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Media Bias Fact Check - Automation (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by Rooki@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

153 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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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[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

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 already 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.

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[-] bartolomeo@suppo.fi 8 points 4 months ago

Good, one should always refer to the Ministry of Truth before deciding what is true or false for The Party.

[-] otter@lemmy.ca 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

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, a format like this 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

See the 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 shows https://instance/LINK
If 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.

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[-] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 5 points 4 months ago

While I'm not as concerned with MBFC as many others are, why not use Wikipedia's RSP as the datasource? Made by the most reliable user-generated platform in the world, it's a great list of controversial sources and is completely open. Changes are also infrequent enough so that adding to the database by hand would be quite easy.

I also echo the concerns raised below on the uselessness at a glance due to the accordion hiding the only information and purpose the bot was created to serve.

[-] zephyreks@lemmy.ml 5 points 4 months ago

Because the mods on this community would rather choose a source that they agree with than a source that's reliable.

[-] GlassHalfHopeful@lemmy.ca 3 points 4 months ago

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: Sample of the bot comments

[-] dubyakay@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 months ago

It is. You just need a client that can handle the formatting most likely?

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[-] ptz@dubvee.org 2 points 4 months ago

But seriously, this is pretty great. Thanks for putting that together.

[-] PindoLek24@szmer.info 2 points 4 months ago

What has it come to - bots will be hunting bots. I hope you see this too.

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this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2024

111 points (69.2% liked)

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