Disinformation is dangerous. That’s how we got the white “alternative facts” thing in the first place. We shouldn’t tolerate it at all.
Comment on Why are people downvoting the MediaBiasFactChecker not?
ccunning@lemmy.world 3 months agoOther people clearly don’t think it’s a helpful resourcem
They should block it.
It gets weird when folks start trying to keep everyone else from having it available as a resource.
Maggoty@lemmy.world 3 months ago
tyler@programming.dev 3 months ago
Nobody in this comment section has provided a single instance of it being disinformation. But people sure are claiming a lot of shit without backing up it one bit. I’m inclined to believe that they’re most likely far right trolls who disagree with their favorite news outlets getting labeled something.
Maggoty@lemmy.world 3 months ago
MBFC itself is biased and unreliable. On purpose or not it’s system has the effect of pushing the GOP narrative that mainstream news is all leftist propaganda while right wing propaganda is normal. It does this by not having a center category and by misusing the center lean categories it does have.
So for example national papers with recognized excellence in objective reporting are all center left. And then on center right, you have stuff like the Ayn Rand Institute. Which is literally a lobbying organization.
Not having an alternative isn’t an excuse to keep using something that provides bad information.
So you missed this comment then? And the ones where they point out any pro Palestinian source is rated badly?
tyler@programming.dev 3 months ago
There isn’t a single link or source for literally any of these claims in any of the comments. So yeah I’m still pretty sure it’s just people making shit up until they can back up a claim, even one.
zazo@lemmy.world 3 months ago
So people can just downvote it instead right? That’s literal direct democracy at play - if there’s more people that like the bot they’ll upvote it and it will have a positive score - saying “just bury your head in the sand if you don’t agree with this message” is the reason we’re in this political mess in the first place…
ccunning@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Sure - do whatever you want. There are users on this very instance that I downvote every post they make rather than block.
I also have comment(s?) in this very thread about when I downvote it.
Pika@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Personally I find the downvore/up vote system to be super unproductive, the only thing it accomplishes is squashing the minority opinion, I keep the score system disabled for the comments section as a whole, it makes life easier and preventse from being populous/bandwagon bias. It still sorts by score for top-level but, it made navigating so much much peaceful.
Maggoty@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Over all and in general sure. But for things like bots it’s really good feedback.
Carrolade@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Unless your goal is to spread misinformation. Anyone that knowingly wants to spread propaganda is going to severely dislike it and be forced to come up with some excuse to be against it, that is more acceptable than “it keeps telling me my russian propaganda is bullshit”.
We do have a small pro-Russian contingent on here after all. We also occasionally get a MAGA type.
Personally I do appreciate it, the wikipedia and Ground News links are convenient, I would occasionally manually google those anyway. News consumption is one of the main reasons I’m on here in the first place though, so I might be an outlier in that regard.
ccunning@lemmy.world 3 months ago
EXACTLY
This is why anyone vehemently opposed to it is an instant 🚩for me
ShepherdPie@midwest.social 3 months ago
Can you even point to a post where the bot calls the source out as propaganda (in whatever choice of words it would use to indicate this) or highly untrustworthy? I’ve literally never seen it say anything but left, left center, or center on any source and usually always highly trustworthy or trustworthy.
Iceblade02@lemmy.world 3 months ago
That has more to do with the fact that centre-right/right/far-right sources are seldom posted to lemmy.
Here are some examples:
mediabiasfactcheck.com/goteborgs-posten/
mediabiasfactcheck.com/new-york-sun-bias/
mediabiasfactcheck.com/fria-tider-free-times/
ShepherdPie@midwest.social 3 months ago
I don’t doubt there are far-right sources out there, but the person I replied to stated that ‘people are complaining because the bot is calling out their posts as right-wing propaganda’ which I’ve seen zero evidence of here on Lemmy.
Carrolade@lemmy.world 3 months ago
No, it will not specifically identify propaganda. Could just check their entry for RT if you wanted, I’ve never bothered to look. That’s a Kremlin funded publication though.
Maggoty@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Mmmm yes everyone who wants to get rid of the conservative corporate disinformation bot is themselves trying to spread disinformation.
Projection, that’s totally original.
Carrolade@lemmy.world 3 months ago
In America, that is not conservative in the slightest, unless you’re coming from a hard communist position. What’s the corporation?
Maggoty@lemmy.world 3 months ago
MBFC