CRX id
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Description from extension meta
Analyzes your newsreading history, shows your balance.
Image from store
Description from store
Balancer analyses your web browsing to show you the political slant of your reading history. If you get way out of balance, we may even give you reading suggestions.
HOW IT WORKS
Balancer classifies pages based on their address: does this source tend to get linked to by mostly liberals or conservatives? Is it regularly visited by liberals, conservatives, or a mix? This is imperfect, but in aggregate, it's pretty good.
YOU SHOULD KNOW
This is a research project. Balancer transmits a portion of your browsing history — sites matching a list of known news sites — to us. We do not ask for any personally identifiable information and cannot link your history back to you, only to your extension.
After you install the extension, you'll be asked to complete a brief (4 minute) survey. This helps us with our research. You may stop participation at any time by uninstalling the extension.
If you have questions, you can email us at [email protected].
Latest reviews
- (2016-11-29) Phillip Reed: It's a great idea but it's poorly executed. The conservative news suggestions are horrible. Breitbart, Rush Limbaugh, Human Events and Drudge are among the least credible political sites. Suggest instead WSJ, The American Conservative, National Review, Reason, etc. There's enough conservative outlets with integrity to not have to point viewers to journalism cancer.
- (2012-11-18) Patrick Gauch: Getting balanced information is more nuanced than this App allows. Many news sources, which many would consider unbiased, are considered to have liberal bias (and yes, the mainstream media does a pretty good job of keeping bias out of their reports). However, if you are interested in whether you are getting a balanced view of world events, and take the above into account, pretty good app.
- (2012-10-12) I think it's getting more accurate the longer it's installed. At first it was leaning heavily right (even though I would rate such content visited at about 10%). However, it's been showing me mostly balanced for the past week or so.
- (2012-10-05) Jake Turner: Not sure how you classify your data so I hope you read this. I spent 15 hours on MSNBC this week roughly, 3 hours on Huffington post, and 3 hours on Fox News and my figure is about to fall off the wire from Red???? Sorry MSNBC left or center maybe, Huff left for sure, Fox right for sure. If anything I should have more blue than anything.
- (2012-09-28) Daniel Pearson: the way they classify sites is kind of weird. Unless something is a netroots blog, its rightwing. ABC News is rightwing, CNN is rightwing, Reuters is rightwing. None of that is remotely close to true. Unless you spend most of your time reading netroots blogs, it will show you as a conservative reader.
Latest issues
- (2016-11-27, v:0.6.4) Terry Klotz: Current?
Is this still active? Do you plan on updating the sites tracked? Been using "http://thelibertydaily.com/" for years. - (2012-10-05, v:0.4.7) Jake Turner: Data gathering.
Not sure how you classify your data so I hope you read this. I spent 15 hours on MSNBC this week roughly, 3 hours on Huffington post, and 3 hours on Fox News and my figure is about to fall off the wire from Red???? Sorry MSNBC left or center maybe, Huff left for sure, Fox right for sure. If anything I should have more blue than anything.