We’ve had some trouble recently with posts from aggregator links like Google Amp, MSN, and Yahoo.
We’re now requiring links go to the OG source, and not a conduit.
In an example like this, it can give the wrong attribution to the MBFC bot, and can give a more or less reliable rating than the original source, but it also makes it harder to run down duplicates.
So anything not linked to the original source, but is stuck on Google Amp, MSN, Yahoo, etc. will be removed.
I can’t ignore suggestions nobody is making. Have a better service in mind? Feel free to present it.
We looked at AllSides, which is good for bias, but has no scoring for credibility.
“We have to keep using the ratings website made by a random dude with no background in journalism who makes it available for free because real fact checking services cost money” is perhaps not the argument I would use for why the bot is both accurate and useful.
You don’t have to have a bot at all, especially to replace something like blacklisting Breitbart URLs, but someone thought the idea sounds cool. So “don’t have the bot” has been unnecessarily eliminated as an option. Even though sometimes the best option really is to just not have a bot.
Stop pretending that “get rid of the bot” doesn’t count as a suggestion. That’s dishonest.
I don’t even care about the bot itself, but at this point I’m just getting pissed off by all the constant distracting bickering about it.
When the question is “how do we improve it?” the answer “get rid of it” is not a genuine suggestion.
The GOOD news is, we DO have a genuinely good suggestion here and the bot creator will be reaching out.
It is a genuine suggestion. If something is a net negative, you don’t go for the sunken cost fallacy and jam it down users throats even harder. If that’s the only question you are willing to ask, then that means you don’t listen to suggestions - you just want to seem like you do.