It's important to remember Dave Van Zandt is not a social scientist, and is not qualified to run a 'scientific' political bias gatekeeping organization.
DVZ identifies as an 'independent voter' but has an obvious right-wing political bias. To his credit, he understands the importance of reporting the consensus of the scientific community, rather than elevating fringe science and pseudoscience in the public consciousness.
To DVZ, center-left means conservative Democrats, and center-right means Republicans. Every news agency, periodical, and lobbyist group he considers relevant he's placed somewhere on his stunted spectrum, except for one category.
Republicans have sought to defund NOAA, and attack science. Most Democrats at least acknowledge climate change is happening and many are trying to actively prevent it. Democrats are the pro-science party. Instead of placing NOAA and similar pro-science organizations on the left, he's created a 'pro-science' category where publications exist outside the left-right political spectrum.
Meanwhile, the scientific consensus is that LGBTQ+ people are not mentally ill or possessed by demons, they are people who deserve the same human rights as everyone else. The Human Rights Campaign is an American single-issue non-profit to promote the human rights of LGBTQ+ people in a non-partisan fashion. To wit, HRC has been criticized for occasionally supporting Republican candidates that support gay marriage, which is acknowledged specifically by DVZ. Instead of placing this advocacy group in the pro-science category, or in its own place elevated above the political spectrum, he has placed the non-partisan HRC on the out-of-center left of his political spectrum.
LGBTQ+ people should not have the advocacy of their human rights categorized as a fringe political position, when other organizations for the advocacy of the consensus of the scientific community are above categorization. Lemmy.World's !news and !politics mods are endorsing DVZ's bigoted political beliefs by promoting his site as an authority in their communities.
I support opening up vote logs to moderators in their own communities. Voting records add useful context to the nature of the exchanges happening, eg. if two people are having a back and forth, but neither is downvoting the other, it contextualizes the disagreement as less hostile.
I don't think it's a good idea to give every new user the burden of using that information responsibly. A minority would use it to retaliate, stalk, and harass, and there would be too many of them to reasonably hold them accountable.
Membership in the IFCN provides a method for member organizations to be held accountable to the IFCN code.
Would you trust an organization that claims to follow a code, but has either been denied and had their membership rescinded for violations of that code, or has chosen to avoid being held accountable in the first place?
Regardless of who it was targeted at, I've definitely experienced my share of similar accusations. Lemmy.world culture seems to favor low effort 'bad faith' accusations, and I wish that weren't the case.
Sorry, no mea culpa. Let me elaborate. Van Zandt claims to value IFCN fact-checkers in his ratings, then he uses that laundered credibility to gatekeep minority and politically inconvenient voices. Here's a recent example brought to my attention.
It should be noted that despite no non-partisan fact checkers are listed on MBFC's site as raising concerns about the The Cradle's credibility, Van Zandt has arbitrarily placed it in the "Factual Reporting: Mixed" and "Credibility: Medium" categories. The concerns he posits about The Cradle's 'lack of transparency, poor sourcing," and one-sidedness clearly apply to the weird right-wing guy who makes these opaque decisions about journalistic value.
If IFCN fact-checkers have issues with sources he'd like to denigrate, he's happy to list them even if they've since been resolved. But they don't make up the central criteria for his 'methodology' as he'd like you to believe. Meanwhile he's free to make unreferenced claims about the credibility of others that uncareful readers take completely at face value.
All the concerns I have about The Cradle's credibility have been developed in spite of MBFC, which is the opposite of what you want if your goal is accountability and media literacy. And thanks to their reliance on this charlatan, LW!news have recently punted what I think is a valuable report.
Ask a socialist what's wrong with Lemmy.world, they'll give you a myriad of issues. Ask a capitalist what's wrong with Lemmy.ml, they'll describe Lemmy.world.
A appreciate your work demonstrating The Cradle's support for the Russian state. It's the first time I can remember seeing The Cradle posted on here, and in between being subscribed to these communities and my contributions to LemmyWorldDefenseHQ, I have not seen The Cradle spam as a reported or observed problem.
I've read the article, and I find it valuable. I'm alarmed that the Lemmy World !politics and !news mods have failed to demonstrate the pressing need for the ham-fisted gatekeeping and censorship regime they've implemented.
Lemmy.World is the largest instance, and !politics and !news are flagship communities. I would like to see the Fediverse overtake corporate forums, and learning to approach the spectrum of journalistic credibility with nuance is an essential feature of a better version of social media.
