Hi all!
As many of you have noticed, many Lemmy.World communities introduced a bot: @MediaBiasFactChecker@lemmy.world. This bot was introduced because modding can be pretty tough work at times and we are all just volunteers with regular lives. It has been helpful and we would like to keep it around in one form or another.
The !news@lemmy.world mods want to give the community a chance to voice their thoughts on some potential changes to the MBFC bot. We have heard concerns that tend to fall into a few buckets. The most common concern we’ve heard is that the bot’s comment is too long. To address this, we’ve implemented a spoiler tag so that users need to click to see more information. We’ve also cut wording about donations that people argued made the bot feel like an ad.
Another common concern people have is with MBFC’s definition of “left” and “right,” which tend to be influenced by the American Overton window. Similarly, some have expressed that they feel MBFC’s process of rating reliability and credibility is opaque and/or subjective. To address this, we have discussed creating our own open source system of scoring news sources. We would essentially start with third-party ratings, including MBFC, and create an aggregate rating. We could also open a path for users to vote, so that any rating would reflect our instance’s opinions of a source. We would love to hear your thoughts on this, as well as suggestions for sources that rate news outlets’ bias, reliability, and/or credibility. Feel free to use this thread to share other constructive criticism about the bot too.
I think this tool, while probably well-intended, only adds to the polarization problem of the world.
Can you elaborate? Like, do you think the bot would be better if it didn’t label things as “left” or “right” (ie: remove the bias rating) or do you think the reliability/credibility ratings have the same issue?
I’m not sure what to do here. On my mobile device the compacted media bias fact check post still takes up 50% of my phone screen.
How a post tag if we have a tagging system in Lemmy, instead of a whole long comment?
Maybe the bot could just post a one line summary with a link to more information?
Thanks for the feedback. Can you elaborate a bit about the 50% of your screen thing? Is it the text itself, or is the issue that the app provides links at the bottom of the comment? I’m thinking of my experience on Voyager, where the links are summarized at the bottom of each comment, which does lead to a decent amount of screen being taken up. Would it be better if there weren’t any links?
yep I’m using Voyager on my iPhone. Maybe a super short summary without links. People could open the bot’s profile and look at the bot’s posts (not comments) if they want to dig deeper to understand a source.
Interesting, so you think the bot should make posts too? Like, a post for each source with a summary of relevant info? Just making sure I understand what you mean
Yeah. It’s an idea for a way to create a user repository within Lemmy that could be edited by the bot as needed. I’m sure there are better ways.
I blocked it straight away so I don’t have a dog in this fight but I’m instantly skeptical of any organization that claims to be the arbiter of what is biased and to what degree.
Personally I’m in favor of the bot. One complaint I’ve seen that I agree with is that it doesn’t need to float high up in the comments. If it was simply made to not upvote itself, it would stay nearer to the bottom naturally, which I think would be preferable.
I think it should be removed
Remove it.
No need for a bot. Obvious misinformation should be removed by the mods. Bias is too subjective to be adjudicated by the mods. Just drop it already. It’s consistently downvoted into oblivion for a reason. The feedback has been petty damn obvious. This whole thread is just because the mods are so sure they’re right that they can’t listen to the feedback they already got. Just kill the bot.
The news source of this post could not be identified. Please check the source yourself. Media Bias Fact Check | bot support
Okay, so maybe we don’t need a comment if it’s a meta post or a mod announcement. Thanks for your inadvertent feedback, bot!
it also does this with a bunch of weird little local newspapers or etc which I’ve never heard of, which is like the one time I actually want it to be providing me with some kind of frame of reference for the source. MSNBC and the NYT, I feel like I already know what I think about them.
Yeah, it’s tricky because who reviews those small guys? Granted, most of them are probably owned by a giant like Gannett, but that doesn’t mean we can just apply a rating from 1 small Gannett-owned paper to another. We’d like there to be some way for users to share their feedback/ratings on those small guys. But then it’s also true that some people will create a news site and try to share links on here to promote their new website and that’s typically just spam bots.
It’s this uninvited commenting on the bots part that has me downvoting it. It’s presenting itself at an authority here. If a user in the comments called the bot to fact check something and the bot did a bad job, i’d just block the bot. I’d even be able to look over that users history to get an idea of the bot’s purpose. But this bot comes in and says “here’s the truth”, then spits out something i’d expect to see on twitters current itteration.
If the problem you’re trying to solve is the reliability of the media being posted here. Take the left/right bias call out and find a decent databse on new source quality. Start the bots post out with resources for people to develop their own skill at spotting bad news content.
If the problem you’re trying to solve is the visibility of political bias in content posted here. So the down vote button isnt acting as a proxy for that. Adding a function for the community to rate left/right lean like rotten tomatoes sounds interesting, so long as you take the reliability rating out of the bot. You can’t address both media reliability and political bias in one automated post. nyt and npr being too pearl clutchy for my taste. and some outlet that exists only on facebook having the same assumed credibility as the associated press. are wildly different issues.
*stupid phone, i’ll live with the spelling but not repeated words.
I think the bot is incredibly useful. The criticism falls under a very specific group of users being very loud about their preferred source not ranking the way they expect.
Linking additional sources will improve it. Wikipedia maintains an active list and has an incentive to do so. Personally, I’d like to see a transparent methodology applied to a source: number of articles retracted silently, corrections issued in last 30 days, etc.
