The affinity for Tucker Carlson (as well as the other things) is from the sidebar. Apparently their familiarity with Western media is enough to know he is pro-Russian, but not enough to realize that expressing on a leftist forum that they like him, will make them glow a little bit.
The original issue was that they posted a story from Mint Press News, and I dropped them a friendly note that it was Russian propaganda, more or less assuming they had included it innocently (since there was nothing wrong at all that I can see with the particular story, or in fact with any of the stories in that community.)
Things escalated. Fun quotes by the mod from the ensuing conversation:
It's actually not from "New Knowledge," it's from a US Senate report, but I doubt that will make this person believe it any more.
The real disinformation was inside us all this time. Of course, I was banned. Reason for the ban?
Clearly, their disinformation policy is lock tight.
It's getting to be where news from everywhere and anywhere is some sort of propaganda for some side. Are there any truly neutral new sites anymore?!
If your instance has a tesseract interface, you can turn on the option to show badges that give clues to the political slant and factual trustworthiness of news sites.
But where does that judgment come from, and how does a user know that this, itself, isn't propaganda?
It comes from https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/
If you want to know how they determine their ratings, you can look at their wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Bias/Fact_Check
If you're looking for some scientific way to figure out if you're being propagandized, then this isn't it. If you're looking for something that's almost always right on the mark, then it's good enough for that. Which is why I said it "gives clues", and didn't say it's the authoritative way to know.
Oh then no thank you then. Even in that Wikipedia article they talk about the bias that the company has. In fact, Wikipeida says "Media Bias/Fact Check is a widely cited source for news stories and even studies about misinformation, despite the fact that its method is in no way scientific."
So no, I'm not gonna use a site that just uses "feels" to determine if something is bias or not.
That’s a misrepresentation of how they work, but I’m not gonna hold a gun to your head. Mostly because I don’t feel it’s important enough to me that you use it to argue about the matter.
Thank you! (EDIT: No thank you)
EDIT:
Nevermind. MediaBiasFactCheck bot and website aren't scientific at all.