Soliciting Feedback for Improvements to the Media Bias Fact Checker Bot
Soliciting Feedback for Improvements to the Media Bias Fact Checker Bot
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.
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Users: “This bot is absolute trash.”
Mods: "Well, I mean, it doesn't set your computer on fire, so that's a win, right guys?"
You just know the guy who coded this bot is probably holed up in his mom’s basement, unloved and ignored, tinkering away on this disaster while muttering to himself in a corner. Bet he’s got some rare genetic condition that makes him think using ChatGPT to write code is a good idea. He’s probably got a conversation open right now, asking for help on how to fix the mess he created, but let’s be real—he’s more likely to ask how to heat up Hot Pockets without burning his hands. This bot’s so bad, it’s like he’s using it as a cry for help.