News

While I think it's important to have some sort of media bias understanding, I dislike the bot being the first (and sometimes only) comment on a post. Maybe it should be reserved only for posts that are garnering attention, and has a definitive media bias answer for (the no results comments are just damn annoying to see).

It also has the knock-on effect of boosting the post higher in whichever sorting algorithm users are using. So it often feels artificially controlled whenever something has 100+ upvotes and less than 10 comments, knowing the first comment is always a bot. Like, would it be fair for me to have 10 bots that comment factual information of posts I personally like, just to boost their visibility?

Unfortunately the bot is fatally flawed as long as it's just repeating MBFC information. I would be interested in a community program but I have the same end worry. What's the risk that we create an echo chamber? It might be better than an echo chamber based on MBFC ratings but it's still an issue worth worrying about.

That said I'm down to try a community approach.

Get rid of the bot

I wound up blocking your shitty bot because it spammed pretty much every post.

Probably not an issue with the bot itself, but just FYI, it appears the spoiler tags don't work on Boost.

Addressing the Overton window issue is the main fix I would hope for.

The proposed solution of a home-brewed open-source methodology of determining bias without the Overton influence would be a very welcome improvement in my opinion.

Credibility isn't subjective. It should be a hard value.

Orientation is indeed subjective and unless in the extremes should (imo) not be defined

How about just finally making the bot open source and let people comment or contribute there?

This bot was introduced because modding can be pretty tough work at times and we are all just volunteers with regular lives.

Then maybe it can be an internal thing only. Let people do their own critical thinking. I believe that if you're on Lemmy, you can make informed decision.

Personally I'm in favor of the bot. One complaint I've seen that I agree with is that it doesn't need to float high up in the comments. If it was simply made to not upvote itself, it would stay nearer to the bottom naturally, which I think would be preferable.

Although I do see that that bot has a very slight right wing bias I like it. It prevents the normalization of the use of literal propaganda outlets as news sources.

I have a suggestion that might be a good compromise.

The bot only comments on posts that are from less factual news sources or are from extreme ends of the spectrum.

On a post from the AP the bot would just not comment.

On a post from Alex Jones or RT the bot would post a warning.

That way there is less “spam”, but people are made aware when misinformation or propaganda is being pushed.

Also with such a system smaller biasses are less relevant and therefore become less important.

Bias ratings will always be biased. So aggregate or having multiple sources briefly used in a single small post would work best.