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Microsoft Fights Fake News With NewsGuard Integration in Its Mobile Edge Browser (pcworld.com)
In a bid to fight fake news read while on your phone, Microsoft's mobile Edge browser on Android and iOS now includes the NewsGuard extension. From a report: The addition needs to be toggled on within the Edge settings menu to be enabled. Once it is, Edge will display a small shield icon next to the site's URL in the search bar: a green shield with a checkmark for a trusted news site, and a red shield with an exclamation point inside of it for a site that NewsGuard believes isn't always accurate. (Some sites haven't been evaluated, and these will simply show a gray shield.)
The UK Daily Mail, a well-known source of ill-informed and reactionary garbage.
Because we are trained journalists who have spent our careers dedicated to the profession. We care deeply about reliable journalismâ(TM)s pivotal role in democracy. (In case youâ(TM)re wondering, our experienced journalists come from diverse backgrounds and have no political axes to grind.)
Because you can see the credentials and backgrounds of everyone responsible for every NewsGuard reliability rating and Nutrition Label that you read. For the names and biographies of our staff and contributors, click here.
Because we have an ethics and conflicts of interest policy to which all of our analysts and editors have to agree. You can read that policy here.
Because we are totally transparent about how we make all of our decisions. Our Nutrition Label write-ups explain what is behind our decisions. We disclose and explain in detail the nine criteria we use to rate each news site on its journalistic practices. Weâ(TM)re not a black box algorithm.
Because we make concerted attempts to get comment from every websiteâ(TM)s editor or manager before we write anything negative about the site, and always include the comment in our Nutrition Labels (or make changes after weighing the comment and realizing our initial conclusion was wrong). Algorithms donâ(TM)t call for comment.
Because we will post any complaints from website proprietors about anything we have written about them. And we will answer them publicly â" and when warranted will make corrections, publicly, after we consider the complaint. You can read our policy for correcting errors or mistakes here.
Because we accept no fees from the news websites we rate. (Our revenue comes from the platforms and search engines for licensing our ratings in order to include them in their feeds and search results.) We rate all news and information sites among the approximately 4,500 sites responsible for 98% of the online engagement in English in the United States.
Because we do not collect any personal information of any kind from those who download and use our browser plug-ins. None. You can read our privacy policy here.
Because bringing more information to people about the news sources they encounter online is our only business. Our success depends entirely on being trustworthy and reliable.
The problem with this NewsGuard extension is that the more likely someone is to need it, the less likely they are to want it (and the more likely they are to actively dislike the idea of it).
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Because it's backed by the neocons. You remember them, right? The folks whose handling of intelligence over Iraq made Obama's handling of the DIA report on ISIS look like a highly cordial disagreement between respectful parties? If they say that Hitler is a bad guy, you better get independent sources.
Who determines what is "fake news"?
This should scare people. Don't they realize we are ASKING businesses/governments to make judgement calls of what is fake news? Translation: People are asking these entities to censor what they feel is fake news.
This seems like a dangerous idea to me. Heavens know a business will not call something it doesn't like to be fake news. Nor would a government who doesn't agree with certain ideas would call something fake news.
BuzzFeedNews rated as trustworthy. Nope.
I guess Microsoft is competing with Google in the Wokelympics.
Yes, Breitbart has a right-leaning bias, but it's like an antidote to the main stream media's false and biased reporting.
An "antidote" is a medicine you give to counteract a poison.
What you describe is countering one poison (what you call MSM's biased reporting) with another (what you call Breitbart's bias). That's not an antidote. I don't think there's any case of using one poison to cure another poison, other than homeopathy. In the absence of antidotes, I think the only thing we have us dilution -- i.e. counter biased reporting by clinging to news sources that are as unbiased as you can find.
They aren't real news, and they aren't fake news....
they're satirical news for purposes of humor, with such absurd topics that any literate person should immediately recognize the article content as satire past the first paragraph or so, even if they were living under a rock and didn't know what TheOnion was. Are they going to get the dreaded "Fake News Warning" anyways?
For a tool that claims they care about transparency they really do their best to prevent you from looking up a list of sites and their ratings.
If anyone is interested, I dug into the code for the chrome extension and grabbed their API URL so you can look up sites without having to install their extension:
- Trusted: CNN
- Trusted: Daily Caller
- Trusted: The Independent
- Trusted: Mother Jones (lol)
- Trusted: Huffington Post (lol)
- Trusted: The Daily Beast (lol)
- Trusted: BuzzFeed News (ok this is just sad)
- Not Trusted: Breitbart
- Not Trusted: Daily Mail
Looks fair and balanced to me.
Wow, Brietbart shills have a lot of mod points today.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC