Reasonable. I wasn't trying to jump down your throat about it. I was a little annoyed at the comments which are positing some sort of fantasy scenario where the bot is useful, but where people hate it for irrational reasons. But yours was a reasonable question, definitely, in particular because for at least one account, it looks like what you described is exactly what's happening.
They have not. I just did some analysis of it, and there is one person whose account has downvoted almost every comment that the bot has left. They have around a thousand other votes, so it's unlikely to be a single-issue votebot account, but they also have no posts or comments, which is suspect. It seems plausible that there's something mechanical going on which might be concerning. On the other hand, it's only one person. There is one other person who has given so many downvotes to the bot that it's suspicious, also.
Aside from those two accounts, it all looks like real downvotes. There are accounts which have given hundreds of downvotes to the bot, but they're all recognizable as highly active real accounts, so it makes sense that they would give mass downvotes to the bot.
People just don't like the bot. Have you considered listening to the pretty extensive explanations they've given in this comments section as to why?
I'm saying that the bot is incorrect. Look up any pro-Palestinian or -Arab source on it, and you'll find a pretty bald-faced statement that it is factually suspect, because its viewpoint is anti-Israel. Look up the New York Times, which regularly reports factually untrue things, including one which caused a major journalistic scandal near the beginning of the war in Gaza, and check its factual rating.
Every report of bias is from somebody's point of view. That part I have no issue with. Pretending that a source is or isn't factual depending on whether it matches your particular bias is something different entirely.
Can you give an example of someone who ever posted something disingenuous that MediaBiasFactCheck got in the way of?
It also has links to ground.news baked into it, despite that site being pretty useless from what I can tell. I get strong sponsorship vibes
It all just suddenly clicked into place for me.
I think there's a strong possibility that you're right. It would explain all the tortured explanations for why the bot is necessary, coupled with the absolute determination to keep it regardless of how much negative feedback it's getting. Looking at it as a little ad included in every comments section makes the whole thing make sense in a way that, taken at face value, it doesn't.
Most people don't want the bot to be there, because they don't agree with its opinion about what is "biased." It claims factually solid sources are non-factual if they don't agree with the author's biases, and it overlooks significant editing of the truth in sources that agree with the author's biases.
In addition, one level up the meta, opposition to the bot has become a fashionable way to rebel against the moderation, which is always a crowd pleaser. The fact that the politics moderators keep condescendingly explaining that they're just looking out for the best interests of the community, and the bot is obviously a good thing and the majority of the community that doesn't want it is getting their pretty little heads confused about things, instigates a lot of people to smash the downvote button reflexively whenever they see its posts.
It never even occurred to me that carbon capture might be storing a giant tank of gaseous carbon dioxide. I assumed that it meant chemically reacting the carbon into some kind of solid material which was then discarded as waste, because trying to store huge chambers full of gaseous CO2 at a scale that can impact climate change is clinically insane.
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Back here in the U.S., Labor Day, the holiday to celebrate American workers, is a moment when labor unions hold parades and picnics to celebrate their role in giving members a voice in the workplace. But in an election year, Labor Day is also about politics. And as NPR's Don Gagne reports, this year labor is playing an especially visible role in the presidential race:
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If you're looking for an example of how unions and the election are intertwined, look no further than the United Auto Workers' combative president, Sean Fein:
"Kamala Harris is one of us. She's a fighter for the working class. And Donald Trump is a scab."
That was at the recent Democratic National Convention, where a parade of union leaders spoke. Other high-profile speakers also gave labor a shout-out. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez embedded hers in this attack on Trump:
"And I, for one, am tired of hearing about how a two-bit union buster thinks of himself as more of a patriot than the woman who fights every single day to lift working people out from under the boots of greed, trampling on our way of life."
Democrats need labor to turn out. Liz Shuler is the president of the AFL-CIO, the nation's largest labor organization. She says in key battleground states, union members make up 20 percent of the vote. Plus, it's also significant that public support for unions is the highest it's been since the 1960s. We've had historic highs the last several years. Young people under the age of 30 are the most pro-union. So what does that speak to? It speaks to the fact that the economy has been broken for young people for way too long. Meanwhile, Donald Trump also sees union support as key. But he doesn't need a majority of voters there. He just needs to shrink the Democrats' traditional lead with labor. That's what helped him carry Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and the presidency in 2016. But four years later, Joe Biden won each of those states, in part by restoring Democrats' level of support with unions. Which brings us to this year. Here's Trump at the Republican National Convention:
"And the leader of the United Auto Workers should be fired immediately, and every single auto worker, union and non-union, should be voting for Donald Trump."
Mike Hinton is a General Motors retiree who talked to NPR as he headed to a Trump rally this summer in Saginaw, Michigan. Personally, he says he ignores his union's candidate endorsements. Here's why this former Democrat backs Trump:
"We're a mess overseas. They don't respect us over there. I says our economy is out of hand for the elderly folks especially, and we need a change and we need to get them back in there to get things under control again."
Still more common are union members like Raquel Harvey, who was cheering on the Harris Walls ticket when they held a rally at a UAW local outside Detroit. Harvey says she does want to hear what her union thinks about candidates:
"Anybody the UAW endorses, you know, they support the working class, so it has a big effect on, you know, my decisions that I will make when I'm voting."
Unions are also stepping up their social media presence, like this UAW TikTok with audio of Trump joking with Elon Musk about firing workers who strike:
"But they go and strike and you say, that's okay, you're all gone."
