this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2024
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World News

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For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

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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[–] Sami@lemmy.zip 0 points 4 months ago (2 children)

That's just introducing 2 more sources of bias

[–] Rooki@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago (10 children)

Yes, that everyone make a better picture. Instead of getting shouted at by one manipulative entity.

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[–] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Both sides? Geeet outta here.

[–] Sami@lemmy.zip 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That's literally what the other source being added called Groundnews attempts to do.

[–] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I understand your edgy take, but equivocating reliable and consistent mediators that accurately discern real news from propaganda with trash like Infowars as "more bias" is nonsense.

[–] Sami@lemmy.zip 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I'm not saying all their work is worthless and I know they're good enough for the most extreme sources of misinformation but to paint entire publications as not reliable based on the assessment of couple laypeople with an inherently narrow worldview (at least a very American-centric one) is the opposite of avoiding bias in my opinion.

[–] Varyk@sh.itjust.works -1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Not entirely and unequivocally avoiding bias every time isn't the "opposite of avoiding bias", it's an example of perfect being the enemy of good.

There may technically be inherent bias everywhere, but it's at best useless and in practice harmful and inaccurate to lump MBFC in with grayzone and to equivocate in general.

Example from 2020:

"Biden is just another politician, like Trump"

Technically true that they are both politicians, but without recognizing the difference between Biden and trump, the states wouldn't have student debt cancellations, no federal minority legal defenses, fifty plus liberally appointed judges, no reversal of the trans ban, no veteran health coverage for toxic exposure, no green new deal, no international climate accords, no healthcare expansion and so on.

or:

"who cares, it's just another plant", but arugula is a great salad green while a bite of foxglove can kill you.

It's important to recognize the shades of grey and distinguish one from another.

How fucked is it that such a poorly written book has ruined the extremely useful phrase "shades of grey"?

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[–] otter@lemmy.ca 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

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

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.
[–] Rooki@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for the feedback. With the new format we will think about it, but i think this is pretty good.

We will discuss this and come back to you. We would love to open sourc ethe bot but the code quality for reading is not in a good state. We will have to clean the code up. But we will be working for that.

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[–] aniki@lemmy.zip 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

So is it time for a new news community then if the admins don't want to listen?

[–] Rooki@lemmy.world -2 points 3 months ago

You can even be better than that! You can make a community that fact check news article / news pages. Then we can add the threads from that community to the bot and have there news page specific discussion.

[–] FauxPseudo@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago (2 children)

A whole lot of people here don't read MBFC each day and it shows. They tend to take a single and testable claim and make a decision. It's really easy to see if the claim is true or false if the claim is specific. They don't have a habit of taking a big claim and ruling it false because of one small detail like Snopes does.

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[–] GlassHalfHopeful@lemmy.ca 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] Rooki@lemmy.world -1 points 4 months ago

See reply in support post

[–] MediaBiasFactChecker@lemmy.world -1 points 4 months ago

Ground News Media Bias Fact Check Credibility: [High] (Click to view Full Report)

Ground News is rated with High Creditability by Media Bias Fact Check.

Bias: Least Biased
Factual Reporting: Mostly Factual
Country: Canada
Full Report: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ground-news/

Check the bias and credibility of this article on Ground.News:
- https://ground.news/find?url=https%3A%2F%2Fground.news%2F%29%2C

Media Bias/Fact Check Media Bias Fact Check Credibility: [High] (Click to view Full Report)

Media Bias/Fact Check is rated with High Creditability by Media Bias Fact Check.

Bias: Least Biased
Factual Reporting: Very High
Country: United States of America
Full Report: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com

Check the bias and credibility of this article on Ground.News:
- https://ground.news/find?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmediabiasfactcheck.com%2F%29

Media Bias/Fact Check Media Bias Fact Check Credibility: [High] (Click to view Full Report)

Media Bias/Fact Check is rated with High Creditability by Media Bias Fact Check.

Bias: Least Biased
Factual Reporting: Very High
Country: United States of America
Full Report: mediabiasfactcheck.com

Check the bias and credibility of this article on Ground.News:
- https://ground.news/find?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmediabiasfactcheck.com%2F%29


Media Bias Fact Check is a fact-checking website that rates the bias and credibility of news sources. They are known for their comprehensive and detailed reports.

Thanks to Media Bias Fact Check for their access to the API.
Please consider supporting them by donating.

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[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world -1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

For those reporting the bot:

We know! We worked with the Admins to enable it. :)

[–] breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca -1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Thanks for this!

Edit: And happy cake day!

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world -1 points 4 months ago

Thanks! I can't believe it's been a year since Reddit imploded! 15 years there and never looked back!

[–] PindoLek24@szmer.info -1 points 3 months ago

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

[–] steventhedev@lemmy.world -1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

A lot of the criticism I've seen thus far falls into two categories:

  1. Users complaining that their favorite source is scored poorly
  2. Users complaining that the ratings have various sources of statistical bias

The ones in the first group I think should take it as a wakeup call that they are either headline shopping or missing out on other perspectives of current events. This is especially important on the international stage where armed conflicts will naturally produce two opposing accounts (and lots of propaganda).

The second group have a point - MBFC isn't the end all be all, but it's certainly better than nothing. Having meaningful bias measurements for each relevant scale would be impressive but way beyond what MBFC aims to do.

So all in all - I see this as a very positive change

[–] Rooki@lemmy.world -1 points 4 months ago

Thanks! Your points are perfectly on target.

If we had any other api with parity of media bias / fact check, then we would have included it, but we only see paid, no api available.

But for now we have added a ground.news search link so that everyone can see a third opinion on it.

[–] HBK@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Mods, I appreciate this bot!

Deciphering media bias is tough, and finding 1 site that will 'perfectly' identify biases is an impossible task, but at the minimum having this bot show up on posts 'gets people thinking' about the credibility of their news sources.

MBFC doesn't have to be the ultimate arbitrator either. If it is missing something about a specific article people can call it out in the comments. At the end of the day, the worst thing it does is add more data about a news source and I'm not gonna complain about that.

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