Microsoft Fights Fake News with New Edge Browser Feature

Megalith

Megalith

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Is the UK’s Daily Mail website fake news? Yes, according to Edge, which Microsoft has updated with a new plug-in that utilizes a third-party startup called NewsGuard to determine the credibility of a page. Visitors are greeted with the following: “the site regularly publishes content that has damaged reputations, caused widespread alarm, or constituted harassment or invasion of privacy.” NewsGuard is now automatically installed on all mobile editions of Edge.

Until now, the service has only been available as a downloadable plug-in but this week Microsoft began installing it automatically on all mobile editions of its Edge browser, the successor to Internet Explorer, in the first stage of what its creators hope will be a widespread roll-out across multiple platforms. Steve Brill, a NewsGuard co-founder, said the Mail Online verdict had been reached in a transparent manner. “We spell out fairly clearly in the label exactly how many times we have attempted to contact them.”
 
I wonder what the criteria are for adding a site to the list. I'll bet you my computer that MSNBC, FOX, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, et al., even though they're guilty of the mentioned offenses, will never end up on it. They'll end up having to add just about every news site in existence.
 
The site regularly publishes content that has damaged reputations, caused widespread alarm
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There goes the online presence for the CDC and FDA, I guess ..
 
Megalith said:
Is the UK’s Daily Mail website fake news? Yes, according to Edge, which Microsoft has updated with a new plug-in that utilizes a third-party startup called NewsGuard to determine the credibility of a page. Visitors are greeted with the following: “the site regularly publishes content that has damaged reputations, caused widespread alarm, or constituted harassment or invasion of privacy.” NewsGuard is now automatically installed on all mobile editions of Edge.

Until now, the service has only been available as a downloadable plug-in but this week Microsoft began installing it automatically on all mobile editions of its Edge browser, the successor to Internet Explorer, in the first stage of what its creators hope will be a widespread roll-out across multiple platforms. Steve Brill, a NewsGuard co-founder, said the Mail Online verdict had been reached in a transparent manner. “We spell out fairly clearly in the label exactly how many times we have attempted to contact them.”
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Em.

No.

Newsguard was pretty much busted on Day 1 flagging Propaganda sites as Legit; and flagging #Who #What #When #Where #Why sites as fake.

It... was proven within a matter of hours to perform the exact opposite of what it claimed to do.

Microsoft got called on the matter... but so far has yet to respond to any serious inquiries into who gave the okay for the partnership... nor have they specified when the parties responsible will be fired.
 
Microsoft news, now there a non-fake news source if ever I saw one :LOL:
 
Literally zero people will benefit from this feature, since that’s approximately the number of people using Edge as their primary browser.
 
PaulP said:
"NewsGuard" rates Buzzfeed as reliable, which instantly tells you it is a piece of trash.
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Headline should read "Microsoft promotes fake news with new Edge browser censorship feature"
 
Just because a posted article meets any or all of the following: “the site regularly publishes content that has damaged reputations, caused widespread alarm, or constituted harassment or invasion of privacy.” doesn't mean the postings are fake. Reporting that Mr Foobar was arrested for child porn pretty well screws Foobar's reputation, but said damage doesn't make the news fake.
 
Google manipulates searches.

Microsoft manipulates news.

Okay, Edge is out; Chrome is out.

Glad I'm using Brave (and search with DDG).

MS is broken. Rather than putting resources here, how about putting those resources into a better W10 experience?
 
Who cares about this, at all. They are switching to Chromium which means anything they do with the current Edge release means nothing.
 
ManofGod said:
Who cares about this, at all. They are switching to Chromium which means anything they do with the current Edge release means nothing.
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That is the rendering engine... I would assume they are building this to work on both engines.
 
So our new Technocrat overlords are still not satisfied in their quest to control all speech and thought to make it conform to their whims.
So now if they don't "like" or "agree" with the news (regardless of if it's actually true or not), they want to try to block it or at least make people not read it.

You can bet 100% that it will be used almost exclusively to support political parties, politicians, policies and points of view that whichever technocrat runs the platform wishes and suppress anything they don't like.
Pretty much the way it has already been proven the technocrats run most other "social media" companies.

