Browsing world after a few weeks:
News
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 right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
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.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
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 or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. 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.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
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.
The amount of people that can't handle a super basic rating of a news outlet is chilling.
I know and accept that I rely on biased media, because all of it is biased. It's media, not scientific papers (which are also often biased btw.). Having a bias does not automatically make it bad.
I care a lot about factual reporting tho. And I want to see the same news from different POVs, with different biases, because they will highlight different things. If you don't, mute the bot, get your daily dose of whatever propaganda you like so much and stfu.
And no, this is not 'centrism'. I'm pretty sure most people who use that word don't even know what it means. Historically, centrism describes a moderate left-wing view. Centrists are the center of left.
The authority that is given to this one bot to determine "Facts" is more the issue I think.
The only bias in my scientific papers is in the data! But we compensate for it and if you approve our next grant we totally promise we'll be able to reduce that bias. So give us more funding pretty please!
Bot: Hmm this article reflects reality, thus it is biased to the left.
Using charged language like that constitutes disinformation and is reprehensible. Imagine if viewers started disregarding a source on account of your bot declaring it biased.
Shameful.
That's not how the bot works.
You're right, it just copies a right-wing human's opinion, and blurts it out in a format that takes way too much space, and pretends to be without bias.
You know, ban material.
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.
Reporting the bot will not get you what you want/expect. If you don't like it, you're welcome to block it.
We are well aware that the bot can be blocked. The issue that I think a lot of us have here is not the bots existence, but rather the reluctance for the mods to take user feedback into account. Just from looking over the bot comments likes and dislikes it is evident the majority of the community dislikes the bot and administrators are ignoring concerns over it and being defensive. This does not bode well for trust at all for future decisions. The administration's actions are showing that the community has no say in how things operate here, despite being a community platform, evidently in name only.
Please do not take your users for granted. Most of of us left a platform specifically where the administration ignored what the user base as a majority wanted. This is how you destroy your community and any goodwill you've built up with them.
I'm truly intending this in good faith, there is nothing to be gained from alienating your community.
I think the bot is crap based on this: The Guardian Media Bias Fact Check Credibility: [Medium]
The guardian is one of the best newspapers on the planet and published content exposing such as the Panama Papers.
A timely article about why this type of "rating" is a really bad idea:
The most chilling words today: I’m from NewsGuard and I am here to rate you by Jonathan Turley.
The guy is a Trump / Musk supporter, he's half the problem as it is.
While I have criticized Trump in the past, I have also objected to some of the efforts to impeach or convict him on dubious legal theories.
Yeah, those 34 duuuuubious felony convictions!
Turley has written a lot about the NY trial and his analysis looked ok to me. IANAL of course. But, those convictions didn't seem to change Trump's polling noticeably. We will see what happens with Harris.
I hate this and have already blocked the bot.
Comments are obscenely long, and I see no reason to trust your source.