does not show the methodology on this page.
“This list summarizes prior consensus and consolidates links to the most in-depth and recent discussions from the reliable sources noticeboard and elsewhere on Wikipedia.”
Its explained. If you read the body.
Its done by consensus reached on conversations. It links to the sources board.
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Could just hardcode it and let the community voice their opinions on additions/changes
While I think the current method is a great idea, there’s already people complaining
But then the issue arises what the people complain, the human bias.
Because the user x from instance b accuses the user y from instance a be a bigot because they added SomeRandomNewsPage as biased into there. And it repeats and repeats.
So we chose to use the available option to use MBFC and ground.news for 2 seperate options.
We all know the downside of a human maintained list / service (like MBFC) because you can not remove the human part.
The “footer” section is very long, and the spoiler tags don’t seem to do anything on the Boost app. This makes the bot comment take up an entire screen on mobile.
Yeah that is sadly bad implemented on the apps.
We put the “footer” that could go into a spoiler into a spoiler.
I love the info it provides. I agree with many here that it’s too long. I think putting everything behind a spoiler tag that simply shows the rating would be a step in the right direction.
Everything that can be hid behind a spoiler is already in there. The rest is partially because of an agreement with MBFC.
Another idea I’ve been thinking about that would help get the wall of text “out of the way”…:
If the credibility is “High” or higher, have the bot downvote itself to allow other comments to float to the top
If it’s “Mostly Factual” or lower, have the bot upvote itself to help call attention to the possible issue.
…alternatively, if “High” or higher, wait for the first reply before having the bot comment.
I don’t know if any of this is even possible with bots; just spitballing…
The wall of text we will reduce in the next update. The others we will discuss with the team.
Cool - I’d love to know the outcome of the discussion even if it’s just “Not technically possible” or “No; it’s a terrible idea because <X>”
What kind of agreement?
That if we use their api (for free) we need to have a link to MBFC.
Ty for clarifying this.
I think it’s a bad move to automatically throw mbfc links under every post. It will cause people not to engage with the substance of a link and instead provide a (literal) shortcut to that links trustworthiness. Further, mbfc itself has a bias against Palestine as other replies have pointed out among other markers of a problematic source of truth.
There is no need for an alternative to mbfc either, because even if there existed some site which perfectly aligned with the political moment and lemmy world position on that moment it would still be bad idea to have a bot replying to every thread with weather the mods agree or not.
A better way to implement what this new practice seems to be aimed towards is to drop the pretense of impartiality, develop a platform and line and use the mod tools against people who don’t align with it.
We alligned with the mods. Thus we activated it only on certain communities.
There is sadly required or the “discussion” will end like a bomb hit the comments.
With a third party they can at least have a reference and wikipedia + ground news
yeah the problem seems to be that during an election year news and politics discussion boards wither need a huge mod staff or a very clear platform and party line in order to avoid being overwhelmed by people discussing things.
i don’t think any amount of leaving a smattering of links in the comment section is gonna stop that. at best it will derail every post into a discussion of how screwed up mbfc is and how underhanded it is to include it by default.
since world already has a huge mod staff my comments recommended dropping the pretense of impartiality and just outright saying “this is the understanding of the world youre expected to have in order to comment here. if you don’t you can be subject to moderation.”
Browsing world after a few weeks:
Reporting the bot will not get you what you want/expect. If you don’t like it, you’re welcome to block it.
Report abuse will be punished.
We are well aware that the bot can be blocked. The issue that I think a lot of us have here is not the bots existence, but rather the reluctance for the mods to take user feedback into account. Just from looking over the bot comments likes and dislikes it is evident the majority of the community dislikes the bot and administrators are ignoring concerns over it and being defensive. This does not bode well for trust at all for future decisions. The administration’s actions are showing that the community has no say in how things operate here, despite being a community platform, evidently in name only.
Please do not take your users for granted. Most of of us left a platform specifically where the administration ignored what the user base as a majority wanted. This is how you destroy your community and any goodwill you’ve built up with them.
I’m truly intending this in good faith, there is nothing to be gained from alienating your community.
This is awesome. Thank you!