But even with all the increased social media, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler says the most important way to reach union voters is still union members talking at work, in the break room, or after hours:
"Union members will be the ones who will be at the center of their communities, educating voters, bringing their friends and family and their neighbors and coworkers to the polls. That old-fashioned person-to-person getting people to the polls is what the labor movement's bread and butter is."
The election is nine weeks from tomorrow. Shuler sees it as a sprint, with union activists trying to reach a critical group of voters. Don Gagne, NPR News, Detroit.
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“Our lack of affordable housing will continue to depress savings, opportunity, and growth in ways that will do long-term harm to the nation’s economy.”
The legendary singer's son is not backing down as he takes on the former president.
From https://twitter.com/ItsDeanBlundell
I made !pleasantpolitics@slrpnk.net to test a new moderation approach which is designed to filter out a lot of the crap. I think you should try posting some articles there, and see whether you see the same hyper-critical anti-Biden content. I think I know what you're talking about, and I think the filtering bot will probably be able to detect and ban almost all of the users you're talking about.
I made this system because I, also, was concerned about the macro social implications.
Right now, the model in most communities is banning people with unpopular political opinions or who are uncivil. Anyone else can come in and do whatever they like, even if a big majority of the community has decided they're doing more harm than good. Furthermore, when certain things get too unpleasant to deal with on any level anymore, big instances will defederate from each other completely. The macro social implications of that on the community are exactly why I want to try a different model, because that one doesn't seem very good.
You seem to be convinced ahead of time that this system is going to censor opposing views, ignoring everything I've done to address the concern and indicate that it is a valid concern. Your concern is noted. If you see it censoring any opposing views, please let me know, because I don't want it to do that either.
It's difficult. A downvote from an account with no history does nothing. Your bot has to post a lot of content first to attract upvotes from genuine accounts. Then once you've accumulated some rank, you can start giving upvotes or downvotes in bulk to the accounts you want to manipulate. It's impossible to completely prevent that, but you have to do it a lot to have an impact.
I think this model is more resistant to trickery than it would seem, but it's not completely resistant. I do expect some amount of trickery that will then need counter-trickery. On the other hand, the problem of tricking the system also exists in the current moderation model. You don't have to outwit the system to get your content posted or ban your enemy if it's trivial to flood the comment section with your content from alt accounts and drown them out instead. I don't know for sure that something like that is happening, but it wouldn't surprise me if that was one reason why there are so many obnoxiously vocal people.
You're not banned or even close to it. The ban list is surprisingly lenient in terms of people's differing political views. You have to habitually make enemies of a lot of the people in the comments, one way or another, with a big fraction of what you post. Most people don't do that, wherever on the political spectrum they might fall.
Whether that's a good idea or not remains to be seen. I had some surprises today.
Here are examples of things you got positive rank for, politics and argumentation:
- https://midwest.social/comment/10357782
- https://midwest.social/comment/10246105
- https://midwest.social/post/13347310
Here are examples of things you got negative rank for, not directly political interpersonal squabbling:
- https://midwest.social/comment/10412423
- https://midwest.social/comment/10413376
- https://midwest.social/comment/10432272
Maybe this is harsh, but I think this is a good decision by the bot. The first list is fine. Most of your political views are far from unpopular on Lemmy. The thing is that you post a lot more of the squabbling content than the political content. You said you're being unpleasant on purpose, don't plan to stop, and that people should probably block you. I feel okay about excluding that from this community.
If in the future you change your mind about how you want to converse, you can send a comment or DM. We can talk about it, make sure you're not being targeted unfairly, but in the meantime this is completely fair.
Look at him, he's so happy.
Maybe it should be Bernie smiling, instead? I didn't want to be openly partisan.
Do you mind if I give some examples? What you're saying is valid in the abstract, but I think pointing out concrete examples of what the bot is reacting to will shed some light on what I'm talking about.
I looked at the bot's judgements about your user. The issue isn't your politics. Anti-center or anti-Western politics are the majority view on Lemmy, and your posts about your political views get ranked positively. The problem is that somehow you wind up in long heated arguments with "centrists" which wander away from the topic and get personal, where you double down on bad behavior because you say that's the tactic you want to employ to get your point across. That's the content that's getting ranked negatively, and often enough to overcome the weight of the positive content.
If Lemmy split into a silo that was the 98.6% of users that didn't do that, and a silo of 1.4% of users that wanted to do that, I would be okay with that outcome. I completely agree with your concern in the abstract, but that's not what's happening here.
It's in the sidebar:
Post political news, or your own opinions or discussion. Anything goes. No personal attacks, no bigotry, no spam. Those will get a manual temporary ban.
I added an explanation of the details of how it works to the source file that implements the main rank algorithm. The math behind it is not simple, but it's also not rocket science, if you have some data science abilities and want to check it out.
I've already declined two reports requesting that I take moderator action against content that's people directly going out into their community and helping get things done, because that is "not politics." People definitely seem to want their mods to be vigorously engaged in enforcing the boundaries on the stuff people are allowed to say.
As far as my take on it, we can have overlap between the peasant politics and the pleasant politics. The community was for the latter, but the former sounds great, too.
It was remarkable, when I started looking at it, how small the population of users is that seem to be causing almost all of the problems. It was also remarkable how little the existing moderation approach is doing to rein them in.