I guess Microsoft felt they were getting left behind in the evil department and needed to catch up.
 
How about we get a program that isn't fake from microshaft, a billionaire for selling software that is only 5/8th ready for prime time. Unfortunately it is pretty easy to use.
 
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Sounds like the only way we have a chance at not being brainwashed with bullcrap is to toss the internet and unplug from the matrix!

Who's going to launch the real internet 2.0?
 
NewsGuard is a state-sponsored (not necessarily financially, but otherwise) propaganda tool that intends to steer people towards propaganda

NewsGuard's advisory board largely consists of former US government persons:

  • Tom Ridge, the first Secretary of Homeland Security (George W. Bush administration)
  • Richard Stengel, former editor of Time magazine and Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy (Obama administration)
  • (Ret.) General Michael Hayden, former Director of the CIA, former Director of the National Security Agency and former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence (George W. Bush administration)
  • Don Baer, chairman of Burson, Cohn & Wolfe and former White House Communications Director (Clinton administration)
  • Elise Jordan, political analyst, NBC, and former speechwriter for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
  • John Battelle, co-founding editor of Wired and founding chief executive of Industry Standard magazines
  • Jessica Lessin, founder and editor-in-chief of The Information

One of those people, Richard Stengel, says that his job in Obama's government was known as the "chief propagandist". He further says that he has no problem with propagandizing the US public and that he supports using propaganda on the US public, claiming "I'm not against propaganda. Every country does it, and they have to do it to their own population." And the US government certainly does it to the US' population (the law change was only to put the law into sync with routine practice).


This US government "chief propagandist" who says that they're pro-propaganda and whose job in the US government was to propagandize the US public is someone who's telling you which websites are trustworthy and which aren't through NewsGuard.

Richard Stengel's former position as editor at TIME Magazine is also noteworthy, as TIME Magazine has been heavily influenced by the CIA since at least the 1950s: Former CIA officer, high-level Defence Department official, and deputy to former CIA director Turner, William B. Bader, was tasked with investigating CIA manipulation of news media in 1976, and was allowed to read "sanitized" versions of CIA files on some of their journalists and reported to the senate committee that had tasked him with the investigation, “You don’t need to manipulate Time magazine, for example, because there are Agency people at the management level”.


I see more signs of conflict of interest when looking into how NewsGuard rates different news sites. For example, NewsGuard gives a green check-mark pass to CNN, Fox News, NYT, and even US state outlets known for being propaganda such as Voice of America. However, it seems that any site known for reporting critically of US geopolitical objectives is deemed untrustworthy by the program, including WikiLeaks which has a flawless record of publishing only authentic documents.

NewsGuard even attests to WikiLeaks' perfect publishing history in their rating of WikiLeaks:


Yet, NewsGuard still labels WikiLeaks as untrustworthy - notably including in the area of "regularly corrects or clarifies errors", which WikiLeaks, by NewsGuard's own admission, doesn't have any to correct. If WikiLeaks didn't have any errors to correct, then they haven't failed to correct their errors. Therefore, the red mark for failing to correct errors is a lie.


By the way, NewsGuard's co-founder, Gordon Crovitz, previously advocated for the prosecution of WikiLeaks' Julian Assange for publishing and reporting on leaked documents:


NewsGuard is blatantly, unabashedly, a propaganda tool for a definitively-biased interest group. It's brainwashingware packaged into your phone by the NSA-collaborating Microsoft.


BTW, look at how the US-state's NewsGuard rates Voice of America, an outlet that is funded and run by the US state to unapologetically broadcast its propaganda, compared to RT, an outlet which is critical of the US state and also has a roster of reputable and also award-winning talent that left outlets like BBC, NYT, CNN, NBC, The Guardian, and other outlets to join RT:


All this NewsGuard program is doing is brainwashing people in favour of US state propaganda. It isn't informing and warning anybody truthfully.


prime2515102 said:
I wonder what the criteria are for adding a site to the list. I'll bet you my computer that MSNBC, FOX, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, et al., even though they're guilty of the mentioned offenses, will never end up on it. They'll end up having to add just about every news site in existence.
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They're all given full 'green marks', despite being among the worst culprits of fake news and deliberate propaganda.
 
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