Why does the "Media Bias Fact Checker" - Bot gets downvoted so much lately?

Roflmasterbigpimp@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 284 points –

No comments or anything, just lots of Downvotes.

158

You are viewing a single comment

The bot is crap. This is how it rates Raw Story, a clickbait factory that churns out shallow articles with dramatic, misleading headlines. It just produces slop for liberal Boomers to fill up their Facebook feed, but based on the bot's reply, you'd think it was the Gaurdian.

It actually rates it significantly higher than the Guardian, which it gives a mixed factual rating and medium credibility, which is the same rating they give the Sun. It's laughable.

Jesus, I knew it was bad, but I didn't realize it was that bad. That's insane.

Ooof. If it gives the S*n even a mediocre rating, it’s shit.

Thank you for actually providing an example. I've asked and I've seen others ask but no one ever actually provides evidence to back their claim, they just downvote or say "bot bad".

Sure, no problem. Also, I think it would be disingenuous to pretend that at least some of this backlash isn't from people who don't like the idea that their beliefs may not be objective facts. I'd be lying if I said I didn't struggle with that from time to time.

But the real problem I have with these bots is that they can never capture the kind of nuance vetting a source requires. The Raw Story ranks high on credibility because they don't publish lies, but they don't publish anything worthwhile either. Most of their, "stories," are second hand accounts of something someone (who may or may not be credible) said on CNN, or how a politician or pundit got mocked on social media, and then given a title that implies the incident was more significant than it was. It's difficult to judge something like that with an algorithm that simply looks for, "Credibility," and, "Bias."