Microsoft

People who don’t use Chrome evidently need forced warnings about the Daily Mail

Microsoft rolled out something a few days ago where mobile versions of the Edge browser will warn you that the journalistic integrity of the Daily Mail is not spotless.

The browser will throw up a warning about that the popular website generally fails to maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability, and while the Daily Mail is not particularly thrilled about this, although the number of people using Edge on mobile going to the Daily Mail is probably about 11, this does raise some interesting questions.

Photoshopped bird
Photoshop bird is photoshop – fake news

Who thought journalistic integrity was a mobile browser feature that needed to happen? Are the 0.4% of Windows Phone users going to be swayed against reading stories about obviously altered video of heat-seeking flip flops? Animals that got stuck in things?

The plugin/code/whatever is owned by another company called NewsGuard who says all complaints should be directed at them and not Microsoft. Microsoft of course being the people who put the plugin in and don’t evidently tell you it’s not a Microsoft plugin, it’s a third party’s code enabled by default.

I honestly worry that Microsoft pushing a third party journalistic integrity plugin by default is a little overreaching. The people who want to believe tripe are going to believe tripe. Hell, I know the Daily Fail’s record and I wouldn’t quite take MS warnings seriously as the crowned owners of the most opinionated news network (by Pew research) and the people who think Windows 10 is a really good idea.

Of course, opinions don’t mean bias nor indicate lack of integrity, but without the very clear ability to see how this random forced plugin came to the opinion that a site doesn’t maintain journalistic integrity… I’m sort of anti-plugin. Then again, that’s just my opinion , man.

Evidently that “See the full Nutrition Label” button is a link NewsGuard’s reasoning. Yup, it is, after I wrote most of this article. OK, so I’m supposed to think the Daily Mail is real and be able to understand that a nutrition label button links me to a list of their journalistic fails? Wha? It’s a little clearer in the browser plugin:

NewsGuard - for some reason we don't have an alt tag here
Chrome version of the plugin, I installed it as I don’t have a Windows Phone with Edge to play with.

Should you want to try it out, there’s a Chrome version of the plugin that you get to choose to install. You can see what they’re claiming about the Daily Fail here.

[via Fark]
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Paul E King

Paul King started with GoodAndEVO in 2011, which merged with Pocketables, and as of 2018 he's evidently the owner. He lives in Nashville, works at a film production company, is married with two kids. Facebook | Twitter | Donate | More posts by Paul | Subscribe to Paul's posts

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