Microsoft Fights Fake News With NewsGuard Integration in Its Mobile Edge Browser (pcworld.com) 180
In a bid to fight fake news read while on your phone, Microsoft's mobile Edge browser on Android and iOS now includes the NewsGuard extension. From a report: The addition needs to be toggled on within the Edge settings menu to be enabled. Once it is, Edge will display a small shield icon next to the site's URL in the search bar: a green shield with a checkmark for a trusted news site, and a red shield with an exclamation point inside of it for a site that NewsGuard believes isn't always accurate. (Some sites haven't been evaluated, and these will simply show a gray shield.)
So how much (Score:1)
I think somewhere in the $50000-$500000 range.
Re: So how much (Score:1)
Slashdot: prepare to be BANNED.
Nothing (Score:2)
They refuse to accept money from the sites they rate. Which makes sense, because it hardly seems the couple of million dollars would be worth the loss of trust that would cause.
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No way they are going to pass that up.
Just look at adblock plus. You pay them money and they will show your ad.
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They're revenue stream is "subsidized by Microsoft so MS can build marketshare on the mobile browser". You're not going to mess with that for a few grand.
AdBlock Plus had no other revenue stream.
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But, but, but, they have a history of being caught out lying. Oh I get it, newsguard, guarding you from the news, putting the bite on truth and making sure the leading US corporations decide what is and is not the truth for the rest of the world. Now just wandering, why I should consider US corporations as the gospel of truth, the holy church of news, whose words can never be challenged and you are sinners if you do not pray at their alters of truth.
M$ Newsguard, yeah, fuck off M$, seriously think any thi
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But does anyone actually TRUST Microsoft enough to believe they're an appropriate arbiter of 'true news'?
Never mind that 'fake news' is now the exact same debate as the news topic itself in most cases. While it seems obvious to most people what would and wouldn't be 'fake news' that obviousness generally exists only in their personal perspective (and with the like-minded people they surround themselves with). There are countless examples these days where both sides know their opinio^^^^^^ facts are 'obvio
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So, how much do you think it would cost for sites to pay M$ to trust it. I think somewhere in the $50000-$500000 range.
They can pay ms as much as they want. Newsguard is a seperate company.
IE? (Score:2)
First hilarious casualty (Score:4, Informative)
The UK Daily Mail, a well-known source of ill-informed and reactionary garbage.
Not even close to the big fish. (Score:1)
- The fact-checks behind 'The Daily Show's' 50 Fox news 'lies'
By Lauren Carroll, Aaron Sharockman on Thursday, February 26th, 2015 at 3:00 p.m.
The Daily Show posted a Vine Wednesday titled, "50 Fox News lies in 6 seconds."
We’ve fact-checked almost all of the statements they cited. For the record, we originally counted 49 claims, not 50. The Daily Show said No. 50 was left off due to a technical error. They've updated their Vine, which we've included here.
* * *
1. "In July 2010 the government said small
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And yet they're still far more truthful than CNN.
You keep telling yourself that. #MAGA!
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NO no no no no no noonononono!!! My xyz news corp only tells the truth!
Didn't you hear that lil timmy fell down the well? They have video implicating lassie. It's extremely obvious and anyone who doubts it is a nazi, will be immediately unfriended/blocked, and outed on social media (ya know, from an account they can't see bc of the block) about how much of a terrible person they are so their job, spouse, children, friends, and pets can abandon them forever. /s
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The UK Daily Mail, a well-known source of ill-informed and reactionary garbage.
And it's still one of the only sources in both the US and Canada that will cover topics in our own countries that the media(NBC/CBS/ABC/USA Today/Wapo in the US, and CBC, CTV, Global, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star in Canada), refuse to cover for various reasons. Mostly because "it makes illegals look bad" or "somethingsomething dats racist" crap.
Re: First hilarious casualty (Score:2)
That doesn't make it a good source. Their hysterical bullshit about vaccines causing autism is a case in point but there are many others.
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The UK Daily Mail, a well-known source of ill-informed and reactionary garbage.
