I feel like I really shouldn’t have to. if people genuinely wanted to use your bot, they would opt in

Which is why the bot is not useful - it literally tries to standardize political stances when that’s actually impossible.

Yeah, living in a parliamentary democracy means I have to make an effort to wrap my head around how the US “democratic” institution works. The internal structure of the Democratic Party has more in common with our democratic structure than the structure of their “competing” parties. As a result there is more room for difference within the Democratic Party than within a political party in our system, but the political difference between parties in our system is greater than those within the democratic party.

Whilst it economically is to the right, many of its social policies it endorses are leftist.

My analysis has long been that there is no political will to implement leftist economical policies in the US, i.e. those that really matter in the grand scheme of things, even though there exists a semi-conscious wish for them within the populace. Please do not misunderstand, increasing equity between people of different backgrounds is important, but important single issues such as gay marriage are insufficient if they do not come along with, or better yet, as a product of equity of material conditions. It was all the same with the feminist movement where social advancements were conceded in lieu of increasing their economical statuses, with the division in measurable quantities, such as income or capital ownership still going strong (note I do not advocate changing the ruling elite from one subset of people to another subset of different characteristics, but instead saying that capital ownership should be transferred from the subset to the whole).

Strengthening the political power of the marginalized by increasing the material conditions of their strata is the best way to make social progress, which the ruling elite of the US is painfully aware and which is why they sometimes are willing to skip the first step and reach the inevitable second immediately. The discrepancy between the people’s wants and needs for leftist policies, again conscious or not, and the actual politics of the US, is deeply connected to the Democratic Party’s willingness to concede these social changes without losing the backing of the capital interests that fund them.

Left of fascism, but not leftist. Bernie frickin Sanders is barely left of center.

I am not from the US so why should I base my definition of left-wing on the Democratic party (and subsequently arrive upon the wrong conclusion that the Democratic party is leftist)? More importantly, why would you?

If you want to talk relatively, use relative terms. That being said, left of the farthest right is not very useful, which is precisely why I care about the distinction.

In any civilised country Bernie fucking Sanders would be considered centre right at best. A vast majority of your politicians are corporate stooges with no political position of their own (though their owners are obviously far right and opposed to any form of human rights), but when it comes to voters most of the democratic party is right to far right, and republicans range from deranged lunatics to fascists and proud of it, in both cases mostly due to ignorance, brainwashing by your extremely biased media, Stockholm syndrome, and probably a good dose of brain damage due to lack of proper health care and regulations.

There are no centre and much less left mainstream political parties or politicians whatsoever in the US. Anything remotely approaching the centre is labelled as communist and socially and mediatically ostracized and or ridiculed.

The US has long devolved into a sad and tragic satire of a fascist dystopia, and any attempt to push its twisted worldviews and standards on the civilised world will naturally be met with hostility, out of sheer principle, self respect, and self defense.

Your bot is extremely biased and obviously ill intentioned. It’s harmful. It’s malware. And it’s spam.

No, but that’s a common misconception. Palestine has never previously been a country, but was a region of the Ottoman Empire, then a part of the British Empire that more or less consisted of modern day Israel, Palestine, and Jordan.

Under the Ottomans and the British, there was a Jewish minority, mostly in the region of Palestine, but also in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, etc.

Starting in the 1800s, Jews living in Europe began to move to the region in larger numbers (as well as Jews living in other parts of the Middle East and Africa). This was primarily motivated by antisemitic events in Europe, but also similar to the national movements that led to Prussia becoming Germany, the pan-Arab movement, re-establishing Poland, etc.

Here is a photo of the 1931 Palestinian football team that included Palestinian Jews as well as Palestinian Arabs.

How far back do you want to go?

If we’re talking Bronze Age, then the exodus didn’t happen. Or rather, only a small handful of refugees showed up and their story eventually became assimilated into Judaea’s and Israel’s cultural narrative.

Tracing ancestry back that far is problematic, but both cultures have equally valid and long standing claims to the region.

It’s like the Hatfield and McCoy feud, except it’s existed since the start of the Bronze Age (or earlier,)

In more modern history, Palestine was a British colony taken during ww1 as the leftovers of the Ottoman Empire, when the Palestine Mandate was done in an attempt to back out, and Jewish militants attacked everyone involved eventually leading to the creation of the current State of Israel.

Precisely. Wtf.

No - actually I do the bulk of it based on presentation.

“Facts” fall into two categories - ones that can be independently verified, which are generally reported accurately regardless of bias, and ones that cannot be independently verified, which should be treated as mere possibilities, the likelihood of which can generally be at least better judged by the rest of the article. In neither case are the nominal facts particularly relevant.

Rather, if for instance the article has an incendiary title, a buried lede and a lot of emotive language, that clearly implies bias, regardless of the nominal facts.

That still doesn’t mean or even imply that it’s factually incorrect, and to the contrary, the odds are that it’s technically not - most journalists at least possess the basic skill of framing things such that they’re not technically untrue. If nothing else, they can always fall back on the tried and true, “According to informed sources…” phrasing. That phrase can then be followed by literally anything, and in order to be true, all it requires is that somebody who might colorably be called an “informed source” said it.

The assertion itself doesn’t have to be true, because they’re not reporting that it’s true. They’re just reporting that someone said that it’s true.

So again, nominal facts aren’t really the issue. Bias is better recognized by technique, and that’s something that any attentive reader can learn to recognize.

The only competition here is between relying on ones own judgment vs. relying on a third party.

So are you saying that you wouldn’t be able to recognize my second example as a biased statement without the MBFC bot’s guidance?

Or did you just entirely miss the point?

I haven’t seen any evidence that it does that, and quite the contrary, evidence that it does not - examples from publications ranging from Israel Times to New York Times to Slate in which it accompanied an article with clearly loaded language with an assessment of high credibility.

It’s possible that it’s improved of late - I don’t know, since I blocked it weeks ago, after a particularly egregious example of that accompanied a technically factually accurate but brazenly biased Israel Times article.