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Harleen Kaur

Ground News Bias Checker - Browser extension which exposes media bias as you browse.

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If you read your news on Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, or any news site, we’ll let you know who else is covering the story and how reporting differs between sources from across the political spectrum.

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Harleen Kaur
Maker
Hey 👋🏽 I’m Harleen. Ex-NASA 🚀 Engineer and Ground News CEO. Our iOS, Android & Web App have helped 150,000+ users fight biased news. I’m excited to launch the Ground News Bias Checker Browser Extension. ➡️ Why we created it: ❗️ If you watched the Social Dilemma and were terrified (I was too), you know just how dangerous filter bubbles can be and that social media has quickly become an echo chamber. It’s very hard to see another perspective when we are all getting fed biased “made for us” news that reinforces our own opinions and perspectives rather than challenging us to see another. The web extension can burst your bubble and enable you to easily access a myriad of different perspectives for every news story. Whether your routine is to check in on Twitter, Facebook, or Reddit, Ground News can uncover the hidden bias in your news feed. ➡️ How it works: ✅ Instantly tell you the media bias distribution of any story (% of coverage from sources on the left, right and center). The bias data is overlaid on your social media feed so you never have to disrupt your news browsing to see the underlying bias. ✅ Give you easy access to media bias data and other perspectives when you read an article on over 50,000+ news sites. ✅ With only one click, the extension enables you to access an aggregation of how other sources are reporting on the story. From here, you can easily compare how headlines and coverage differ among sources from across the political spectrum. The Bias Checker by Ground News is free to download for Chrome & Firefox. For even deeper coverage analysis features, join 150,000+ users and download our award-winning mobile app for iOS & Android. We’d love for you to check it out and let us know what you think! I’ll be here answering questions, or you can reach out directly to feedback@ground.news Discover us on the web: ➡️ Chrome Web Store: https://check.ground.news/Chrome... ➡️ Mozilla Add-On Store: https://check.ground.news/FireFo... ➡️ Website: https://check.ground.news/WebApp... ➡️ iOS/Android App: https://check.ground.news/iOSAnd... ➡️ About us: https://about.ground.news/
Gittel Marcus
People must be really desperate about the upcoming USA election. The grading of this is absurd - not unless it's analyzing financial sponsors of news sources.
Ravi Bajnath
@gittel_marcus This is the most important point and far more revealing about the News source versus (another) labeled ideology product. Keep in mind on Crunchbase, Facebook and Ryerson University are listed as lead investors, what are the financial incentives behind free/paid user data from this product?
Harleen Kaur
Maker
@gittel_marcus The bias ratings on site our come from 3rd party NPO's dedicated to monitoring and rating news outlets along the political spectrum. We take an average of these 3 ratings: mediabiasfactcheck.com, allsides.com, and adfontesmedia.com. These sites each have their methodology listed on their website if you're interested. You can read more about our methodology here: https://about.ground.news/about-...
Gittel Marcus
@harleen the third party sites have a clear agenda in the upcoming election. When they describe their methodology, they themselves admit it's just subjective. There is no such thing as an unbiased news source. It is possible that even the most outrageous media channel runs an accurate story . The only reason these third parties exist is to validate failing media channels, regardless of whether they publish anything relevant or true. News should be judged on whether or not it successfully makes its point. Not on the reputation accorded by some subjective third party.
Harleen Kaur
Maker
@gittel_marcus @ravi_bajnath Hi Ravi, none of those companies are investors or own a stake in Ground News. Ryerson University's School of Journalism in collaboration with the Facebook Journalism Project gives grants to innovative companies in the News space, but there is no equity or stake exchanged. Full transparency, we have also received credits and grants from Big Tech such as Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud but none of these companies have ANY say in our product or how we treat user data. Our business model is to sell subscriptions to our product (see https://ground.news/subscribe) and we consciously choose not to monetize our subscribers' data. This browser extension for now is a stand-alone freebie to show people the value of our other products and services.
Mark Tan
This is awesome, thanks for creating this! Looking forward to using it. I noticed that it doesn't appear everywhere. It doesn't surface on FB as much as Twitter and Reddit too. Are there criteria on which articles are tagged?