So for once, MS has made something that works. Jokes aside, NewsGuard isn't from MicroSoft, they've just included it by default in Edge. NewsGuard is an independent organisation founded by a pair of American lawyers and media entrepreneurs in 2018 that has criteria for judging the trustworthiness of news sites. The 1 star reviews for Chrome involve the words "Leftists" and "Neo Liberal" so that's a good sign the extension is pretty accurate.
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So we're supposed to trust a bunch of LAWYERS to decide what news is real vs fake? ... and you blame the 1-star reviews on, well it doesn't matter, does it?
Re: An Irony (Score:1)
I think your tinfoil hat has given you aluminium poisoning
Re: An Irony (Score:2)
Why would I bother wading through all that drivel more than once?
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Why would I bother wading through all that drivel more than once?
What, you don't want to spend hours researching and refuting each point just so he can call you a shill and move on?
Better yet, a small tweak (Score:2)
We should simplify this and instead provide a liberal or conservative flag. Unfortunately many people value political implications over the truth. It's the sad reality of living in a post-fact world.
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It's not liberals or conservatives you have to worry about. It's the progressives, who just like the communists of yesteryear are lining up to redefine words and make sure you're guilty of a hate crime.
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You make a good point.
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No, it's people who make generalized comments about a group they don't like that you have to worry about, lumping them together under one label.
Really? So who was leading the charge labeling people nazi's? It wasn't liberals, it wasn't conservatives either, or libertarians. But the plethora if idiots that call themselves progressives. How about the mantra that disagreement is violence/hate speech/etc? Same deal. How about claiming that free speech is violence? Noticing a trend here yet? Like how actual words that "mean bad stuff" are watered down the point that they become useless.
Remember when you could simply use godwins law, when someone
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"Well, what do you think all these new censorship tools & systems are really for?"
Narrative control?
https://www.mintpressnews.com/... [mintpressnews.com]
"it will soon become almost impossible to avoid this neocon-approved news site’s ranking systems on any technological device sold in the United States ... the latest venture to result from the partnership between Steven Brill and Louis Gordon Crovitz"
https://www.newsguardtech.com/... [newsguardtech.com]
"Our Advisory Board - Tom Ridge, the first Secretary of Homeland Security (George W.
From NewsGuard's site: Why Should You Trust Us? (Score:5, Interesting)
Because we are trained journalists who have spent our careers dedicated to the profession. We care deeply about reliable journalismâ(TM)s pivotal role in democracy. (In case youâ(TM)re wondering, our experienced journalists come from diverse backgrounds and have no political axes to grind.)
Because you can see the credentials and backgrounds of everyone responsible for every NewsGuard reliability rating and Nutrition Label that you read. For the names and biographies of our staff and contributors, click here.
Because we have an ethics and conflicts of interest policy to which all of our analysts and editors have to agree. You can read that policy here.
Because we are totally transparent about how we make all of our decisions. Our Nutrition Label write-ups explain what is behind our decisions. We disclose and explain in detail the nine criteria we use to rate each news site on its journalistic practices. Weâ(TM)re not a black box algorithm.
Because we make concerted attempts to get comment from every websiteâ(TM)s editor or manager before we write anything negative about the site, and always include the comment in our Nutrition Labels (or make changes after weighing the comment and realizing our initial conclusion was wrong). Algorithms donâ(TM)t call for comment.
Because we will post any complaints from website proprietors about anything we have written about them. And we will answer them publicly â" and when warranted will make corrections, publicly, after we consider the complaint. You can read our policy for correcting errors or mistakes here.
Because we accept no fees from the news websites we rate. (Our revenue comes from the platforms and search engines for licensing our ratings in order to include them in their feeds and search results.) We rate all news and information sites among the approximately 4,500 sites responsible for 98% of the online engagement in English in the United States.
Because we do not collect any personal information of any kind from those who download and use our browser plug-ins. None. You can read our privacy policy here.
Because bringing more information to people about the news sources they encounter online is our only business. Our success depends entirely on being trustworthy and reliable.
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In other words, not even worth the electrons it's printed on. [mintpressnews.com]
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Wow! Thanks for that link.
