Inevitable. I am not fan of the Daily Mail, but I agree with you. It is inevitable that these sorts of decisions are going to be biased by whether people agree with a particular site or not.

One of the most irritating groups in the UK are people who believe whatever the Guardian says who look down on those who believe what the Mail says. No snobbery there, oh no...

yes, i agree inevitable.

personally i'm not a fan of any uk newspaper - i don't read any of them and rarely visit any of their websites ... your quip about guardian readers gave me a smile!

the point of the article is that the Edge Browser app now includes NewsGuard. Currently you have to turn it on to use it. But there are plans to have it turned on by default.

... I would seriously question an American company (as NewsGuard is) passing judgement in an impartial way on foreign news outlets, or even other news outlets in the usa .... don't get me wrong, i love the usa, if i could i would emigrate there at the drop of a hat! ....

... everybody has an agenda ... who's to say what is right and what is wrong, what is real and what is fake ... quite honestly we all know of dubious news sites from both the left and right (and other specialist viewpoints) - and i look at them often (OT, there is a lot to be learnt from their writing styles and techniques IMO) ... i often find myself thinking some stories have credence even when i utterly disagree with the political agenda.

I guess i'm saying, i find it very dangerous when browsers start dictating to us what is right and wrong ... yes currently, it is a fairly inocuous warning but that can change, and i predict it will.

Good point about US company and foreign outlets.

There is also the danger of political pressure on companies like NewsGuard. If you look at what people think about certain controversial current topics in the UK, it is often the case that both sides are entirely convinced the other lying, or mislead by lies (I do think that myself on some issues), so which side gets to decide who is lying?

The Daily Mail is complaining that

The NewsGuard plug-in currently brings up a warning that says the newspaper's website "generally fails to maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability".

And their point is ...?

Newsguard is currently set to default in Edge. Extensions coming soon are NapTime and PottyTime to make sure users get plenty of both to keep their health top notch. Followed by ReadThis, VoteThis and BuyThis... it won't be long before WebNanny comes as default in all browsers.

Real concerns should be now, of course, but REALLY CONCERNED will be when these extensions cannot be disabled by the user.

Meanwhile, buddy asked me what this means. I said "Red means READ IT RIGHT NOW", green means "GET OUT OF THERE QUICK!"

Microsoft is now winning the browser war.

i find it very dangerous when browsers start dictating to us what is right and wrong

I completely agree with that.
If users choose to add an extension, that's fair enough.

Whatever you think of the particular publication concerned, most news sources are written by people and given editorial guidance. If you don't hold the same views as the editorial guidance, you wouldn't read the news source, or if you did, you'd make your own mind up based upon the story.

How can users remove NewsGuard?

If you don't hold the same views as the editorial guidance, you wouldn't read the news source, or if you did, you'd make your own mind up based upon the story.

That's assuming you are already familiar with the source. In this respect, the Daily Mail is obviously a ridiculous test case, because everyone knows what they are. At least, I should hope so. But say you're doing a search for information on an obscure topic, and you land on results from sites whose names you don't instantly recognize. It isn't necessarily obvious from a single article that what you thought was an information source is in fact an extremist {insert details to taste} conspiracy-theorist blahblahblah ...

@lucy that would be OK if people were choosing this with a browser plugin. This is built in to the browser. Its not on by default (yet anyway).

The other problem is who ensures that the people doing the evaluating are fair. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes.

would be OK if people were choosing this with a browser plugin. This is built in to the browser.

With this I agree.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes.

Fun fact: This is not a deeply profound inquiry about the nature of laws and their enforcement, but rather a rhetorical question about who prevents the eunuchs in charge of your upper-class women's quarters from getting up to hanky-panky on their own initiative. (In Latin because the locus classicus is Juvenal, not Anne Rice.)

Looking the governing board at Newsguard one might ask if it is a guard, or protection for a choice few? :)

It seems this has now been resolved and the publication now has a green shield.
[bbc.co.uk...]

yes, resolved for the Daily Mail ... however the problem of rating news outlets is perhaps one of the big issues going forward.

The other "favs" have been ignored. Newsguard 0, Real News 1(M) and it is not "msm".

When site we can't name here gets a green check then Newsguard will be valid. :)

@Lucy still the same problem.

As I have not read Juvenal (apart from the odd passage a long time ago, and not including this) and have not read any Anne Rice as far as I am concerned its just a phrase in common use.

As with any of these rating sites, it's an opinion, and whether automated, or not, someone, somewhere has provided an opinion of the sites and their ratings. If you don't agree with them, that's fine, too. I do not like the idea of a blanket approach to this in a browser.

Is it browser default, as suggested by most of this thread, or is it an optional voluntary extra, as suggested by the word “plugin” in the topic title?

its a plugin, but now built in to the browser: [newsguardtech.com ]

All the above begs the question:

Smart phone users: How many of you do the MS Edge? I suspect dang few. :)