NewsLens

SUMMARY

OUR MISSION:

THE GLOBAL CHALLENGES COMPETITION

News Lens was created by two students at the University of St Andrews to combat the issue of ‘fake news’ and misinformation. Our mission is to harness the power of technology, using it to prevent misleading or false information from influencing politics.

OUR APPROACH:

1. To identify potentially misleading sources of information.

2. To educate readers and help them become resilient to ‘fake news’.

How does News Lens work?

News Lens is a browser extension for Chrome that searches all links on a given web-page for references to unreliable news sources, checking against a manually compiled list of domains obtained from OpenSources.

Whenever a link appears on your screen that references a potential source of ‘fake news’, News Lens highlights the link in red. You’ll see a magnifying glass on either side of the source in question. Hovering over the link will reveal a text-box that outlines reasons for warning readers.

News Lens targets the spread of misinformation on online platforms, particularly social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit.

Download the News Lens extension today!

The latest version of NewsLens is available on the Chrome web and is currently being used by 50 active users. The initial version was launched on 2018-04-13.

HOW TO INSTALL NewsLens FROM A CRX FILE

1. Download NewsLens CRX file
2. NOTE: Sometimes the browser may block downloading / installing CRX file from outside the Chrome Web Store. If so, you may need to download the ZIP file instead
3. In the URL bar, go to chrome://extensions
4. Enable Developer mode

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