The tesseract Lemmy app, has a little overview from mediabiasfactcheck.com (MBFC). It seems like a clever way to foster a healthy community.
If you click on the ranking you get details.
EDIT: Sorry to stir up an old hornet’s nest.
EDIT2: Commenters have some valid criticisms of MBFC. Even if there are flaws, I would like to celebrate all attempts at elevating the conversations we are having.
Imagine thinking CNN is center-left 😂
In the Overton Window that is US politics, it is. But that’s because the damn window has been dragged so far to the right that facts themselves are “Liberal Marxism” now (oxymoronic as that label is).
Edit: And MBFC perpetuates that rightward movement. I prefer Ad Fontes, although it does also label CNN as center-left.
MBFC does the opposite of elevate conversations. It’s quite frankly a poison pill for conversations. People will apply their prejudices and alter their interpretations based on the ‘bias check’, typically before or instead of any critical thinking
or ant article.of any article.The last time the MBFC bot was going the user pushing it was very clearly aware of this dynamic. They also knew it was lumping everything to website source, despite authors and opinion pieces, for maximum damage.
EDIT2: Commenters have some valid criticisms of MBFC.
Here’s another in my “making friends” series of posts.
Commenters DO NOT have valid criticisms of MBFC. They are universally wrong, have no idea how MBFC works, and are too lazy to look it up. The misinfo ghouls among them are happy to repeat lies over and over until people start to accept them.
Some of these people can be pretty convincing but I urge you to actually fact check their arguments. Most of these people are just parroting bullshit they saw someone else say. The “best” of these are basically artisanal, hand-crafted AI hallucinations: high-confidence, syntactically-correct nonsense. Don’t put that glue on your pizza. If someone posts an MBFC link as evidence, click it and read it. Nearly every single time, the link they posted contradicts them and they just haven’t read it.
And ask yourself why no one ever posts peer-reviewed research backing up their claims. It’s a simple reason: it doesn’t exist. Every single piece of academic research on MBFC says they’re wrong. The MBFC conspiracy theorists can’t just ignore that body of research because it’s inconvenient – they need a compelling reason why all research to date is wrong. For their claims to be true, it would require a massive conspiracy between academics, journalists, and media bias organizations because they are all in consensus about what makes good and bad news organizations. It’s loopy, tinfoil hat bullshit.
You’re right, defending Nazi sites doesn’t make you friends, you’re wrong that there’s any peer review of the site though, either way.
I’m awarding you three demerits for a reply that doesn’t make sense. Govern yourself accordingly.
Mbfc is funded and run by Nazis. You’re defending a Nazi site. I personally wouldn’t call you a Nazi over doing so in ignorance, but others might.
As the person asking people to fact check the claims of weird conspiracy theorists, I’m gonna have to ask for your sources on that one.
Edit: For anyone wondering, MBFC is transparent about their funding sources.
Edit2: an MBFC conspiracy theorist just making shit up??? I’m shocked…
Yeah, I’ve also looked into MBFC and found it was more grounded than what Lemmings were saying.
I always found it suspicious why people here would rather choose no fact checking than some. Is it the old “don’t let perfection ruin a good plan” again or other motives? Hmm.
I think that very few of these arguments are being made in good faith. For some people, any bias monitor is a barrier to sharing propaganda as news. Others just don’t understand how to use the site properly. Or use it in a really stupid way anyway. Like this:
- Look at the ratings.
- If something strikes you as odd, run around screaming like your hair’s on fire.
Instead of:
- Look at the ratings.
- If something strikes you as odd, read the part of the report that explains the rating.
- Decide how important those things are to you and whether it’s a deal-breaker.
Others are like, ‘it’s telling me what to think, man!’ who don’t seem to understand that those pages contain a wealth of information that you can include in your decision-making (or not). They’ve convinced themselves that it’s presented as the one and only source of absolute truth, which is really just something they made up to be angry about. No one but them is making that claim.
There also isn’t another free source that has that info in one place. There’s no better place to quickly find news org ownership info, the country they’re operating in (with links to info about press freedom in that country), and their history of factual reporting. But those people don’t care – they’re just viscerally reacting to the ratings, not reading the reports.
MBFC is bad. It supports the American overton window, which is, you know, now openly fascist.
Wow, I decided I would give MBFC a shot. You are greeted with an ad-infested experience with a giant start bar reminiscent of a malware site. After building up enough courage to click it I discovered it not only wanted my email but also my credit card.
After having to fight to see the article I wanted rated I just don’t have the fortitude to the fight this horrible experience to probably be told that the following article is left center or left leaning bias.
While I will admit this was a not Fox News praising the Trump Admin, it has an extremely neutral tone and does nothing to pushback against the obviously clownish message that the Trump team provides.
For this reason it, is to me at least, right leaning. I guess I will never know what MBFC would rate it.
reminiscent of a malware site
Well, that’s because it is malware.
it, is to me at least, right leaning
It’s not right leaning.
It’s disinformation malware whose sole purpose is to move the Overton window as far right as possible.
It labels anything short of outright fascism as far left.
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It has malicious intent, therefore it’s malware. 🤷♂️
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Any software intended to cause harm is malware. MBFC is software intended to cause harm. MBFC is malware.
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Oh dear god not this argument again
Right, I almost forgot about the rage against the MBFC bot that went on for like MONTHS lmao. Seeing it downvoted to hell was hilarious though lol
Tbh I didn’t even mind what the bot was trying to do. I just remember opening what felt like every post and seeing dozens of lines taken up by the bot. I ended up just blocking it and cross-referencing with ground news myself.
Ground News makes you think American conservatives are centrists.
Can you give the rundown on what happened for us newer people.
Some of the news and politics communities added an automatic comment to new posts that linked to fact checking information, and a big portion of the community lost their minds about it. A lot of people found it biased, obtrusive, or unnecessary, and it generated a lot of conflict between the people who liked it or felt neutral. It went through many iterations based on the feedback before being removed entirely.
The entire saga was fairly disruptive and everyone is glad it’s over.
I guess I had missed it the first time
account age 1 year 8 months
LOL, not a chance unless you were straight-up absent that whole time.
Ew.
“Ew” what? The fighting over MBFC was a big deal for a long time. If he was here, it’s hard to believe he wouldn’t have noticed it.
Not everyone sees everything. It feels like gate keeping to assume everyone has to have seen everything based on their join date.
Relative to your impressive comment and post count, it appears I was.
Is this the same media bias checking bot that thinks a Murdoch media owned news site was left leaning?
As a left-leaning Canadian, this seems crazy to me. There’s not even a place for me on this chart.
It’s crazy how normalized right-wing extremism is. Well, it does explain the state of things in the US, though.
I also don’t love that is has least biased in the center. Bias is a trait that is on an almost entirely separate axis.
