News

36043 readers

4467 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil

Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.

2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.

Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.

3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.

4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.

Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.

5. Only recent news is allowed.

Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.

6. All posts must be news articles.

No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.

7. No duplicate posts.

If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.

8. Misinformation is prohibited.

Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.

9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.

All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.

10. Don't copy entire article in your post body

For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

JonsJava@lemmy.world

gedaliyah@lemmy.world

little_cow@lemmy.world

138

Soliciting Feedback for Improvements to the Media Bias Fact Checker Bot (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 years ago by jeffw@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

210 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hi all!

As many of you have noticed, many Lemmy.World communities introduced a bot: @MediaBiasFactChecker@lemmy.world. 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 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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] jeffw@lemmy.world -3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Thanks, that tip about being a non-profit is a good suggestion. Do you have any specific fact checkers in mind?

In terms of the comments, they look like they are off-topic. There are support communities within Lemmy.world that would be more appropriate places to post concerns. Or even other communities focused on things like Lemmy drama and similar topics like that. But copy/pasting the same comment on multiple threads? Doesn’t matter what you’re saying, we’ll delete it as spam. Done it many times myself, even if I didn’t delete your comments in particular.

[–] Five@slrpnk.net 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

This is not a case of copy/pasting the same comment in multiple threads. Please look closer at the comments and the reports. One comment is repeated once, but that is due to it being topical to MBFC's take on the BBC, and both articles were from the BBC.

Also, I'm alarmed you consider contextualization of MBFC in comments that reply to the Bot as 'off-topic.' The Bot created the topic of MBFC's credibility by linking to it as an authoritative source. If a comment about the credibility of the BBC in reply to an article published by the BBC is on-topic, then a comment about the credibility of MBFC as a reply to a review published by MBFC is also on-topic.

[–] goferking0@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I love how they call your replies to bot spam but the bot isn't.

[–] Five@slrpnk.net 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Not just any bot spam - the most downvoted spam in Lemmy history. It is now more unpopular than the most popular Lemmy account is popular.