Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Microsoft have released a plugin for their Edge browser, which uses Newsguard ratings to mark Buzzfeed as reliable, and Breitbart, Drudge and Wikileaks as untrustworthy. At the time of writing they haven’t yet made up their mind about WUWT.
Microsoft Teams with Establishment ‘NewsGuard’ to Create News Blacklist
23 Jan 2019
Allum BokhariWithout consulting with its users, Microsoft has installed an establishment media browser extension, purportedly designed to rate the accuracy of news websites, as a default extension on mobile versions of its Edge browser. In practice, it creates a news blacklist by warning users away from sites including Breitbart News, The Drudge Report, and the Daily Mail.
The browser extension, called “Newsguard,” presents users with a red warning label if they navigate to a website that it judges to be unreliable. A “green” rating is given to websites that NewsGuard considers trustworthy.
A number of pro-Trump websites, including Breitbart News, are given a “red” rating by the extension.
…
To see this new feature you need to install Edge on your iPhone or Android device, or perhaps use the Edge browser on your Microsoft computer.
For fun I pulled up a few screenshots of the ratings of Buzzfeed, Breitbart and WUWT;
The “reliable” rating for Buzzfeed in my opinion seems a little questionable, given their recent fake news embarrassment.
But the real question in my mind is, if Microsoft tells you web content is reliable, are they liable if you act on the content and suffer harm or loss?
H/T Microsoft PowerPoint!!!
Did you have to slight Christians as well?
How is that slighting Christians?
“A bunch of socially retarded left-wing nitwits who believe CNN and the New York Times like Christians believe the Bible.”
Sure looks like an insult of opportunity to me. Whether or not you created it, it is prominent in the message.
Or is the reference to Christians intended as satire?
It’s insulting Christians by comparing them to “socially retarded left-wing nitwits”.
Comparisons of “X is so bad they’re like Y” while intended as an insult to X also acts as an insult to Y by implying that Y is as bad as X.
As I always joke when such comparisons are made: you owe Y and apology for comparing them to X.
you could have used Openoffice:-) but well done anyway
Openoffice is good. Just remember to look at all the installation screens very carefully, otherwise Sun will install McAfee and who knows what else.
I thought Microsoft was giving up on Edge and getting out of the browser market. I certainly have.
WOW! A critical role in “Group think” is the control of information to the group. This is classic “group think” manipulation.
Yes.
I’ve been reflecting a bit about why I was “conned” into thinking negatively about the Covington boys after the media did its “first pass”… the smirking young man challenging the Native American earnestly practicing his freedom of religion surrounded by a pack of jeering teens. The second video, emerging afterward, quickly showed this was wrong. He may have been smirking, but he was also standing his ground justifiably. A second look opened up a whole panoply of complex issues, making judgment about ANY of the actors a lot harder… and maybe pointless.
Part of the purpose of teaching “critical thinking” in schools is to bring students face-to-face with their own prejudices and predilections. If they understand what writers and advertisers do TO US to “sell” their ideas, we’re more watchful and can at least do recursive mental checks of our own reactions: “What’s this selling?” “Who is it targeting?” “How is it propagandizing?” “Is this good for me? (or anyone else?)” “Am I buying into this?” and maybe just as important, “Have I given this sufficient thought before I comment? / buy in? / jump down somebody’s throat about it?”
I don’t think we need the imprimatur of Microsoft, Buzzfeed, CNN anchors, politicians – or loud commenters – to help us make these decisions for us. We can make up our own minds.
Far more distressing (in my opinion) than the virtue signaling of the media monopolies is the close breathing of advertisers who have managed to get my number. Today on “Watt’s Up With That” my advertisers manifest themselves as: a beautiful woman reading a book with the caption, “Download hundreds of e-books without spending a dime!”; an ad for Viagra pills; and “Bargain Office Equipment”, “a green company since 1980”. One may conclude that I’m old, cheap and… the opposite of wealthy, all correct. That bothers me.
And by the way, blocking their pop-ups is not the same as ridding your computer of their cookies. They may not be monopolies, but they sure are pernicious.
“One may conclude that I’m old, cheap and… the opposite of wealthy”
And h*rny. 😉
Q.E.D. (Latin for “goes without saying”)
FrontPage Mag has more on this, obviously for a different reason though. I found the back and forth emails in the article interesting.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272652/microsoft-using-spurious-leftist-fact-checking-robert-spencer
Buzzfeed is in financial trouble. It is so reliable it is having to shed 250 more staff and its sponsors are getting a bit antsy with the way their multi-million investments are failing to create any kind of recognisable return.
So sad. Too bad.
Why MS would consider Buzzfeed to be in any way reliable (fake news is rampant at BF) has to be a mystery only a marketing genius would understand. Perhaps its the same marketing genius who thought that “that” man-unfriendly Gillette ad was a good idea.
Had the satisfaction last week after the recent “bombshell” fizzled to inform a BuzzFeed booster that it would soon go the way of Gawker after he had smirked (yes, I could just see his face) that I was a dinosaur because I didn’t get my news from clickbait farms funded by Democratic donors.
Didn’t know how quick it would be, though.
And while I’m usually sad to see people lose their jobs and I believe more journalism is better than less, in this case:
1) they aren’t journalists, they are barely writers and most of their material would fairly fit under the “remedial typing” category
2) they are politicians and we need fewer of them
Another reason why DuckDuckGo is my browser of choice; no tracing of activities, no propaganda, works just fine.
Yes, just this morning I posted something here about using DDG vs. Google to look up “Club of Rome failed predictions”.
Needless to say, the first five links at Google were fan sites posing as Serious Journalism (i.e., the Gruniad).
