How lean labels work
Communities about politics can turn on lean labels: readers rate each post's political lean, and the label shows on the post. Other communities don't show labels. No AI assigns or suggests a label: the community decides them all.
The scale
Each rating is one step on a five-point scale, or Not political:
| Lean | Value | Score range |
|---|---|---|
| Left | -2 | below −1.2 |
| Centre-left | -1 | −1.2 to below −0.4 |
| Centre | 0 | −0.4 to 0.4 |
| Centre-right | +1 | above 0.4 to 1.2 |
| Right | +2 | above 1.2 |
The colours run teal to amber with a grey centre, avoiding the red and blue that mean opposite parties in different countries. Badges always show the word too.
Post labels
- Any verified member whose account is at least 7 days old can rate a post once, and change their rating later. Authors can't rate their own posts.
- Under 10 ratings, a post has no label and shows “Rate lean”.
- If most ratings say Not political, the post has no label.
- Otherwise its lean score L is the average of the political ratings, from −2 to +2, placed in the ranges above.
- If those ratings have a standard deviation of 1.25 or more, the label is marked Disputed.
- You only see how others rated once you've rated, so early ratings don't sway later ones.
Your votes and your feed
- Your upvotes and downvotes on labelled posts from the past 365 days give Disrupt Social a private estimate of which way you lean. It only decides which perspectives balancing adds to your feed.
- Nobody sees it: not you, not other members and not moderators. It isn't on your profile or beside your name.
- Deleting your account erases your votes, lean ratings and that estimate.
Balanced feeds
- Balancing applies to feeds that include a community with lean labels. After a feed is sorted, each page of 25 is filled so that no single lean holds more than 40% of its labelled political posts, while there are enough posts to allow it.
- Once enough of your votes are in, at least 30% of a page's political posts come from leans two or more steps from the way you lean.
- Unlabelled and Not political posts keep their places.
- Pages are picked from the top 100 ranked posts, skipping any that would break a rule; if none fit, the next post in rank order is used.
- Balancing is on by default. Switch it off in Settings, or for one session from the Balanced chip above a feed.