I’ve noticed a lot of linking to articles from Fox News and the New York Post. I’m sure everyone already knows about Fox News but you may not know that the New York Post has essentially the same flaws as Fox News. I believe that these “news” sources should at minimum have restrictions or face an outright ban.
I’ve previously posted on this topic at length I just thought of trying to extend this to Reddit. Sadly I don’t have an usable account because for some weird reason got shadow banned when I tried to create an account so the best I can do is ask that people here with a Reddit account for help.
I’m urging everyone with a Reddit account to send a message to the moderators of r/news and r/politics urging for these two policies:
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Automoderator message warning that the website is known for low quality reporting and it’s owned by Murdoch and therefore may contain conflict of interests.
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Encourage users to link to reputable news sources and develop media literacy skills to. Posts to low quality news sources should be deleted when similar but higher quality content is available elsewhere. Often times the NY Post and Fox News just summarize from more reputable news sources and add their own bias and opinion to the story.
These policies should also be applied to similar websites that have the same flaws but are not owned by Murdoch. For example websites like The Daily Mail are similar because although they are not owned my Murdoch they have the same flaws in that they are not committed to telling the truth and instead profit by spreading hate, lies and propaganda.
In addition whenever you see someone share a link on a Murdoch rag or similar no matter what social media platform they are on please try to educate people on what website they are using and how it’s biased.
Here’s an example comment I posted when I saw someone linked to nypost.com on the Technology community.
Just so you all know the New York Post is a Rupert Murdoch (same person who owns Fox News) rag. According to Wikipedia it wasn’t profitable from 1976 to 2022 perhaps even loosing up to $70 million a year. The reason why he ran it at a loss for so long is for influence. Prior to Murdoch’s acquisition the “Post was seen to have liberal tilt, supporting trade unions and social welfare”. Now it’s a conservative trash rag.
My comment means nothing if you don’t first accept that I am non political. With that in mind I will never understand screaming “source” as an issue. Something is either true or it isn’t. Media sources treat undeniable facts based on their leaning. Both sides do it. If the fact doesn’t confirm your agenda you ignore it. If it pushes forward your agenda you highlight it. We should all know that going in. It’s not a hard concept. If you read something in the Washington Post you have to know that they are left leaning. The New York Post is exactly the same thing but on the right. Whether you are on the right or left you cannot deny that there were times when something you read in your “approved” sources was subsequently proven false. And you also have denied things reported by the other side that you subsequently were forced to agree was true.
Try thinking about it as a sports score. The reality is Yankees 5 and Red Sox 4. But a “news” source that favors the Red Sox has the headline - “Red Sox hold their own against Yankees”.
I read both sides and remain politically neutral. I think too many of us are political zealots as if either political side actually cares about us. Trust me they don’t. And of course we all know that my opinion stated here will be downvoted because who am I to have an opinion that differs with yours. (My comment is not directed personally to OP but to everyone in general)
FYI
Fox News is banned from all PieFed instances and on https://piefed.social/ every post linking to nypost.com has a red warning symbol with a popup saying “very unreliable news source”.
That is awesome!!! That’s how it should be done!
Do you mean that all existing PieFed instances have decided to ban Fox News, or is that something that’s built-into PieFed’s code?
It’s sort of built in. During initial setup a blocklist is downloaded which includes fox news, RT, brietbart and 3000 more fascist, conspiracy and misinfo sites. Admins can unblock anything but I assume they have not bothered.
Reddit is a lost cause now that Spez wants to be MiniZuck and is a freezepeach Conservative. I give it one year before r/TheDonald is brought back.
Sympathetic mods (who probably sont even exist on a default anymore) might try to enact these policies, but Reddit made a big showing last year about being just peachy to replace “problematic” moderators. There’s no doubt in my mind that there isn’t a direct line of comm(and)/(unication) between Reddit Corporate and mods of defaults.
I went back to my country’s sub and I swear to God some of the posts are ai generated questions designed to trigger a visceral response. That, or the community is now filled with socially inept people who simply don’t know what is appropriate in social conversation anymore.
Of course, I wish people would be here instead of Reddit. I just figure we might as well try. It doesn’t cost anything to copy and paste and press message the moderators. I doubt moderators would be considered problematic for doing this.
It makes me so fucking sick that Republicans lost their minds over Twitter banning people and removing content that violated their TOS and were claiming it’s all censorship of conservatives and that social media shouldn’t be biased, but now that every single goddamn social media site is full mask off Nazi loving the Republicans are happy as a pig in shit. Suddenly bias isn’t a problem. Musk literally owning Twitter and working in the goddamn administration isn’t a problem.
They had a fucking investigation into Twitter for less…
To try improving reddit nowadays would be firmly in fool me twice territory
Reddit news and all subreddits should be for free speech like the #1 news app 𝕏
I will do that
Pretty sure I’m still permanently banned from r/Politics because way back when trump had Covid, I simply posted:
“Fingers crossed!”
And that’s all it took.
I don’t think they would listen to me, as I have been banned from r/news - the usual “antisemitism” for criticizing Israels genocide in Gaza.
Go figure how this “news” would deal with criticism of Murdoch…
