Hi all!

As many of you have noticed, many Lemmy.World communities introduced a bot: @MediaBiasFactChecker@lemmy.world. This bot was introduced because modding can be pretty tough work at times and we are all just volunteers with regular lives. It has been helpful and we would like to keep it around in one form or another.

The !news@lemmy.world mods want to give the community a chance to voice their thoughts on some potential changes to the MBFC bot. We have heard concerns that tend to fall into a few buckets. The most common concern we’ve heard is that the bot’s comment is too long. To address this, we’ve implemented a spoiler tag so that users need to click to see more information. We’ve also cut wording about donations that people argued made the bot feel like an ad.

Another common concern people have is with MBFC’s definition of “left” and “right,” which tend to be influenced by the American Overton window. Similarly, some have expressed that they feel MBFC’s process of rating reliability and credibility is opaque and/or subjective. To address this, we have discussed creating our own open source system of scoring news sources. We would essentially start with third-party ratings, including MBFC, and create an aggregate rating. We could also open a path for users to vote, so that any rating would reflect our instance’s opinions of a source. We would love to hear your thoughts on this, as well as suggestions for sources that rate news outlets’ bias, reliability, and/or credibility. Feel free to use this thread to share other constructive criticism about the bot too.

  • jeffw@lemmy.worldOPM
    1012·
    2 months ago

    I apologize if this thread was misunderstood. Perhaps I was not clear that this was meant for improvements, it is not a vote on removal. Should that vote ever happen, the post would be clear about that.

    All of my questions were only seeking to gain more information about people’s feelings. I apologize if it came off as a promise to enact anything in particular or an endorsement of any particular stance on the bot.

    • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
      142·
      2 months ago

      The problem is with MBFC, and you have no control over them. Therefore, the only way you can improve the bot is to remove it entirely.

      • jeffw@lemmy.worldOPM
        310·
        2 months ago

        Remove MBFC? Yes, that’s part of the discussion and the point of this post. The struggle seems to be over the API, but I’d love to have suggestions to bring to the rest of the team. As I have said multiple times, it is not my decision to remove the bot, I’m simply here for suggestions that the rest of the team would be open to.

          • jeffw@lemmy.worldOPM
            39·
            2 months ago

            It’s a team decision and I am the newest mod on the team. The main developer of the bot is an admin, who ultimately would be the one to implement any changes.

            • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
              74·
              2 months ago

              So it is in part your decision. I’m pretty sure the admins aren’t forcing you to have it here.

              • jeffw@lemmy.worldOPM
                47·
                2 months ago

                During your next shift, you should do something that nobody on your team or your supervisor wants you to do. Lmk how that goes for you

                • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
                  74·
                  2 months ago

                  I’m concerned about why the team wants to force something on the users that is objectively harmful. What is the justification?

    • fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc
      155·
      2 months ago

      Yes, you’ve been very clear from the start that you do not want to remove the bot. However, the feedback you’ve consistently received is that it provides no benefit, is misleading, reductive, and the best improvement you could make would be to remove it. You don’t seem willing or able to respond to that.