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 💖
Everything that can be hid behind a spoiler is already in there. The rest is partially because of an agreement with MBFC.
What kind of agreement?
That if we use their api (for free) we need to have a link to MBFC.
Ty for clarifying this.
I think it’s a bad move to automatically throw mbfc links under every post. It will cause people not to engage with the substance of a link and instead provide a (literal) shortcut to that links trustworthiness. Further, mbfc itself has a bias against Palestine as other replies have pointed out among other markers of a problematic source of truth.
There is no need for an alternative to mbfc either, because even if there existed some site which perfectly aligned with the political moment and lemmy world position on that moment it would still be bad idea to have a bot replying to every thread with weather the mods agree or not.
A better way to implement what this new practice seems to be aimed towards is to drop the pretense of impartiality, develop a platform and line and use the mod tools against people who don’t align with it.
We alligned with the mods. Thus we activated it only on certain communities.
There is sadly required or the “discussion” will end like a bomb hit the comments.
With a third party they can at least have a reference and wikipedia + ground news
Another idea I’ve been thinking about that would help get the wall of text “out of the way”…:
If the credibility is “High” or higher, have the bot downvote itself to allow other comments to float to the top
If it’s “Mostly Factual” or lower, have the bot upvote itself to help call attention to the possible issue.
…alternatively, if “High” or higher, wait for the first reply before having the bot comment.
I don’t know if any of this is even possible with bots; just spitballing…
The wall of text we will reduce in the next update. The others we will discuss with the team.