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 💖
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Removed by mod
What has it come to - bots will be hunting bots. I hope you see this too.
I actually like it. Thanks.
What a terrible idea.
MBFC is already incredibly biased.
It should be rejected not promoted.
Ok then tell me an alternative we can use in the scale for free.
None? Then pls dont just complain complain complain… And dont suggest improvements.
You don’t.
There doesn’t exist a site to magically do what you want.
Likewise it’s not needed. It doesn’t add to the quality of discussion on the community. All it’s going to do is cause conflict as we now have to constantly point out to people how garbage the source is so that they don’t let it influence them.
Boooo. Running a community as a mod-dictator and not being able to hear feedback and react to it like an adult. Just because you thought of something, doesn’t mean it is a good idea or that people will like it. The approach of “better than nothing” is naive and plain wrong - misinformation isn’t “better than nothing” it actively hurts the community.
As the other poster says we don’t need to have something like this at all.
If you’re adamant about it then make a post where people can suggest which one we use and vote on it. We can also adjust the bots comment to clearly call out the chosen ones biases and methodology. As it is now it’s actively harmful as I mention in my other comment.
I find the only people that say MBFC is biased, are just saying they themselves have biased opinions so they don’t agree with the MBFC rating
I’m 1000% with you on this
Seeing as this is the stance the site admins stance on decisions that are majority hated by the community, I’m just gonna leave this instance and go to one with admins that are more user-focused.
I expect community leaders to take reasonable feedback from the community respectfully even if they disagree, rather than doubling down on very unpopular decisions. Especially when said community funds the platform.
The majority of the bots posts have more downvotes than upvotes. The community has voiced its dislike for this bot as a majority.
So much for “feedback is welcome” I guess
Figured it would take more than a day for that response to happen lol
Please remove this bot.
No we dont. We saw the expected “ReMoVe ThE BoT” comments, because MBFC did hurt their feelings by not rating their favourite newspage the highest creditability on earth.
And just block it, then you can imagine how it is without the bot.
I don’t care what it rates a particular news page, I care that you’re treating this as an objective/unbiased authority on truth that you feel needs to be communicated on every single post.
You could take a moment to reflect on all of the responses you’ve received, but your comments make it clear that you don’t value other perspectives.
Every newspaper has its bias. MBFC heavily favors western liberal perspectives. It is often fine on domestic policy but not reliable when it comes to foreign policy.
As this is worldnews and not Americanews, MBFC ratings are not reliable. Articles should be judged by the evidence they provide.
Given the overwhelmingly negative response from the community, what is the justification for leaving the bot in place? Is it because the moderators think they know better than everyone else?
Overwhelmingly negative? Those are the 24/7 negative users. We do anything: Those guys: THIS IS IS A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY
So you stand alone in that statement. See the post vote score.
We give you the option to block it. Block it.
Numerous comments contain thoughtfully researched, balanced and reasonable criticisms, and your reaction is to basically call them just a bunch of negative nellies, rather than to consider maybe whether they have a point.
If I made a bot that shared fake news in comments on every single news story, would you say that having the option to block that bot is sufficient? I can block anyone, yet you still ban people for breaking the rules here.
You’re getting way too defensive, and digging your heels in - criticism isn’t always bad faith.
They have a point but strict fake news it isnt. It is not an option to leave it without any second bias opinion. Its not banning anyone. If you dislike it and demand it to be shutdown for democracy. Then you arent allowing other opinions.
You’ve made a bot which shares the political opinions of one dude as a comment to every single news story on here. A pro-zionist, right-wing dude.
I’m willing to make a public API to share my media bias and fact-checking report, as well. Will you add my opinion to every news post automatically as well, please? It would save me a lot of trouble!
Got it, only enthusiastic yes men are actually counted as valid members of the community.
Interesting take, gotta admit.
Real Reddit vibes from Rooki over this one.
When your community is built from Redditors it’s sort of bound to happen
Well, it’s more that the mods know that people don’t have an alternative
Please get rid of it. I’ll figure my own truth from facts I descern are true. I don’t need someone else telling me what to believe. Especially with the election coming up…
Why does the bot spend so much space asking for donations to mediabiasfactcheck.com and thanking them for an api? Especially when it’s one of the few areas not in a spoiler block so it’s always shown?
Because it’s free money for MBFC
The mods on this community have always had a rather unhealthy relationship with MBFC
We feel this is especially important with the US Election coming up
This is not us news but ok
It does have an effect on the world. Or did we somehow remove the states and their influence from the world?
I appreciate having this bot, and I also think that it can be tweaked to be better. Are there other services that do something similar (ex. I see ground.news in the bot comments). What might be better is if there was a bot that linked to a few different options, so that people can benefit from the extra information. I seem to remember a Lemmy bot that was doing something like that last year, but I can’t find it now.
For example, this is the format that might get the benefits of the bot while also addressing the concerns people have:
Information for
News Source Name- Media Bias Fact Check: Centre-Left Bias, Mostly Factual, Germany
- Wikipedia: Left Bias, Privately Owned, High Factuality
- Ground News page for this article, to compare bias and credibility with other sources
See this page to learn about this bot, and how you can support the tools above.
If the bot was open sourced somewhere, then people could contribute improvements to formatting and add/remove sources as appropriate. It doesn’t need to be a fully democratic process, as the maintainers would get the final say, but it would make people trust the tool a lot more.
Other small tweaks / bugs
- The links need an
https://at the start, else it breaks and showshttps://instance/LINK - The data can be condensed some more, with inline links as opposed to full ones. Yes we should recommend that developers fix their apps/frontends, but with federation it’s likely that there will be breakages in a lot of places. Improvements to comment format will help.
