TRUSTEDNEWS

FIGHTING THE SPREAD OF FAKE NEWS.

The reach of social media is so extensive that it’s often hard to distinguish between fake news and the real thing. In fact, sometimes it can be difficult to tell if what you’re reading is satire or not, unless you’re a regular reader of The Onion. That’s where TrustedNews comes in. It aims to clear up any confusion by letting you know if what you’re reading is the real deal, and does so by adding a colour-coded icon to the plugin’s button on the toolbar. TrustedNews comes from the company behind AdBlock Plus and is, for now, only available for Chrome. What makes TrustedNews an excellent filter is the fact that it’s so easy to use – just download and it will do its thing. No need for account creation, no need to click on anything (unless you want more information), nothing. It even works on sites like YouTube, letting you know that it contains “user generated content”. If there are news sites which aren’t too popular, TrustedNews will display a grey icon which denotes “insufficient data”. The blue smiley is for satire, while the green tick represents factual news.