The Factual - News Evaluator (delisted)

clbbiejjicefdjlblgnojolgbideklkp

Get smarter about the news you read

Latest reviews

• (2022-10-11) Tony Lenart: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: This really is a critically needed resource in the world today. So many people choose whether a media source is trustworthy based on whether it "resonates" with them - which is a nice way of saying that they're only interested in media that reflects their own biases and prejudices. Some other sites rate media according to perceived bias, but The Factual is significantly more concerned about its accuracy, willingness to tell the whole story, and whether it is trying to create hatred against others through emotive, negative writing. I love this Chrome app which automatically assesses news articles and rates them on numerous criteria. P.S. I'm not involved in any way with The Factual, but as someone very involved in conflict resolution (eg see www.youtube.com/ToTranformConflict ) I do greatly appreciate the work it is doing.
• (2020-09-20) Steven Murphy: Most news sources bring up no rating. I installed and tried clicking on various news article on the Google News page. Many such as CNN and USA Today showed no rating. I do not find any value from this extension.
• (2019-11-27) Arul Velan: With the amount of reading I do and news I consume, this extension is the best. Hands down, Factual is a simple addition to guide me and others to higher quality pieces. Good luck to the team.
• (2019-05-14) Artex Jay: Much better than what Newsguard has done, this evaluates the article not the news company. Albeit the way it rates the articles are pretty simplistic. has lots of room for improvements. and so far great extension for news reading. Edit: After more research I have found a few issues. Labels Far-left websites such as CounterPunch as reputable and have good journalistic standard which is completely incorrect. While seemingly having a left bias so that most of the conservative websites have low standards which is also incorrect. Good thing this is still in Beta as it still has quite a bit of work to do but i think they will get there! Many times the it get to N/A results on Cato Institute among others. Hope to see it out of Beta and fully working soon! Vox news is far from being reputable, they skew facts to fit their opinion as their website is mostly opinionated website. They very rarely or barely correct their mistakes that they have put especially if it's political. They even went so far as to justify the needless violence, against people who were misclassified as white supremacist or even escalated a peaceful gathering, perpetuated by Radical Leftist/neo communist, ANTIFA. There also appear to be a miscalculation of how many references there are on a certain webpage take for example Vox's House Bill article, it says that Vox is very divers sources and links. The article has 2 links and one of them refers back to their own website. At least you got the rating for Buzzfeed and Vice (both of them being relatively similar) are correct! Al Jazeera is a state run news agency it skews facts and misrepresents them to better represent themselves. It's funny that RT News is rated poorly but AL Jazeera which is just as bad is rated very well.
• (2017-11-29) Eugene Joseph: Thoughtful, well-designed, and minimalist extension that lets me know when the stories I'm reading are rough.
• (2017-11-17) Will Cheung: Biased stories is something I almost never think about, until I started using this chrome extension. Love it!
• (2017-11-15) Guerson Meyer: Great extension. I get now the quality of the source and some other points of view.
• (2017-11-15) Prasanth Gangadharan: Our prejudices come from seeing only one side, from allowing ourselves to blindly believe all that our one trusted/like-minded source tells us. With CivikOwl, each news item can be viewed objectively, based on its own merit and credibility, irrespective of where it is coming from. That can get us closer to the truth. Thats why I believe CivikOwl is making a big contribution towards making the world a better place.
• (2017-11-15) Michael Morales: Last year, while serving two presidential administrations as a White House Fellow, I went through a spell where I stopped reading the news altogether. I felt overwhelmed by the unceasing barrage of sensationalistic news on both sides of the political spectrum. Moreover, I didn't have the bandwidth or the patience to ensure that I was reading the highest quality news available so that my perspectives and policy recommendations were as well informed as possible. In the midst of that, someone suggested I take a look at the work that CivikOwl was doing. What I found was refreshing and exciting. The CivikOwl team is committed to encouraging thoughtful civic discourse through high quality news. Their Chrome extension does exactly what I need: it ensures that I make the most effective use of my time by not only providing instant feedback on the quality of the news I'm reading, but also suggesting the best related articles from both sides of the political spectrum. I have been so excited about the work that the CivikOwl team has been doing that I asked to be on their advisory board so I could be a part of this exciting journey they are on. We all have biases. There is wisdom in recognizing them. CivikOwl helps us avoid our tendency to read only news that aligns with our existing biases by making us smarter and more efficient news consumers. Keep up the great work CivikOwl!