- I’m not sure if the thank you and donation link is appropriate in the comment, since it feels like an advertisement / endorsement. Having that information on a separate link would be more fair. For example, ground.news also has a donation page, but it’s not in the comment.
Thanks for the feedback. With the new format we will think about it, but i think this is pretty good.
We will discuss this and come back to you. We would love to open sourc ethe bot but the code quality for reading is not in a good state. We will have to clean the code up. But we will be working for that.
Sounds great, I’ll keep an eye out :)
So the reasons against open sourcing the bot is because you’d be embarrassed?
It has been pointed out multiple times that mbfc is ran by a Zionist.
There is no way the mod team is not aware of this by now so it must be on purpose.
The mod team is absolutely aware of the criticisms - they’re censoring them.
I just got a comment deleted just for telling OP to engage with the criticism instead of hiding away with people who agree with them.
I wonder if they were former Reddit power mods?
Your comment was deleted for the insult, I’m guessing. I can still see it in the mod log.
What, “coward”?
🙄
There’s a reason lemmy.ml mocks MBFC daily lmao
Hmm. It’s not a perfect way of measuring source bias, and bias is only correlated with truthfulness as I think they themselves admit, but I applaud the spirit.
I worry that people will put too much stock in it’s assessment, and as far as I can tell propaganda posting is pretty controlled on .world specifically. Did you code this yourselves? Is there some way one of us could request to push to the source, like if I figure out some way it could be better? In particular, it would be good to add notes on the specific sources commenters have described as having issues not covered by MBFC.
Currently the code is for now private. We will see if we can make it public in the future. The mods wont moderate posts because of the MBFC result.
I think it’s a great addition, but it sure does eat up a lot of space. Any way it can be condensed to the absolute basic information?
This is what it looks like for me on Boost:
See reply in support post
It is. You just need a client that can handle the formatting most likely?
A lot of the criticism I’ve seen thus far falls into two categories:
- Users complaining that their favorite source is scored poorly
- Users complaining that the ratings have various sources of statistical bias
The ones in the first group I think should take it as a wakeup call that they are either headline shopping or missing out on other perspectives of current events. This is especially important on the international stage where armed conflicts will naturally produce two opposing accounts (and lots of propaganda).
The second group have a point - MBFC isn’t the end all be all, but it’s certainly better than nothing. Having meaningful bias measurements for each relevant scale would be impressive but way beyond what MBFC aims to do.
So all in all - I see this as a very positive change
Thanks! Your points are perfectly on target.
If we had any other api with parity of media bias / fact check, then we would have included it, but we only see paid, no api available.
But for now we have added a ground.news search link so that everyone can see a third opinion on it.
For those reporting the bot:
We know! We worked with the Admins to enable it. :)
Thanks for this!
Edit: And happy cake day!
Thanks! I can’t believe it’s been a year since Reddit imploded! 15 years there and never looked back!
Then I guess we’ll continue until you remove it.
I’m just gonna drop this here as an example:
- https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-jerusalem-report/
- https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-jerusalem-post/
The Jerusalem Report (Owned by Jerusalem Post) and the Jerusalem Post
This biased as shit publication is declared by MBFC as VEEEERY slightly center-right. They make almost no mention of the fact that they cherry pick aspects of the Israel war to highlight, provide only the most favorable context imaginable, yadda yadda. By no stretch of the imagination would these publications be considered unbiased as sources, yet according to MBFC they’re near perfect.
Interesting how @Rooki is still a day later active in this post responding to all the comments supporting their bot, but manages to avoid replying to all the legitimate criticisms on display.
Really shows the mods don’t value feedback, which begs the question why even bother making a thread to get feedback if you’ve already made up your mind.
@rookie@lemmy.world is probably another mod alt account as seen before
yet according to MBFC they’re near perfect
Here are some quotes from the link you posted:
They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by appealing to emotion or stereotypes) to favor conservative causes. These sources are generally trustworthy for information but may require further investigation.
After Conrad Black acquired the paper, its political position changed to right-leaning, when Black began hiring conservative journalists and editors. Eli Azur is the current owner of Jerusalem Post. According to Ynetnews, and a Haaretz article, “Benjamin Netanyahu, the Editor in Chief,” in 2017, Azur gave testimony regarding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pressure. Current Editor Yaakov Katz was the former senior policy advisor to Naftali Bennett, the former Prime Minister and head of the far-right political party, “New Right.”
During the 2023 Israel-Hamas conflict, the majority of stories favored the Israeli government, such as this Netanyahu to Hezbollah: If you attack, we’ll turn Beirut into Gaza. In general, the Jerusalem Post holds right-leaning editorial biases and is usually factual in reporting.
Overall, we rate The Jerusalem Post Right-Center biased based on editorial positions that favor the right-leaning government. We also rate them Mostly Factual for reporting, rather than High due to two failed fact checks.
Based on MBFC’s methodology, they can’t have more than 6 points (out of 10) toward credibility, which is the floor for high credibility. They’re one lost point from being listed as a medium credibility source, not “near perfect.” They’ve also failed two fact checks in news reporting (not op-ed), which is seriously non-perfect. No one reading that page could walk away thinking that jpost isn’t biased toward both the current Israeli government and conservative causes. MBFC calling them “right-center” is also consistent with how they’re rated just about everywhere else. AllSides rates them as “center” (with a note that community feedback in disagreement believes they “lean right”) and even Wikipedia describes them as “center-right/conservative”.
What exactly are you angry about here?
MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY
Because? You’re angry that they have a methodology? You’re angry that they’re basing it on the paper as a whole and not solely on their coverage of Gaza?
Because they’re in agreement with you. When someone posts a Jerusalem Post story about Gaza, MBFC is saying “this source is heavily biased toward the Israeli government.” Even if their coverage is factual, you’re not getting the full context of what’s happening in the conflict.
