World News

We don't need many, we just need a good one. So nuke the smaller one referring to the larger one.

There's been rather public infighting on lemmy.world based on the pinned posts on this community.

A moderator on this community (@MightBe) collected community feedback on a post (https://lemmy.world/post/10102462) because of discontent with how the community was being run. The other moderators were unhappy with that mod, so they removed him, removed the post, and pinned this post instead: https://lemmy.world/post/10656753

I'm not sure what's going on in private, but publicly there's been a lot of drama. It's also been revealed that some members of the current group of moderators have been rather unprofessional imo. I'm quoting from a previous comment:

Some mods have also been deleting comments that add context to mod abuse. @naturalgasbad gave me the full DM context for their "bad faith argument" with a moderator (they did not specify which one), which I posted in a comment in the other pinned thread. It's a rather childish escalation sequence imo. That comment was deleted for "violating Rule 6", but I have copied it below for the record:

For the record, naturalgasbad sent me their exchange with the moderator, which stemmed from the moderator in question removing SCMP articles due to "SCMP not meeting reliability guidelines."

@moderator:

Al Jazeera is reliable when they aren’t talking about things that involve Qatar, that seems to be their specific blind spot.

Kyiv Post and the Telegraph I haven’t specifically looked at, if they get reported I’ll check them out.

@naturalgasbad:

Literally by the standards on SCMP you quoted, they’re unreliable.

@moderator:

SCMP: Mixed for factual reporting due to poor sourcing.

Al Jazeera: Mixed for factual reporting due to failed fact checks that were not corrected and misleading extreme editorial bias that favors Qatar.

You: “bUt ThEyR’e ThE sAmE!!!”

Poor sourcing is poor sourcing. You picked a shitty news agency. Try to do better next time.

(for reference, the Daily Telegraph is also "mixed due to poor sourcing" and Kyiv Post is "mixed due to failed fact checks")

@naturalgasbad:

MBFC claims SCMP has poor sourcing based on the suggestion that they’re misrepresenting the US import ban on China (the one “failed fact check” according to them). That’s how MBFC gives the commentary on their ratings. It’s based on a sample-size of one. There’s no long-term commentary provided by MBFC because their entire ratings system and commentary is based on sampling a small number of articles (we don’t know which ones) and going off of what goes wrong within that sample.

It’s also reflecting the problem of a US-based bias assessment > website: it suggests that ideas within the US Overton window are “correct” will those shared by the Global South are “less correct.”

From what I can tell, some of the problem is what they assume the basic level of skill is for readers. A few weeks ago, I posted a story about SCMP reporting on a research study published in Science. Members of this community failed to find it, despite being told the subject, authors, where it was published, and when it was published. That’s not poor sourcing, but poor research ability on behalf of the readers.

@moderator:

Continuing to argue with a mod who has made their decision will not win you any favors. Keep it up and you’ll get a ban on top of having your shitty links removed, oh, wait, you’ve already been banned for abusing the report feature. I can easily extend that.

@naturalgasbad

But again, MBFC’s entire commentary on SCMP’s issues is reliant on this single sentence from a single article. It’s inherently because MBFC relies on a small sample set of each site to determine a rating because they lack the manpower and the educational foundation to provide comprehensive analysis of a news source. Either way, that article was an editorial, not a news report. (In any cases, SCMP is commenting on Chinese reports written in Chinese, which American readers struggle to find because they don’t speak Chinese).

[The [U.S. import ban] has been taken without evidence being provided.]

Unlike SCMP’s reporting, Polygraph is unable to source the article this claim can be found in. From the articles I can find that, SCMP is comnenting based on this statement:

[The ban creates a “rebuttable presumption” that any Xinjiang goods were tainted by the use of forced labour – a “guilty until proven innocent” principle that effectively inverts US customs laws related to forced labour]

In fact, Ad Fontes’ media bias chart considers SCMP to be “reliable” (reliability score of 41.56 on a 0-64 scale) and “centrist” (bias score of -3.3 on a scale of -42 - 42). This is on par with Al Jazeera (41.65, -6.71) and New York Times (41.92, -7.96) and better than Washington Post (38.08, -8.69). (Ad Fontes also has issues, but your obsession with MBFC in particular is a little odd).

@moderator:

7 day ban. Want to go for 30?

@naturalgasbad:

I cited Ad Fontes. Feel free to criticize their methodology.

@moderator:

30 days. Keep going.

@naturalgasbad:

So… Do you not like Ad Fontes’ methodology, then?

@moderator:

And permaban. Good luck on your next account.

I love having a community where I can continue spreading news like "China economy collapsing" and ignore the unreliable numbers from Caixin and S&P that are reporting manufacturing PMI of 51.1 (official number: 50.8), services PMI being above 50 for months, and unreliable numbers from Citi raising growth forecasts to 5%.

In fact, it's much better to have a community to critique Chinese companies for the absolute horror of daring to "dump" clean energy resources on the open market at such a low cost that they can only make small profits. This is a real danger to the stability of fossil fuel prices which form the backbone of conventional energy markets.

Oh, I'm totally willing to step aside and let Squid do it, I only volunteered because the community needed help ASAP. :)

This is world. You're in it. :) worldnews is the other one.

Personally, the confusion ALONE merits removal, but I wouldn't just do that without engaging the users. :)

How do you vet videos, though? Do the mods have to watch each of them in their entirety?

A lot of them that get posted are opinion or aren't from news sources.

Plus, how is a reader supposed to know where the headline comes from when the link is just to YouTube (etc)?

And on a petty note, lol, I'd much rather read the news than have someone read / spoon-feed it to me.

This (the community of this post) is the world community. [email protected].

That would be pretty cool in this case, but if that became a general feature people might snag up a whole lot of names to all direct them to the same place.

That's the piece I'm not aware of, we'll probably need to engage with the Admins on that.

I had to look up what happened because the problem on worldnews was a LACK of moderation rather than OVER moderation.

Turns out, it was the worldnews on lemmy.ml not lemmy.world, but it also looks like it was just a 3 day ban.

FWIW, what you wrote also looked 100% factual to me:

For those unaware of the territorial disputes in the South China Sea, man, is it complex:

https://www.britannica.com/place/Spratly-Islands

https://www.usip.org/publications/2023/12/rising-tensions-between-china-and-philippines-south-china-sea

https://fsi.gov.ph/philippines-china-relations-beyond-the-territoral-disputes/#:~:text=Philippines%2DChina%20relations%20have%20lately,of%20infrastructures%2C%20and%20incidents%20of

As a mod, it's my right to ignore your report as well as reply to the thread to add context.

Today is, largely, considered a monotheistic holiday even though the vast majority celebrating it is blissfully unaware of the polytheistic origins of it.

I didn't call you out on your report, I simply left the comment in situ as it broke no rules, and added context to it.

Mod abuse? Impossible.

Supporting organised religion is not a sentiment people should have. If they do, they are always free to leave Lemmy.

I don't believe flyingsquid has an appropriate temperament to moderate a current events community