Mod parent +1 Informative
Re:From NewsGuard's site: Why Should You Trust Us? (Score:5, Insightful)
My policy is to never trust someone who is making a point of trying to convince me they are trustworthy.
Trustworthiness should be evident in your actions and no amount of assurances will be enough if that isn't true.
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Okay, say I have a new P2P technology I want to deploy, or end-to-end encrypted chat app (that has some feature missing from the current offerings.) What can I do to make you trust me, vs. explaining who I am? Like, it's great in theory, but I'm not sure how it works in practice.
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In practice, not everyone is as paranoid as I am. If your product provides enough value, some others will be willing to take the risk that you and your technology are trustworthy. Your starting user pool will be a mix of people who already trust you and these naive fools ... err .... early adopters.
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Trustworthiness should be evident in your actions
Their actions are to tell you something. What basis do you then have for trustworthy? Remember that people's pre-concieved biases will then determine trustworthiness based on what ever you already believe to be true.
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Why are there so many people here with reading comprehension problems?
He didn't say "distrust everyone". He said "be wary of trusting someone who goes to suspicious length to try to convince you how trustworthy they are".
Imagine someone being pulled over by a cop and immediately starts trying to convince that cop that there's not a dead body in their trunk. Guess who's trunk is immediately getting searched?
And when they don't find a body they will believe you when you say the spare tire isn't filled with drugs.
Oh, and one more thing (Score:1)
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My question is... will the site red-flag websites that are leaning in their political direction, but are making up white lies, or will they let someone who is trying to step over the line with vague stuff get their way.
I hope that they are able to call out anyone, regardless of side, trying to actively lie, or passively misrepresent stuff. However, I have doubts... I have lost respect for journalism as a whole, as formerly top notch news agencies have devolved into propaganda presses... and this is both si
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So I haven't installed the extension, but I'm considering it. There are a couple things that make me feel good about the concept.
First, this "why should you trust us" is actually a pretty good list of rules. If they abide by them, it'll be pretty sweet. The moment they break them, or appear to be bending them for a bias, they'll have lost all trust.
Second, based on their samples [newsguardtech.com] it looks like you get a lot more than a little red flag -- you get a bunch of data backing up their decision, and can make your ow
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First, this "why should you trust us" is actually a pretty good list of rules. If they abide by them, it'll be pretty sweet. The moment they break them, or appear to be bending them for a bias, they'll have lost all trust.
Their rules seem pretty vague to me. Here's all I need to know to distrust News Guard: apparently they rated a Web site called "The Palmer Report" (which I've never heard of before). The Palmer Report complained, and News Guard published the complaint. Good for them, acknowledging all two complaints they received, but the response from News Guard is really stunningly inadequate [newsguardtech.com]. The Palmer Report made 12 specific points. The response from News Guard was, "this letter does not point to any specific errors."
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"Because we are trained journalists who have spent our careers dedicated to the profession."
That is as good a reason to dismiss "NewsGuard" as another horribly biased "journalistic" piece of nonsense. Look at how many "journalists" utterly and completely misfired on the Covington boys. CNN even mistranscribed Nathan Philips words in their own video to claim he was a Vietnam veteran when he never set foot out of the US according to the Marines authorities. Oh, wait, this is the CNN that has repeatedly been s
Miscreant-o-soft CENSORSHIP right in your browser (Score:1)
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Self-defeating inverse relationship (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with this NewsGuard extension is that the more likely someone is to need it, the less likely they are to want it (and the more likely they are to actively dislike the idea of it).
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It seems wrong to blame the media for reporting lies governments told that could not be independently verified. CNN, BBC etc. don't have their own weapons inspectors. Do you blame them for repeating "no obstruction!" and "no collusion!" too?
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First of all, did they report that Iraq has WMDs or that various intelligence agencies have stated that Iraq has WMDs? I'm betting it's the exclusively the latter. And how would the BBC or CNN verify the existence of WMDs in any case? Try to send a journalist to find and sneak into Iraq's secret military bases?
