[META] MBFC bot
[META] MBFC bot
The news mod team has asked to no longer be a part of the project until we have a composite tool that polls multiple sources for a more balanced view.
It will take a few hours, but FOR NOW there won't be a bot giving reviews of the source.
The goal was simple: make it easier to show biased sources. This was to give you and the mods a better view of what we were looking at.
The mod team is in agreement: one source of truth isn't enough. We are working on a tool to give a composite score, from multiple sources, all open source.
You're viewing a single thread.
Honestly; I think the "Negative" reactions to the bot are overblown and only done by a vocal minority who are sockpuppeting followed by a few people who are irrationally angry that the bot can be, GASP! Dare I SAY IT???!!11, Wrong.
Personally I don't find the bot problematic at all; and I think it could easily be blocked or ignored by people who find it too inaccurate. So I find it extremely disappointing that the mods are listening to the vocal minority about this.
That being said; I do understand why Mods want to make the bot more accurate. It's assessments and information can easily make obvious extremists and trolls more obvious to the naked eye; and can help people consume media with some grains of salt. More sources of data are good for accuracy.
Anyone who disagrees with me is a bot!
Love that they are actually using that reasoning...
Sockpuppetting? You have any indication of that?
We do. Admins found dozens of downvote alts and nuked them at the same time. Seems folks aren't content to just state their opinion and leave it at that, and instead they feel compelled to overwhelm the system to give the illusion of uniformity.
Props to the LW admin who uncovered and banned the vote manipulation ring. Its existence is troubling.
I did a vote audit of the Soliciting Feedback from the Mods thread, and none of the sock accounts that were banned three days ago voted on the post or the most highly upvoted or downvoted comments. If you don't believe me, I suggest asking an admin you trust to repeat the audit.
The outrage about the bot seems extremely organic, and any sockpuppetting going on is small compared to the overwhelming number of legitimate accounts casting votes that are apparent from the logs. The uniformity of the consensus does not appear to be artificial at all.
These people were specifically trying to get the bot removed? Must have hit quite a nerve. I know it was biased in favor of Israel, but it must have been even worse. That bot sucks so bad people make mass sockpuppet accounts just to tell you they want it gone
You're taking the wrong lesson from these findings.
I was joking. Just like you can't be seriously claiming there is no consensus that the bot sucks and that all the net downvotes for that bot are due to a small minority of sockpuppeteers?
I didn't claim there was no consensus, or that "all" the downvotes were sockpuppets. We have evidence that some of them were, which makes distilling the overall sentiment pretty difficult.
So based on your other comment, the "evidence" you're referring to here is merely that vote manipulation had occurred in some other community?
No, in this community. We were told that the admins found a vote manipulation ring in our threads. I don't have admin level access, so I have no idea where they voted for what.
Ok, but you did claim that you had evidence that some of the downvotes were sockpuppets, contrary to the analysis discussed in this comment.
Yeah, we were told they disrupted a downvote ring. I have no fucking idea where those accounts voted, except that we took vote totals with a grain of salt because we were in the dark. I'm frankly used to being bombarded with downvotes every time i comment in this community (edit: One person went out of their way to downvote each of my last 7 comments, for example.). So in my eyes, votes were (and continue to be) compromised, and we were informed about the ring while we were deliberating bot feedback. I tried to connect the dots with incomplete information because I'm not an admin. What else are you looking for here?
What point does a "bias" bot serve if it can be incorrect? And if it can be incorrect then why should we trust it at all?
You may as well write a bot that posts "remember, don't trust everything you read online and use critical thinking when you're doing your own research" to every post.
Honestly, the bias piece was never the important piece for us. It was the credibility piece.
Just trying to give some insight into why we used it in this community.
Then you understand the negative reactions. Especially regarding controversial topics such as Gaza where the bot preferred sources on one side to the conflict
The question is how much is it incorrect? Because the bot isn't AI or anything. MBFC's database is used in research and has been compared with other independent sources and deemed reputable enough.
Citation needed
our results suggest that there is substantial agreement across different sources of domain quality ratings, and that aggregated domain ratings provide a useful tool for advancing misinformation research.
https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/2/9/pgad286/7258994
Your source:
Domain ratings may not be as accurate as fact-checking individual pieces of content
You know -- like a stupid bot writing useless bullshit.
but they offer a convenient tool for evaluating the efficacy of antimisinformation interventions
Also my source. You know, when used like a person with more than two brain cells would. Instead of nit-picking at the bot, why don't we look at the bigger picture for the value it provides?