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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • They face a lot of shit because of their poor economic status, and that causes them stress, but one of the things they face is their economic status forces them to rent.

    Cool, you have gone so far into the weeds that this no longer even resembles the original fact check, which was:

    The survey asked: “To what extent do you agree or disagree with each of the following statements? Housing problems or worries (e.g. affording the rent, poor conditions, losing my tenancy etc.) have made me feel physically ill/sick in the last year.”

    10% of the private renters surveyed strongly agreed and another 13% answered “tend to agree”, meaning around a quarter agreed to some extent.

    The Guardian headlined its piece “Private renting making millions sick in England, poll shows.”

    This suggests a causal link specifically between renting privately (as opposed to renting from the council or some other housing situation) and feeling physically ill or sick. This isn’t evidenced in the survey.

    Survey: did housing worries make you feel sick in the past year?

    About 1/4th of renters: yes

    The Guardian: article focusing entirely on the stress renters face

    MBFC: if you only read the headline this article is very misleading!!



  • For clarity, your defense of MBFC’s rating is that anxiety over rising rent costs outpacing wages (leading to more people spending more of their income on rent), worries about no fault eviction (which only happens if you rent), and stress from poor quality housing (which again is mostly a problem for renters, because homeowners can deal with it how and when they please), is somehow completely unconnected to the fact these people are renting?

    Yeah, I guess it’s technically true that they could have rented a castle or a luxury apartment instead. But it’s completely irrelevant when talking about the effects of housing insecurity on large swathes of the populace, and trying to spin it as “The Guardian says renting is bad for your health, negative points!!” is outright dishonest.



  • This is actually a great example for how the bot actively discourages critical thinking, as it seems you have started from your conclusion (MBFC is correct), worked backwards, and apparently have not even read the article or anything I’ve said in response to you.

    They aren’t stressed because they’re spending 41% of their income on housing, they’re stressed because of their low socio economic status which causes them to spend 41% of their income on housing.

    Wow, I wonder if the article mentioned any other factors, like no-fault evictions and poorly maintained apartments, in the second paragraph?

    You keep talking about there being other factors like that wasn’t entirely what the article was about. Furthermore, almost every single one of those statements was about what advocacy organizations are claiming. Reporting what they are saying is factually inaccurate? Come off it.


  • “We have to keep using the ratings website made by a random dude with no background in journalism who makes it available for free because real fact checking services cost money” is perhaps not the argument I would use for why the bot is both accurate and useful.

    You don’t have to have a bot at all, especially to replace something like blacklisting Breitbart URLs, but someone thought the idea sounds cool. So “don’t have the bot” has been unnecessarily eliminated as an option. Even though sometimes the best option really is to just not have a bot.


  • “Renters experience stress and anxiety over renting to the point of illness” is not code for “and homeowners don’t feel any and are all perfectly healthy.” The only way to read it that way is if you’re trying to manufacture “fact checks” (or defend them, I guess). Same energy:

    They could be experiencing stress by their overall socio-economic status which is also a reason they are renting, not the other way around.

    Oh, do you think that if the article about stress from renting mentioned that financial problems contribute to that then it would make that fact check unfair?

    Because it does.

    Renters on average spend 41% of their income on housing costs, more than any other tenure, official figures show.

    Polly Neate, Shelter’s chief executive, said: “A whole generation of children risk growing up surrounded by this constant stress and anxiety. This cannot go on.


  • Example of a “failed” fact check for The Guardian:

    “Private renting is making millions of people ill with almost half of England’s 8.5 million renters experiencing stress or anxiety and a quarter made physically sick as a result of their housing, campaigners have said.”

    OUR VERDICT

    A survey found almost a quarter of private renters agree that housing worries have made them ill in the past year. This doesn’t mean the sickness was specifically caused by renting privately as opposed to any other type of housing situation.

    This was an article entirely about stress and anxiety. Ignoring that stress and anxiety have physical effects on the body, the only way someone could conclude that the article was about like, toxic apartments and not stress and anxiety was if they failed to read the article at all and instead just read the headline and made up an article in their head.

    Such obviously agenda driven nitpicky bullshit is why people don’t respect the bot.