Harleen Kaur
Maker
@mjltan Articles are tagged if we can find other sources that are reporting on that story. The criteria is the same across all platforms and the difference may just be due to the content that is common on each site. Twitter and Reddit are more news focused, so the extension really shines on those two sites.
Eric Fettner
Ok @harleen I was a little skeptical at first about what this app did. I was worried there was going to be a biases. What I love about the product is. 1. It's very easy to use. 2. It just gives you the facts for where an article has been published and a "general breakdown of " Left, Right and Central". 3. It gives me a sense of what's "general news" vs. "politically driven articles" (on both sides). Question for you..... how do you determine if a source is Right, Left or Center? I get there are the obvious ones, but what about the others? Great work!
Harleen Kaur
Maker
Thanks Eric! Glad to have you onboard. Happy to explain our bias rating methodology as well. The bias ratings you see on Ground are not our team's personal assessment. We wanted to keep our team's subjective opinions out of the app in order to give our readers the most objective view of bias possible. All bias data is from 3rd party NPO's dedicated to monitoring and rating news outlets along the political spectrum. You can read more about this here: https://ground.news/about-bias-r...
Brandi Sippel
This is awesome. Love how your assessments are based on aggregate data, helping prevent unintended bias from the development team. Please don't take this as criticism, but sincere curiosity -- how do you plan to get this tool in front of the people who likely need it most? I'd assume that those willing to download something like this are already data-driven, truth-seekers. Hoping you have plans to expand that base somehow? As a fellow aerospace engineer, wishing you the best in this new (and super important) endeavor!
Harleen Kaur
Maker
@brandi_sippel Thanks! Keeping our team's subjective opinions out of our product was a must for us. Completely valid question as well. We made the extension very easy to use and install, so the people who do download it don't have to be tech-savvy to reap its benefits. It only takes 5 seconds to install and it doesn't require any user input to function as it overlays the bias data on your news feed. We plan to market the tool on channels where people who aren't that tech-literate consume media. We've already talked about the product on radio interviews, cable news and plan to do many more such interviews. Also hoping that some of our early adopters tell their relatives about it at Thanksgiving dinner 😃.
Brandi Sippel
@harleen Thanks for the response! Thanksgiving dinner sounds like the perfect place to get this in front of both sides of the spectrum. 😛
Amrita M
How do you decide what sources are left right and center?
Harleen Kaur
Maker
@amrita_m The bias ratings are not our personal assessment of bias. All bias data is from 3rd party NPO's dedicated to monitoring and rating news outlets along the political spectrum. You can read more about our methodology here: https://ground.news/about-bias-r...
Roman Velitskiy
Can't be 100% sure, since I haven't used the service yet, but on paper, this looks really good! A suggestion for future updates: a little pop-up window with a brief look at a news source's parent companies, subsidiaries, and stakeholders, e.g. taken from Wikipedia articles. I think this could also help the audiences have a better understanding of media-outlets' political connections and motivations.
Harleen Kaur
Maker
@rvelitskiy Thanks for the suggestion! Giving our users a deeper looker at other underlying factors of bias is definitely something that would add value to our product.
Varun Dave
Love this and much needed. I experienced that not all news articles show bias checker under it, even if they are from the same news source on Twitter, e.g. under Sky News or BBC News feed, I see bias checker on some of their articles, but not all. @harleen
Harleen Kaur
Maker
@varundave Hi Varun - thanks for letting us know about this. Originally, stories that were only covered by one source did not generate any coverage data. Our newest update will enable the extension to show some data for stories only being reported on one source, like the bias data for that one outlet.
Mike Staub
Is the code open-source? How do you plan on generating revenue?
Harleen Kaur
Maker
@mikestaub Hi Mike. The code for the extension isn't open source. Our business model is to sell subscriptions to our product (see https://ground.news/subscribe) and we consciously choose not to monetize our users' data. The subscriptions for our mobile and web apps are optional but unlock deeper coverage analysis features and the ability to use your account cross-platform.
Pavel Mazuelas 🔥
I look impressive this tool! Congrats for this job, hope you release more tools like this.
Harleen Kaur
Maker
@pavel_mazuelas Thanks! We have a lot of big plans for the future, follow our socials for more exciting announcements.
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