5mo ago

Media Bias / Fact Check bot declares itself as unreliable

lemmy.world

North Korean troops in Russian uniforms heading to Kursk, says US - Lemmy.World

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32 comments

What does it say? I blocked that stupid bot ages ago.
- They added a line to the bot that includes Wikipedia’s stance on a source. And Wikipedia doesn’t consider MBFC to be reliable, so the bot reports that.
  If you scroll below that, MBFC rates themselves as maximally reliable, which I’m sure is based off of a rigorous and completely neutral assessment.
  Edit: although, reading the links in question they don’t seem to correspond to what the bot is saying. Perhaps this is some sort of mistake in how it was coded.
  
  It's not a mistake, just confusing UX. The text in question comes from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MBFC
  
  It doesn’t though. Or at least, I didn’t see anything resembling that on that page. If you can find it, let me know. It’s possible I missed it.
  
  The text comes from this table.
  
  Thanks, it seems to me like it should link here rather than to the main article.
  
  sorry, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:MBFC. that's what i get for attempting type a link out on mobile
- The post links both The Guardian and MBFC. The bot has picked up both links and posted the following (verbatim):
  
  Media Bias Fact Check | bot support
  
  Interestingly enough, Wikipedia’s sourcing list counts Wikipedia as unreliable. It says you need to find information somewhere else so as not to create a self-referential loop. You have to justify it from a solid source that’s outside the system.
  MBFC says that MBFC is incredibly reliable, and incidentally also tends to mark sources down if their biases don’t agree with MBFC’s existing biases, which are significant. It needs no outside sources, because it’s already reliable.
  Good stuff.
  
  Hahahah, so it's becoming self aware about how shit it is.

32 comments