Josh Hendrickson
NewsGuard, the service that rates news sites for trustworthiness and transparency, is now free for all Microsoft Edge users. The service was free for mobile Edge users (iOS and Android), but now the Edge desktop extension is free too. Chrome and Firefox users will still have to pay $2.95 a month.
NewsGuard’s goal is to help you determine if you can trust the news you are reading. It rates news sites on several criteria, like if it repeatedly spreads false news or is open to admitting mistakes. If you happen to be on a satire site, it won’t grade the site but mark it as satire, so you’re fully aware.
It hasn’t evaluated every site yet (cause the internet is large), but if you are on a website it looks at, you’ll get a green, yellow, or red badge based on its score. If you want to know more, you can click to find out the details.
Transparency and trustworthiness are laudable goals, but you might be reticent to pay $2.95 a month for a service that itself requires a certain amount of trust. Now, thanks to a partnership with Microsoft, all Edge users can use NewsGuard for free.
Microsoft already added NewsGuard to the iOS and Android versions of Edge last year. But now the desktop extension is free to use as well. You’ll have to download it from the Microsoft Store. Chrome and Firefox users will still have to pay, but if you have both multiple browsers installed anyway, you could install the Edge version to check on sites when you have questions.