That having been said, I’d rather see efforts invested in other areas rather than inventing yet another “weighing” function for multiple ratings. Let us decide if mbfc is good enough or if we prefer ad fontes or Wikipedia or whoever. Give us two or three options and let us decide on our own.
The criticism falls under a very specific group of users being very loud about their preferred source not ranking the way they expect.
“Any opinions that differ from my own are simply invalid!”
It seems bizarre to me that the only user I have seen actually trying to provide constructive criticism for the bot so far in this thread is the one that already likes it. Especially when others instead advocate for things like the mods taking a political stance to endorse and using mod powers to reinforce it.
I like the bot. It’s valuable to have context for the organization pushing a story. I agree that others are reading too much from the orgs they like being labeled as biased. It’s assumed a news source will have some bias, and trying to avoid acknowledging that is dangerous. The takeaway is simply to be wary of any narrative being pushed (intentionally or not) by framing or omission, and get news from a variety of sources when possible. Instead, people tend to think identifying bias is advocating that the article should be disregarded, which is untrue.
To your suggestion, I do think adding more sources for reliability and bias judgements is a good idea. It would give more credibility if multiple respected independent organizations come to the same conclusion. More insight into their methodology in the comment itself could also be nice. The downside of adding these is that it would make the comment even longer when people have already complained about its size.
Other than that, I have seen people dislike using the American political center as a basis for alignment, but I have yet to see a good alternative. I expect a significant plurality of users are from the US, and US politics are globally relevant, so it seems to be a natural choice.
Nearly every critic I have seen so far just thinks it should be removed entirely because they find it annoying. I would say even if it isn’t considered useful for the majority of users, the amount of value it provides people who do use it justifies whatever minor annoyance it is to others. Anyone who gets really tired of collapsing the comment or scrolling past it can block it in seconds.
Thank you to the mod who created this thread. Even if it’s good to gather feedback, it’s obviously not easy to get bombarded with negative comments. I’m impressed with the patience you have shown in this thread.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by improvements in other areas?
Improvements to automod, such as checking for opinion articles by regex (and building up that list). Or automatically marking/linking duplicate posts.
Also, regex scanning of comments to autoban would be useful for moderation well outside of the news/politics realm.
Most of the changes I’d like to see would require major changes to Lemmy though. Things like rate limiting posts/comments/votes, and allowing complex conditions for using those quotas. Also more nuanced moderation such as unlisting a post/comment (or potentially rehoming them).
Just kill it with fire.
Indeed. Thermite is usually the recommended method to erase hard drives you don’t want to be recoverable.
This thread is a mess.
users: “bot is awful”
mod: “ok so it’s not terrible so that’s good”
I apologize if this thread was misunderstood. Perhaps I was not clear that this was meant for improvements, it is not a vote on removal. Should that vote ever happen, the post would be clear about that.
All of my questions were only seeking to gain more information about people’s feelings. I apologize if it came off as a promise to enact anything in particular or an endorsement of any particular stance on the bot.
Yes, you’ve been very clear from the start that you do not want to remove the bot. However, the feedback you’ve consistently received is that it provides no benefit, is misleading, reductive, and the best improvement you could make would be to remove it. You don’t seem willing or able to respond to that.
Correct, I am unable to supersede admin decisions as a mod. I am here collecting feedback on improvements. Again, I am looking for feedback on improvements, as the decision to remove the bot is not in my control.
Then you’re just wasting both your time and ours.
Ok. Sorry you’ve never been on a functional team before.
It clearly seems as though you aren’t either.
.
The problem is with MBFC, and you have no control over them. Therefore, the only way you can improve the bot is to remove it entirely.
Remove MBFC? Yes, that’s part of the discussion and the point of this post. The struggle seems to be over the API, but I’d love to have suggestions to bring to the rest of the team. As I have said multiple times, it is not my decision to remove the bot, I’m simply here for suggestions that the rest of the team would be open to.
Whose decision is it, then?
It’s a team decision and I am the newest mod on the team. The main developer of the bot is an admin, who ultimately would be the one to implement any changes.
So it is in part your decision. I’m pretty sure the admins aren’t forcing you to have it here.
During your next shift, you should do something that nobody on your team or your supervisor wants you to do. Lmk how that goes for you
Yeah lol, i cant help but laugh every time i see the mods replies in this thread. i dont understand shit about his train of thought, i dont know if he is denyal or was surprised most people didnt end up aligning with his bias and is in damage control replying nonsense.
The thing I don’t get is why are they so insistent on this change that is so overwhelmingly not wanted?
Who is pushing this and why are so many mods backing it?
$$$$
Bias ratings will always be biased. So aggregate or having multiple sources briefly used in a single small post would work best.
In literally every thread I’ve seen it post in, it gets downvoted to hell.
Get rid of the bot
The bot is basically loud as fuck in a way that disrupts the comment feed.
Imagine how comments should create and add to a conversation. Imagine how various lemmy clients feed or service that conversation….
Now imagine how a double dropdown big as fuck post says “fuck you” to that conversation.
Just please consider how the form of your shit can be just as imposing as the content, which I really appreciate.
Yet somehow your posts always have me thinking “shut the fuck up” which seems antithetical to building a community.
Probably not an issue with the bot itself, but just FYI, it appears the spoiler tags don’t work on Boost.
Yeah… there was a whole big to do about this. One dev actually quit (can’t remember which one) because it was publicly noted that their app “scored” lower in terms of feature implementation. But feedback has been made available for app developers.
Or Mlem