• (2017-11-15) jill soley: The CivikOwl team has developed an incredibly smart and thoughtful solution to help people consume news more intelligently. I’ve been advising the company. I got involved because assessing the bias and trustworthiness of news today is challenging. CivikOwl helps me assess the biases and quality of the news I am reading and introduces me to other high quality articles to balance out the biases. It does all this in a simple, clean, unintrusive way. Great work CivikOwl! I can’t wait to see how the product continues to evolve.
• (2017-10-30) Rima Sample: relevant and interesting suggestions, love it.
• (2017-10-30) Ben He Wu: With CivikOwl filter, I can trust what I read is real and relative with my interest. Suggestion: if I can control when the news popup schedule, therefore I can have better time management about when to read news. Great JOB!
• (2017-10-30) Tim Chan: I'm in love with the insights into your news reading habit. There's so much potential here!
• (2017-10-30) Maverick Iyers: Being a fairly regular consumer of news and articles I have come to realize just how much biased news has skewed my perception of content quality and online reading experience. This extension is a great tool and a step in the right direction. Not only does this tool help me understand the quality/credibility of content out there, it also enables me to have healthy discussions on topics that I am passionate about. Kudos to the team on building this much needed resource.
• (2017-10-30) Sajjit Thampy: A really useful and valuable extension. Highly recommended.
• (2017-10-29) Siva Pandeti: Good one
• (2017-10-28) vikram bhamre: This is a great way to be able to know what you are reading and how credible it is. Nowadays news is convoluted and riddled with lies and misconceptions and CivikOwl is like a filter. Perhaps you could add some kind of prompt for when people are falling behind on their "reading" schedule? Great job! The very simple format is perfect!
• (2017-10-28) Anita Moorthy: Cool extension! You install it and then get this rich information on whatever you are reading. It tells you the quality of news and give you other perspectives on the same topic. Very cool!!!
• (2017-09-26) Amitabh Chibber: CivikOwl has been a great addition to my online news reading. It's a fun, lightweight extension with a serious purpose — helping us understand the sources of our online content better and raising the overall quality of discussion on and off the web. Highly recommended.
• (2017-09-23) Alan Berkson: In my TEDx talk I identified the ability vet content as a key skill for the 21st century. The CivikOwl extension is a BIG step in right direction. It gives you a sense of the quality of the content but also makes you aware of potential bias present. Install it now and let's all do a better job of consuming and sharing content.
• (2017-09-21) Sam Mallikarjunan: I think we can all agree that the way we consume news is broken. Social networks are designed to create self-reinforcing echo chambers. What I love about this extension is that it helps to make me a more informed reader. Not only does it help me understand the quality of the article based on the quality of its citations, but it helps me gain a more complete understanding by suggesting other potential readings. Frankly, this should be a required extension that everyone automatically installs. Let's be honest, none of us have the time to vet the quality of the citations in every article we read, nor can we remember the huge number of authors and understand the context of their credibility. For me, that's part of what makes this extension so indispensable. If you want to to be an informed consumer of information on the internet, add this extension. Other than perhaps getting angry that what you thought was true had more context you didn't know (which is a good thing, if frustrating), you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. And no, I don't work for this company and this isn't a paid review. I love this idea just that much. Can't wait for them to add mobile and social media integrations as well.

Latest issues

• (2019-09-25, v:6.0.4) Artex Jay: Suggestion for app
  I think it would be pretty cool if TheFactual made an RSS feed app for desktop/mobile where it fetches the content that users want as well as show ratings for each story/article. And of course if this is done have a way to sync desktop and mobile app so they don't present you the stories that you already read.
• (2019-08-10, v:5.0.28) Artex Jay: OwlFactor report on political leaning.
  OwlFactor should be able to report the political leaning of any website without the need for an article. Also OwlFactor has no idea what to do with this site it reports nothing: https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2017/12/01/the-way-we-were-climate-and-human-evolution/
• (2019-01-30, v:5.0.10) Steven (Steven): Pop-up...
  I would like the option to disable the 'Not a Reliable News Source' pop-up.
• (2019-01-20, v:5.0.10) Steven (Steven): Turbo Mode
  What does 'Turbo Mode' do?