Soliciting Feedback for Improvements to the Media Bias Fact Checker Bot - Infosec.Pub
infosec.pub
Hi all! As many of you have noticed, many Lemmy.World communities introduced a bot: @MediaBiasFactChecker@lemmy.world [https://lemmy.world/u/MediaBiasFactChecker]. 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 [/c/news@lemmy.world] [https://lemmy.world/c/news] 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.
    • demesisx@infosec.pubOPEnglish
      1117·
      3 months ago

      I think I was being generous. That bot makes China’s great firewall seem tame. Those people (lemmy world mods and their uncritical users) are lemmings, slowly signing away more of their liberties to a bot because they’re either too lazy, smug, or both. The ones that support it will fight you about it. They think it somehow helps them to be in an echo chamber, exposed to only their tribe. They are literally PROGRAMMED to call you a bot if you even remotely conflict with their view. The people on hexbear are equally into the echo chamber thing. They banned me because I wasn’t leftist enough for them. 😂

      Tribalism is so dangerous and stupid. It’s what got me to finally quit Facebook back in 2016 and now I have to see it here. Ever since governments have figured out how to achieve this kind of willing dupe environment, it keeps popping up everywhere free speech might find a way to peek through the cracks.

      Anyway, nice chat. I really should get back to being a “Russian bot”.