• BatrickPateman@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Was that the bot that just cut paragraphs from an article to shorten them, mangling context beyond comprehension in the process?

      • illi@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        So… how do I opt in to see the bot in the comments?

      • Zorque@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        When it comes to tools that help you stay informed, I’d say the opposite is true.

        If one wants to maintain ignorance, they should have to do so at their own inconvenience.

          • Zorque@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            Whether they are effective or not is definitely in question, but they are unquestionably intended to be informative. If they irritate you, you have the ability to exercise your right to block them.

            You being annoyed at something you don’t like isn’t a reason to not have it.

                • tyler@programming.dev
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                  4 months ago

                  This user is literally lying about what the thread contains! holy shit the level of gaslighting and misinformation is insane! How can you function!?!?!

              • tyler@programming.dev
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                4 months ago

                That thread was filled with people downvoting anyone who even attempted to disagree. It was also full of people claiming bias and then not backing it up with a single source, link to offending pages, etc. so yeah no wonder it was full of people saying they hated it. Anyone who said otherwise (like myself) got fucking reamed.

          • Mechanize@feddit.it
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            4 months ago

            Considering you seem to dislike the whole concept of Bots, isn’t the Bot toggle in the Lemmy profile exactly what you want?

            It auto ignores all posts and comments made by accounts marked as Bots. Sure, the owner of the account has to correctly mark it, but I feel that can easily be solved by reporting unmarked bots.

            But I’m interested, if you would like to expand on it, how would you make a bot opt-in?
            The only way I could think of is through PMs, but that would be cumbersome, and generally unfit for purpose, for all the involved parties.

              • tyler@programming.dev
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                4 months ago

                You have no measurement of any bot’s popularity. You’re just making the claim without proof.

              • saltesc@lemmy.world
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                4 months ago

                Ah, I see. We should just pass all bots through you for approval first.

                Sorry, everyone else. I know some of you liked that bot, but wazoobonkerbrain doesn’t, so it’s switched off due to “popularity reasons”. If you want to experience open internet, you’ll have to find somewhere else.

      • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
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        4 months ago

        not really. there is no good way for people to know what bots are available. if they had a bots section in the settings where you could turn them on then maybe.

  • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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    4 months ago

    I love how the mods of the News community held a thread asking for feedback on the bias bot. Everyone overwhelmingly said it was full of shit and should be removed. The mods decided that it must be the text formatting that’s the problem, not the obvious lies the bot spews.

    Edit: https://lemmy.world/post/18775630

    • Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      Then in another thread I came across they said they were open to any solution except getting rid of the bot. When I asked why that was off the table I got a copy paste strawman and then ghosted. I get that modding is a tough and often thankless job but if you make a decision like this that’s wildly unpopular then refused to consider feedback it sends a poor message to the community. Hopefully a better solution can be found.

    • tyler@programming.dev
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      4 months ago

      Anyone who said otherwise got downvoted to hell and deleted their comments because it was clear the bot haters are so fervent they do not care about facts, they just want to yell about hating something.

      And the mods aren’t the ones that implemented the bot. It was the admins, so no shit the mods couldn’t do anything about it.

        • tyler@programming.dev
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          4 months ago

          No it means that the only people participating in the thread are people who passionately hate it. The same way you only hear negative reviews for things, even if something is great, because most people don’t care enough to put the effort in for positive reviews.

      • AhismaMiasma@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        Maybe a bunch of people just don’t like a bot being pushed that tells people what to think.

        Still waiting for Rooki to see reason.

      • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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        4 months ago

        A slight follow-up: the mod log on Lemmy is public, and I can’t find much evidence to corroborate your claim that all of the supporting comments were self-deleted. Can you back up the claim you made?

        Not to mention that anyone who is so worried about imaginary federated internet points to the point of deleting unpopular statements is a fuckin’ loser that isn’t worth listening to…

        • Tenthrow@lemmy.worldM
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          4 months ago

          Self deletions don’t appear in the mod log. Only moderator actions. That’s why it’s called the mod log.

      • Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works
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        4 months ago

        I don’t hate bots, I don’t even hate the MBFC bot but I feel strongly about it specifically because it spreads misinformation. Claiming that an arbitrary bias rating can in any way be considered a fact is going out on a limb, to put it mildly. I don’t hate bots, I don’t hate facts, and I don’t like yelling. Frankly it’s been pretty tiring to try and stay constructive whilst voicing concerns about something I am passionate about.

        Instead of accusing everyone you disagree with of being a hater and wanting to yell at things, maybe we could engage honestly with the issue instead.

        • tyler@programming.dev
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          4 months ago

          Not a single person in this thread has provided a single shred of proof for the “misinformation” claim, so forgive me if I don’t believe your very first sentence. It’s just a bunch of people spouting nonsense and not backing it up with anything. If you provide even a single link (first hand source, not a lemmy comment) supporting your argument that it’s misinformation then I will gladly have a conversation with you about how bias ratings can be accurately created.

