Hi there.

A short introduction: This is an alt account. I’m a moderator here who has been unhappy with the state of news/political discussions here for a long time. The admins have kindly given me the opportunity to see if we can make some improvement the community here.

We will be doing some major revision of the rules left by the previous moderators and will use discussions in this thread as feedback on the direction we should take our community.

This will be an open discussion on the state of our community, the rules and our moderation practices. Feel free to give your inputs.

  • breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca
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    11 months ago

    I get the idea and understand the appeal but it would be a big victory for state propagandists. Modern propaganda, perfected by Russia, operates by flooding the information space with a mix of fact and bullshit. They want to present numerous opposed but credible sounding versions of events to exhaust efforts to discover truth. Sorting fact from fiction in that pile of shit is impossible by design. They want you to conclude that it’s impossible to know the truth. The accuracy of a particular article has almost nothing to say about the source being a place to discover truth. MBFC is good not because it’s an authority but because it helps answer these questions:

    1. Is it illegal for this source to tell the truth?
    2. Is this source controlled by someone with a vested interest in lying?
    3. Does this source have a documented history of dishonesty?
    4. Do they correct the record when they make mistakes?

    Asking those questions is far more important than fact-checking articles.

    If that standard were adopted, I think the community would quickly shift from a news source to a propaganda source. I suspect the community would fail, or least be abandoned by those who genuinely want to understand what’s happening in the world.

    • nekandro@lemmy.ml
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      11 months ago

      We’re already inundated with propaganda from Western sources. The NYT article in question cites almost exclusively from IDF or IDF-backed sources.