Context:

The article in question was well sourced, factually accurate, and written by a well-renowned author and journalist whose work appears elsewhere too, regardless of which outlet published it.

Nonetheless, Jordan Lund is once again blindly trusting a pro-zionist conservative outlet masquerading as a bias and fact checker that nothing from anywhere that criticizes the fascist apartheid regime can be reliable 🤦

  • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    12·
    17 hours ago

    Took me a bit to find it; it was in a direct reply to an admin rather than pinging them. They also give a link to the thread where JL claims the admins would sack him if he got rid of the bot.

      • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
        13·
        17 hours ago

        That whole conversation is so weird. I went back and reread big sections of it, and it’s just… the conversation is off. Jordan says he can’t remove the bot, because the admins won’t allow it. Rooki says that’s definitely not true, so people ask Jordan about it… and he’s just silent. Not “oh I must have misunderstood” or anything else, just pretending that if he doesn’t say anything, no one will notice that someone asked him a question, and everyone will move on. And then there’s Rooki accepting the code for scanning Wikipedia’s sources… but totally missing the point that the MBFC sources are awful, and the WP reliable sources list is actually quite good, and deciding that MBFC and Ground News are what needs to be positioned front and center. Also seeming totally uninterested in the idea of improving the quality of the ratings in response to the clear consensus of the community with citations.

        I checked the last of the stuff that MBFC bot posted, 4 months ago, and the little line where the Wikipedia rating had previously featured had been replaced to a link to the WP article about the source, missing the whole point of categorizing sources cleanly into bullshit/not bullshit or the point that certain sources (Newsweek) had clearly slid into unreliability over time, but were still allowed on the lemmy.world subs for some reason.

        It’s just so strange. Someone had a conspiracy theory that one of the admins had an unannounced sponsorship deal with Ground News, and that was the whole reason behind the entire thing to drop a link to Ground News while misdirecting everyone into getting mad at MBFC or something. I have no idea. It was just weird.

        • Maeve@kbin.earth
          43·
          17 hours ago

          I don’t envy the unpaid mod job, especially mods who work hard to be fair and honest. I get your disdain and distrust of mintpress too and I hope you’ll reconsider. They do source their articles very well, because they know their audience and we’re foolable, but not always.

          • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
            4·
            16 hours ago

            disdain and distrust

            They do source their articles very well

            https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/senatedocs/2/

            Look at page 98, they literally have an org chart of Russian disinformation campaigns within this one particular network that they analyzed, and where Mint Press fits into it.

            I also sent some examples of open propaganda articles elsewhere in these comments. They don’t source their stuff “very well,” by definition, since they are posting open propaganda and disguising the fact that it’s sourced indirectly from Russian intelligence, but that’s not even the point. It has nothing to do with “disdain,” although I applaud your consistent efforts to remove the discussion from a factual domain and into an emotional one through the use of charged words (or into a domain where “sourcing of articles” is the issue.)

            • Maeve@kbin.earth
              33·
              16 hours ago

              Emotional? Lol Phillip. Not everything Russia says is a lie, not everything they say is the truth. I’m saying mintpress articles, even if sources from Russia, cite verifiable sources. Who’s emotional?

              Fwiw, I also lend credence to legacy media, although I often can’t easily verify it. I’ve been wrong about a LOT of stuff and that’s part of being human. I even know sometimes I can’t believe my lying eyes. And sometimes, i can because they’re not lying. It’s not like nyt who’s openly admitted they lie when the feds ask them to, then keep lying, even when the feds_don’t_ all them. And I still give them credence sometimes too.