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MediaBiasFactChecker almost broke the whole system - SLRPNK
slrpnk.netEverything’s been working smoothly, with nothing to report about the moderation
bot. The community has been quiet but productive, which was precisely the goal,
and the bot working smoothly with no issues. However, something almost went
wrong in a particular entertaining fashion which I thought I would share. The
algorithm for classifying troll users doesn’t have any polarity. It only knows
which users are opposed to which other users. 50% of the time, it’ll get its
whole ranking system backwards, so the troll users are the normal ones, and
everyone else gets negative rank, because the math works just as well under that
ranking regime. Generally this isn’t a problem, because there’s a step: # Flip
the sign if we arrived at a majority-negative ranking, which can happen if
-min_val > max_val: rank[1:] *= -1 The most popular user is always more popular
than the least popular troll is unpopular, by quite a big margin, so that works
fine. However. Things have changed. MediaBiasFactChecker@lemmy.world is so
unpopular that it’s almost (1% margin) more unpopular than the highest-rank user
is popular. If that had happened, the whole polarity would have flipped, every
user would have been banned, all the trolls would have been unbanned. Mass
hysteria. I only happened to notice it before it happened and stop the bot. It’s
on track to be the least popular user on Lemmy, with about 5 times lower rank
than some of the most notorious trolls. Have fun with this information. I
started checking the median rank of all users, instead. Thanks
MediaBiasFactChecker.
I honestly don’t understand why people are downvoting the media bias bot. From what I’ve seen, it is pretty accurate. Is it that people see the comment count go up and expect a human comment to interact with, only to be disappointed and then downvote the bot?
If so, I’d suggest Lemmy/Mbin to not could comments made by bot accounts towards the total comment count.
It might have something to do with their steadfast insistence on rating literal Zionist propaganda outlets that spread straight up lies that have been debunked hundreds of times over as “extremely credible”.
Just ignoring reality like that tends to hurt the credibility of a credibility meter.
And don’t get me wrong, I have a shit ton of gripes about The Guardian as a trans person, but rating its factual reporting as “mixed” while the NYT is “high” is either incompetence or an agenda. I think they bank on Americans not being familiar with what international papers are reputable.
Absolutely. And also banking on both Americans and non-Americans to be unaware of the extreme pro-zionist, pro-cop, and pro-establishment bias of the NYT as well as the lies they keep spreading as a result.
Wikipedia’s entries note that such outlets aren’t much credible.
No, that would have made it the most popular user lemmy has ever seen. I think it was because it was something that no one asked for like that one U2 album.
You think zionism is extremely popular on Lemmy?? What the fuck have you been smoking?!
certainly on .world
Nope. Even on !politics@lemmy.world, the most Neoliberal community on the most Neoliberal instance on Lemmy, pro-zionist comments are few and heavily downvoted, as they should be.
They’re openly hostile to anyone who says that Democrats should not support Netanyahu’s genocide.
Not really, only the ones who say that you should withhold support from all Democrats in a binary election system. And anyone who says anything that can possibly be interpreted as such. And quite a few where they have to invent the nonsupport out of whole cloth.
It’s not so much that they’re Zionists, it’s more that many of them are pro-Dem to the point where any dissent against any Dems, especially the leaders, gets the same ferocious reactions as when you criticize the Mango Mussolini amongst his fascist cult.
Or to put it another way: apart from understandable election pragmatism, there’s a lot of people there who cares more about pretending that their “team” is perfect than about holding the people supposed to represent them accountable for participating in countless crimes against humanity.
I have never, not a single fucking time, suggested withholding support. That has never fucking mattered.
And I don’t give the benefit of the doubt to people who are willing to jettison their humanity just for their “team”. Particularly when they’re super fucking excited to get Dick Cheney’s endorsement.
MBFC equates respectable outlets like The Guardian and literal nazi rag Breitbart
It’s propaganda masquerading as impartiality
Could have just stopped there tbh.
It’s not. It’s the hobby of a right wing Zionist masquerading as a neutral and authorative arbiter of facts and bias.
For example, it rates The Guardian, Fox News and Breitbart as equally factual.
That too, yes. Personally I have it blocked and get annoyed by there being no comments in stead.
Or just get rid of the biased and counterfactual bias and fact checker.
The Bot is wildly inaccurate as other people have pointed out. Even having the idea of potentially one person verifying the veracity of all news media is plainly ludicrous.
I downvoted it when it showed clear bias, which was most of the comments I saw.
I don’t like it because it’s placing an objective statement on a subjective matter. it’s also apparently run by a single person (which is understandable given what it needs to do) but I just don’t like the vibes that gives off.
I think it’d be a lot better if it just stated objective things (e.g. where their funding comes from, the corporate relationships, country they’re based in)
For me I liked it at first but ended up blocking it after it started doing “more stories like” which revealed that it was clearly there to turn a profit.