Reasonable. I wasn't trying to jump down your throat about it. I was a little annoyed at the comments which are positing some sort of fantasy scenario where the bot is useful, but where people hate it for irrational reasons. But yours was a reasonable question, definitely, in particular because for at least one account, it looks like what you described is exactly what's happening.

Big if true.

They have not. I just did some analysis of it, and there is one person whose account has downvoted almost every comment that the bot has left. They have around a thousand other votes, so it's unlikely to be a single-issue votebot account, but they also have no posts or comments, which is suspect. It seems plausible that there's something mechanical going on which might be concerning. On the other hand, it's only one person. There is one other person who has given so many downvotes to the bot that it's suspicious, also.

Aside from those two accounts, it all looks like real downvotes. There are accounts which have given hundreds of downvotes to the bot, but they're all recognizable as highly active real accounts, so it makes sense that they would give mass downvotes to the bot.

People just don't like the bot. Have you considered listening to the pretty extensive explanations they've given in this comments section as to why?

I'm saying that the bot is incorrect. Look up any pro-Palestinian or -Arab source on it, and you'll find a pretty bald-faced statement that it is factually suspect, because its viewpoint is anti-Israel. Look up the New York Times, which regularly reports factually untrue things, including one which caused a major journalistic scandal near the beginning of the war in Gaza, and check its factual rating.

Every report of bias is from somebody's point of view. That part I have no issue with. Pretending that a source is or isn't factual depending on whether it matches your particular bias is something different entirely.

Can you give an example of someone who ever posted something disingenuous that MediaBiasFactCheck got in the way of?

It also has links to ground.news baked into it, despite that site being pretty useless from what I can tell. I get strong sponsorship vibes

It all just suddenly clicked into place for me.

I think there's a strong possibility that you're right. It would explain all the tortured explanations for why the bot is necessary, coupled with the absolute determination to keep it regardless of how much negative feedback it's getting. Looking at it as a little ad included in every comments section makes the whole thing make sense in a way that, taken at face value, it doesn't.

Most people don't want the bot to be there, because they don't agree with its opinion about what is "biased." It claims factually solid sources are non-factual if they don't agree with the author's biases, and it overlooks significant editing of the truth in sources that agree with the author's biases.

In addition, one level up the meta, opposition to the bot has become a fashionable way to rebel against the moderation, which is always a crowd pleaser. The fact that the politics moderators keep condescendingly explaining that they're just looking out for the best interests of the community, and the bot is obviously a good thing and the majority of the community that doesn't want it is getting their pretty little heads confused about things, instigates a lot of people to smash the downvote button reflexively whenever they see its posts.

It never even occurred to me that carbon capture might be storing a giant tank of gaseous carbon dioxide. I assumed that it meant chemically reacting the carbon into some kind of solid material which was then discarded as waste, because trying to store huge chambers full of gaseous CO2 at a scale that can impact climate change is clinically insane.

The motive is unclear

Not to me it isn't.

I know! He came into office with strong sanctions being applied to Israel for their massacre policies, a decades-long established ban on the construction of new settlements, and an agreement which was undoing illegally constructed settlements and resettling Palestinian families back into their homes. Biden broke with all of that, gave Netanyahu a green light to start their apartheid policies again, and personally visited the West Bank and shot a few Gazans himself with a sniper rifle, just to emphasize the point.

In contrast, Trump is famous for protecting the rights of Arabs. Just like he is Hispanics and Chinese people. Why, the strong protections that all Palestinians enjoyed were partly his doing. They were part of the Iran / Muslim immigrant / asylum seeker reforms he enacted. Although, the main work was started by other Western politicians. I can't wait for Trump to get elected, and undo all the harm Biden's been doing, and finally set us on the road to lasting peace in the Middle East, and a world where the rights of vulnerable non-white people will finally be strongly protected in the halls of power.

Or...

Found one

This is the idea behind /c/inperson@slrpnk.net. The idea is, instead of using this platform to gripe at each other about "yes it is" "no it isn't" "yes it is", we can start to organize and make things better.

I propose that any time one of those awful "no one vote it definitely won't matter trust me" posts comes up, we make a thread underneath it with some links to productive positive things we're doing in addition to, obviously, voting for the guy who's not going to blow up the country and piss on the ashes. Turn the shilling into a reminder to get out and do something concrete.

Right after I get done typing this I'm going to go back to trying to figure out a way I can volunteer some time to the Biden campaign. I'm going to be honest, I feel a little corny even typing that out, but I think trying to make sure Trump doesn't win is for real the most effective thing that'll set us up for more positive change and less end-of-the-world disaster in the near future.