          I said everyone is a hater because I did try to converse honestly earlier in the thread and people refused to provide any sort of proof of misinformation, literally going so far as to say I should just “google it”. Sorry it’s not on me to provide proof for others claims.

          • Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works
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            4 months ago

            Claiming that everyone who disagrees with you is a hater is inherently dishonest. I’m not trying to defend every single person who might have downvoted you, only providing you a counter example to hopefully get you to challenge your assumption.

            I can give you an example of what I would consider misinformation from MBFC itself in their bias rating of the BBC. It’s misinformation in my view because this particular example exposed the arbitrary and contentious nature of their bias ratings which they present as though they have some kind of rigour behind it. That is simply not the case. For what it’s worth I provided a discussion on this particular topic which I won’t repeat here but hopefully you can see why I would say it spreads misinformation.

            Again, not trying to defend every single person who’s been in this discussion, but your dismissal of criticism because everyone is just a hater is not justified, because there are plenty of people raising well thought out and genuine concerns.

            • tyler@programming.dev
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              4 months ago

              Claiming that everyone who disagrees with you is a hater is inherently dishonest.

              I did not claim that. I said that anyone who provided an alternative opinion got downvoted by haters who are so fervent they do not care about facts. Disagreements are not downvotes.

              I’m not trying to defend every single person who might have downvoted you, only providing you a counter example to hopefully get you to challenge your assumption.

              I’m not even talking about myself. That was one of the first comments I made in the thread. I was talking about others who got downvoted for literally saying they like the bot. It had nothing to do with disagreement.

              I can give you an example of what I would consider misinformation from MBFC itself in their bias rating of the BBC. It’s misinformation in my view because this particular example exposed the arbitrary and contentious nature of their bias ratings which they present as though they have some kind of rigour behind it. That is simply not the case. For what it’s worth I provided a discussion on this particular topic which I won’t repeat here but hopefully you can see why I would say it spreads misinformation.

              Can you go more into what you think is arbitrary and contentious in that rating? As it is, what I see is that they have provided very detailed reasons for their ratings, backed up with sources and statistics, and then provided a multi-faceted rating to cover each part of that.

              Again, not trying to defend every single person who’s been in this discussion, but your dismissal of criticism because everyone is just a hater is not justified, because there are plenty of people raising well thought out and genuine concerns.

              you’re the first I’ve seen that actually has commented anything even slightly reasonable.

              • Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works
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                4 months ago

                The rating is arbitrary because even MBFC cannot agree with itself on why it gave the rating. It seems to be plucked from the air, with no justification given.

                The top level reason they give us ‘biased story selection’. Nowhere in their analysis is this concept defined or even mentioned. Instead the analysis mentions 3rd party research which concludes that the BBC is somewhat right wing on many key issues, go into some audience analysis (completely irrelevant) and then assert that they have a negative tone when discussing Trump, with one single example given.

                Maybe I missed something, but I don’t think this can credibility be called a detailed analysis when evidently none of it supports the conclusion that the BBC is left wing due to story selection.

    • FlihpFlorp@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      Memory unlocked: I remember when i came here during the Reddit exodus there were so many bots just cross posting from Reddit it was so overwhelming cus posts had no discussion going on they were just there

  • Jesus@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Me after posting:

    “Ohh, a reply notification for my dank post”

    Me reading my inbox:

    “It’s a fucking bot.”

  • Johanno@feddit.org
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    4 months ago

    Ok I wanted to see what are we dealing with here.

    The website for the factual check is a bit shady in my opinion.

    For example the guardian from UK is mixed because of “many failed fact checks over the last 5 years” I could only find 5 linked there and if that is all failed checks then it is still very good.

    Then I looked at a news paper I know is the worst. BILD from Germany. It is also mixed. There was only one failed fact check linked and I don’t think the analysis which leads to the conclusion is transparent enough.

    So we have a relatively good news paper from UK and a lying shit of paper from Germany and both are mixed. If mixed has this much variance it doesn’t mean anything.

  • lengau@midwest.social
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    4 months ago

    I just don’t get this complaint. Block the bot and you never have to worry about it again.

    • awwwyissss@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      Linkerbaan is a shill. My guess is they’re against the bot because it will call out their authoritarian propaganda.

        • Zoot@reddthat.com
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          To me it doesn’t make sense to get rid of a bot that objectively helps everyone (any article is now easily read from a summary) with an extremely controversial bot, that they will not take suggestions or feedback on.

          Sure you can block what ever bots you want, and id say that is the best solution. However, you can’t choose to do that when Lemmy.world bans Autotldr and not mbfc.

  • emmy67@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Tbh i was late to the hate. Wasn’t it run or sourced by ground news? Was it inaccurate or something?

    • Linkerbaan@lemmy.worldOP
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      It’s sourced by MBFC and Ground News. MBFC is ran by a Zionist.

      In the end the rating of a website is not important, as long as the article posted is well sourced.