Why does the "Media Bias Fact Checker" - Bot gets downvoted so much lately?
Why does the "Media Bias Fact Checker" - Bot gets downvoted so much lately?
No comments or anything, just lots of Downvotes.
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So the answers in this post are mostly that people are downvoting the bot because it is often wrong and then others defending it by saying “it’s not wrong it’s just based on American politics”.
If the bot reported from a range of sources that reflect a number of different political perspectives I’m sure it’d be more useful outside of the scope of American politics, and therefore wouldn’t get downvoted.
As far as I’m concerned the vote system is working as intended.
The internet is not American. There are no nations on lemmy ✌️
Agreed. NYT is center-right from my point of view, and I think it's a pretty neutral assertion. The bot says it's center left. That's the same discrepancy as if they would call Fox News Center.
In my opinion the bot tries to shift the overtone window to the right. Just because Trumpists call everything leftist media doesn't make it that.
This may have just been an autocorrect issue, but it’s Overton Window
I asked in another thread complaining about MBFC if anyone knew of alternatives and nobody shared anything. Anyone got any?
Edit: Fuck me for asking I guess…
Here's an analogy:
The alternative to drinking bleach is not drinking bleach. As opposed to drinking "diet bleach," or something equally ridiculous.
Why do you feel it would need to be replaced?
Because not everyone has strong media literacy. I may have the means to assess the quality of a source on my own but that’s not the case for everyone. This problem will hopefully solve itself with more users on Lemmy who can call out bad sources but right now it’s not uncommon to find posts with zero comments minus the bias bot.
But the bot is biased itself. That's worse than no information.
Which is why I just asked if anyone knew of any alternatives. I will say, I’m at a minimum that the bot has people talking about how news should be vetted, at least.
Some people have mentioned https://ground.news. I haven't tried it, this is not a vouch for their credibility.
They are using MBFC's bias rating too, with some additional ratings from other sources for a few publishers. Seems to have a strong US-centric view as well.
Thanks for the reply! Ground.news is used by the bot to show potential alternative sources for the story which I’ve found useful.
That part actually is useful. It wouldn't be getting down voted if it was just that.