I know MediaBiasFactCheck is not a be-all-end-all to truth/bias in media, but I find it to be a useful resource.
It makes sense to downvote it in posts that have great discussion – let the content rise up so people can have discussions with humans, sure.
But sometimes I see it getting downvoted when it’s the only comment there. Which does nothing, unless a reader has rules that automatically hide downvoted comments (but a reader would be able to expand the comment anyways…so really no difference).
What’s the point of downvoting? My only guess is that there’s people who are salty about something it said about some source they like. Yet I don’t see anyone providing an alternative to MediaBiasFactCheck…
Of course that doesn’t exist, my point is why does this specific subjective opinion get promoted on here?
Why does any opinion get promoted on here? Because somebody posted it. And then there is a voting system and comments for people to express their agreement or disagreement.
I honestly don’t care either way if the bot exists. I just think it’s silly that people are claiming that MBFC is terrible based on basically nothing. You can disagree with how they define left vs right, or what their ratings are, but they are pretty transparent about how their system works. And no one has given any example of how it could be done better.
It shouldn’t be done on Lemmy at all, which is why I downvote the bot every time I see it.
Also if you actually read and understand their system, then even if you dont agree with it, you can recalibrate the ratings based on what you know their system works like.