Probably January 5th Capitol Riot defendants, unfortunately.

I enjoy her writing too. Her piece on the threat of Facebook entering the Fediverse does a great job of making the case.

Let’s be clear that I am anti-Putin and anti-Kim.

Ad-hominem means “to the man” – that is, instead of attacking the message, one attacks the credibility of the messenger. This also includes when instead of defending the credibility of a message, one defends the credibility of the messenger. Ad-hominem is exactly the purpose of the MBFC bot. Instead of fact-checking the individual article, it tells you if the article is credible or not based on its clearly biased assessment of the article outlet.

You are correct in that ad-hominem is generally a terrible way of judging credibility. I am not making an ad-hominem fallacy. I am responding to an ad-hominem fallacy that has been spammed in every thread in this community.

Groups like MBFC use their position as gatekeepers of the political spectrum to disguise radical ideas as centrist positions, and it’s ironic that !world using such a biased propaganda platform to tell its readers what is credible.

Bias is not the same thing as propaganda, propaganda is not the same thing as misinformation. Articles should be evaluated on how factual they are, and there are plenty of platforms that are doing the hard work of verifying information without putting their political ideology above their credibility. This bot is a mistake.

Before removing the bot, !news mods removed comments critical of the bot, and ignored the overwhelming negative feedback and the consensus that the bot should be removed when they opened the discussion up to the community.

!politics and !world now appear to be willing to change course. The vote to “Kill” – stop their bot from advertising MBFC in all of their posts – appears to be leading in both communities.

If you upvote the Kill comment so that this lead becomes a landslide, you can make it even more embarrassing and difficult for them to claim ‘bots’ or backtrack.

Voice of America (VOA) is a state media network funded by the United States of America, whose purpose is to project soft power through journalism. In 1948, Voice of America was forbidden to broadcast directly to American citizens to protect the public from propaganda by its own government. The restriction was removed in 2013 to to adapt to the Internet age.

In 2005, the Washington Post reported that suspected Al-qaeda operatives were flown into Thailand to be detained and tortured. VOA’s remote relay radio station in Udon Thani province has been widely suspected to be the torture site.

Most people do not believe that propaganda is anything that disagrees with the United States Government’s foreign policy, and find the idea that the VOA is less biased than the New York Times laughable. Lemmy.World endorses these absurdities by advertising Media Bias Fact Check in every post in their community. You have a limited time to let !politics and !world know what you think.

Voice of America (VOA) is a state media network funded by the United States of America, whose purpose is to project soft power through journalism. In 1948, Voice of America was forbidden to broadcast directly to American citizens to protect the public from propaganda by its own government. The restriction was removed in 2013 to to adapt to the Internet age.

In 2005, the Washington Post reported that suspected Al-qaeda operatives were flown into Thailand to be detained and tortured. VOA’s remote relay radio station in Udon Thani province has been widely suspected to be the torture site. VOA has been conspicuously silent on the charges. Their reporters have unparalleled access to the details of the case, but none of them appear to have done any investigation.

According to David Van Zandt in MBFC’s methodology:

It’s crucial to note that our bias scale is calibrated to the political spectrum of the United States

To better understand this statement, it should be noted that MBFC regards VOA as “least biased” despite its uncontroversial status as the United States’ official propaganda outlet.

As stated elsewhere in the thread, my vote audit shows no participation from any of the 29 banned sock accounts the in the !news feedback thread, or this one for that matter. Please take the votes more seriously. If you’d like to spread FUD about the legitimacy of a vote, ask an admin to audit them first so you can state with evidence that a specific vote has been manipulated.

People trust the software to tell them what others are thinking, and if you successfully spread the false idea that votes that disagree with you are manipulated, you’re not just arguing in bad faith, you’re undermining the federated system we should all want to succeed.

Rule 1 Ban Count: 5

• @LagrangePoint@lemmy.world (Permaban)
• @aniki@lemmings.world (15 day ban)
• @catloaf@lemm.ee (15 day ban)
• @DoctorButts@kbin.melroy.org (Permaban)
• @stormesp@lemm.ee (15 day ban)

Not a good look, mods.

Not just any bot spam - the most downvoted spam in Lemmy history. It is now more unpopular than the most popular Lemmy account is popular.

This is not a case of copy/pasting the same comment in multiple threads. Please look closer at the comments and the reports. One comment is repeated once, but that is due to it being topical to MBFC’s take on the BBC, and both articles were from the BBC.

Also, I’m alarmed you consider contextualization of MBFC in comments that reply to the Bot as ‘off-topic.’ The Bot created the topic of MBFC’s credibility by linking to it as an authoritative source. If a comment about the credibility of the BBC in reply to an article published by the BBC is on-topic, then a comment about the credibility of MBFC as a reply to a review published by MBFC is also on-topic.

I appreciate you reading and responding to my concern instead of censoring me like your fellow mod in !news and !world:

• Censored by !news as ‘Stop Spamming’
• Censored by !news as ‘Stop Spamming’
• Censored by !world as ‘Stop Spamming’
• Censored by !news as ‘Stop Spamming’
• Censored by !world as ‘Stop Spamming’
• Censored by !news as ‘Stop Spamming’
• Censored by !world as ‘Stop Spamming’
• Censored by !news as ‘Stop Spamming’

More than half of these occurred in a community you moderate. Do you approve of this use of the term ‘spamming’ to silence criticism?

Exposing a free API for anyone to use is not typical trade practice for respectable fact-checking operations. You may be able to get free access as a non-profit organization, and that may be worth persuing. On the other hand, there’s a fundamental problem in the disconnect between the goals of real fact-checking websites and the kind of bot you are trying to create.

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.

Just like every good lie has a little bit of truth in it, MBFC wouldn’t be able to spin its bullshit as well without usurping the credibility of real fact-checking organizations.

Who fact-checks the fact-checkers? Fact-checking is an essential tool in fighting the waves of fake news polluting the public discourse. But if that fact-checking is partisan, then it only acerbates the problem of people divided on the basics of a shared reality.

This is why a consortium of fact-checking institutions have joined together to form the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), and laid out a code of principles. You can find a list of signatories as well as vetted organizations on their website.

MBFC is not a signatory to the IFCN code of principles. As a partisan organization, it violates the standards that journalists have recognized as essential to restoring trust in the veracity of the news. I’ve spoken with @Rooki@Lemmy.World about this issue, and his response has been that he will continue to use his tool despite its flaws until something better materializes because the API is free and easy to use. This is like searching for a lost wallet far from where you lost it because the light from the nearby street lamp is better. He is motivated to disregard the harm he is doing to !politics@Lemmy.World, because he doesn’t want to pay for the work of actual fact-checkers, and has little regard for the many voices who have spoken out against it in his community.

By giving MBFC another platform to increase its exposure, you are repeating his mistake. Partisan fact-checking sites are worse than no fact-checking at all. Just like how the proliferation of fake news undermines the authority of journalism, the growing popularity of a fact-checking site by a political hack like Dave M. Van Zandt undermines the authority of non-partisan fact-checking institutions in the public consciousness.

Fediverse links to current communities:

• !piefed_meta@piefed.social
• !piefed_help@piefed.social