DDG had WUWT in the first page.
Govern yourself accordingly.
DuckDuckGo isn’t a browser.
F***ing outrageous! We must take a stand against this affront to liberty.
There is no metric for Edge on portable (Android, Iphone), at this point no one has posted usage statistics. You should be aware that FireFox is rapidly gaining market share due to it’s commitment to privacy with the latest build rated faster then the competitors and more secure, several reviews have talked extensively about this. Also be aware that Vivaldi, Opera, Brave and soon Microsoft Edge, use Chrome’s open-source foundation, called Chromium, this means the ‘search’ returned data is filtered. And of course we have know this was coming: Google may break ad blockers with upcoming Chrome change https://goo.gl/152yS2 which will increase the rate of those with a brain leaving the Google kingdom.
I’m stuck with all browsers for testing compatibility, rethinking this to to only support browsers that don’t track you and sell your data. A start at unmasking Google: https://goo.gl/XgAkNa
Recommendations today. Blocking tomorrow?
Book burning the day after…
Compulsory labelling of all those with political views to the right of Stalin to follow…
What you say is correct. The Jews are the epitomic example.
First they labelled them with arm bands. Then they rounded them up and branded them, putting them into ghettos. Then they made slaves out of them, or worse.
Funny how it’s the same old music time and time again.
“Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. pledged to work together with other tech and advertising companies to fight the spread of “fake news” online in Europe, largely to prevent it from blighting political elections in the region”-Bloomberg 2018 (not that Bloomberg would oppose censorship)
As with all free speech issues the devil is in the details. They have completely free speech in China as long as you stick to the party line. It is accurate to say that foreign actors have run influence operations online. That is different than rating domestic sites.
Yeah, probably has nothing to do with this:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=google+fined&t=h_&ia=web
good info.
You can see the frog boiling in the pot. Getting fined for privacy law violations slips smoothly into fines for allowing the wrong views to be expressed.
Americans have a general sense that European attempts to squeeze the FANG’s has a little something to do prejudice and envy. Maybe a little. Mostly it’s about political control.
Okay now I know more in deciding not to use Edge. Thanks for the info.
My default position these days is to assume all news from outlets like CNN, MSNBC, BBC etc is false unless I see it somewhere genuinely trustworthy.
For those of us alive in the 50’s and 60’s..this targeting and control of information and sources of information is expected..heck..it was predictable!!! winning hearts and minds is still the game plan of control..Payne had some good points..create a mob and you have politics as a maleable might over right and/ or facts…namely, in our age the repercussions of enlightenment-styled democracy. Essentially a 500 year old battle of individualism-mobs ( genderistic..religious..tribal..skin-deep identifications..namely self-identified political identities) versus the mob of the commons identifiable by the management of food and resources conrols and protectionism..hence, individual protectionisms..which exhibits as us locking our cars..homes..or building a fence around our home to protect our stuff..nothing is new under the sun..even now..
But who will ‘guard’ the guardians?
“Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” (Satires of Juvenal).
I’ve already seen it and discussed elsewhere, in matters unrelated to global warming. Repeating some of that:
It’s just a tool for people too lazy to do their own thinking.
Such a tool does nothing to tell you about the truth of any particular story. Even the worst liars in the mainstream media make sure they tell the truth most of the time, they just tell a convenient lie when it suits them. If one newspaper is truthful 90% of the time, and another newspaper with a different politics is truthful 80% of the time, how does that help you decide which one is correct on any one story?
I opened Edge on my PC, which I rarely use, and didn’t see any of the NewsGuard ratings. I guess I’m missing a plugin for it (which I will not install). BTW, on the browser I usually use, I accidentally mistyped breitbart.com — I missed a letter (won’t tell you which one I left out), and it redirected to a site that Norton Internet Security warned was a fake tech support site (scam).
“littlepeaks January 24, 2019 at 1:17 pm
I opened Edge on my PC, which I rarely use, and didn’t see any of the NewsGuard ratings. I guess I’m missing a plugin for it (which I will not install). ”
If you run Windows 10 Home, Pro etc, and you let M$ update it, it will be installed for you. There is so much junk that is “installed” with every release, soon the up and coming 1903 release, along with all the updates.
I have Windows 10, let M$ do updates, but still don’t have it (not that I care).
This is yet another reason never to use Microsoft Edge. There are many better alternatives.
What did they say about its predecessor Internet Explorer?
“It’s the browser you use to load Google Chrome onto your Windows PC”.
Just one more reason I switched to Linux 4 years ago.
I use DuckDuckgo for search and WSJ for news except Greg Ip has gulped the kool aid and I can’t stomach that part of it now.
Well this just adds to the “issues” most corporates I develop a Windows 10 platform for simply “turn off” Edge in favour of Google Chrome or Firefox. And then there is Windows 10 analytics…literally “watching” everything you do and then M$ sells the data back to corporations.
Interestingly, I now get warnings stating WUWT is a dangerous site on my corporate PC using Chrome running on Windows 10 1511. Hummm…
I’m sure this will massively affect the 5 people that actually use Edge as their main browser.
And all 5 work at MS in the Edge Development department.
I gotta say WUWT I don’t like your chances with this goofy plug-in. They may be delaying your rating while they cook up a category worse than “proceed with caution”. You should wear it as a badge of honor.
Smart people avoid Microsoft at all cost.
Very wise advice.
Not really. It’s a matter of taste and convenience. All of these companies are out for themselves, couldn’t care less about you.
Yes Jeff, but some of the companies are worse about screwing you over than the others. It’s a matter of picking the lesser evil
It might come in handy to identify fake news orgs by using Newguard’s whitelist as blacklist.g