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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... as opposed to the NeverTrumpers pushing Iranian propaganda from the NY Times? Or are you comparing them to the Chinese apologists at CNN?
So what is Fake News? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who determines what is "fake news"?
This should scare people. Don't they realize we are ASKING businesses/governments to make judgement calls of what is fake news? Translation: People are asking these entities to censor what they feel is fake news.
This seems like a dangerous idea to me. Heavens know a business will not call something it doesn't like to be fake news. Nor would a government who doesn't agree with certain ideas would call something fake news.
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Who determines what is "fake news"?
NYT, WaPo, Guardian
That's all you need to know.
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WaPo runs anti trump stories daily because during the election Trump threatened to revoke their press passes.
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Buzzfeed story, they ran with it.
I looked at it and assumed it was false, read it anyways. TWO unnamed sources, that's far more believable than one unnamed source.
I assumed it was bullshit, I was right NYT, WaPo, Guardian all wrong.
I have no sources to verify, I have no journalism degree, I have no credentials, yet I am better than your "best".
Let me repeat my frequent statement. PopeRatzo is a moron. He knows the news sources are fake, knows they lie, and yet here he is posting that they are more trustw
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Yeah, like we need yet another group to say what is real and what isn't. Maybe if critical thinking was taught in schools again then people could make their own decisions. I know it does suck having to read stuff from many different sites (from diverse viewpoints of course) and forming your own opinion from all the "facts", but better than relying on somebody else making that value call.
Yeah, sure (Score:5, Informative)
I guess Microsoft is competing with Google in the Wokelympics.
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And in your 66 years you've learned zero about how to validate sources. Did you even bother to go and see what sort of affiliations the people making that assessment have? I'll give you a hint - it's not all from the left. Now I know that's an impossibility for you but for the rest of us we can see that when a pool of people from a broad political spectrum all agree that a site is untrustworthy, we're pretty comfortable with it.
You continue to wear your blinders. It makes your world that much more comfo
I find such things helpful (Score:2)
Anything it claims is untrue, should probably be paid extra attention to so that you can get a sense of what the mainstream media is trying to hide.
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I am so happy to see you confirmed you see those that oppose your comments as other than sheep, unlike yourself.
Very brave to admit such at the same time you are making as ridiculous statements they were.
Bigotry was not new to him at election time, but you seem to have only started paying attention to him after that point. A lot must seem new to you these days.
Re:Thanks, but no thanks (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, Breitbart has a right-leaning bias, but it's like an antidote to the main stream media's false and biased reporting.
An "antidote" is a medicine you give to counteract a poison.
What you describe is countering one poison (what you call MSM's biased reporting) with another (what you call Breitbart's bias). That's not an antidote. I don't think there's any case of using one poison to cure another poison, other than homeopathy. In the absence of antidotes, I think the only thing we have us dilution -- i.e. counter biased reporting by clinging to news sources that are as unbiased as you can find.
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Overall Breitbart is trash. Maybe you can sift through it to find something useful, but I wouldn't recommend bothering unless you had already exhausted dozens of other news sources.
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I'm sorry but I'll need to see your long form birth certificate before I can consider your opinion as valid.
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Fake News separates people. How do I know you are not generating Fake News right now?
I don't know what the end goal is, but this Fake News thing is an agenda of some sort.
Back in 2008, I had a sudden realization that I misinterpreted. See, the price of rice was going up. Everywhere. The BBC did a VERY extensive story on it and did some researching in the story. Nobody from the farmers to the auction houses, to the end consumer, was benefiting from the rise in price... so where was the money going?
And that i
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Thats some nice OS level censorship.
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How did you get from optional browser plug-in to OS level censorship by NATO?
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Not much use if the users interaction with the WWW lets them find news that are not approved?
So the ability to detect what site a users is "reading" and "watching" is going to have to be done in real time.
Not much good if the user can just change a browser and escape to news thats not approved.
So someone has to approve and rate thousands of news and information sites and ensure the browser never allows the user to see one
Re:Thanks, but no thanks (Score:4, Funny)
Wow, Brietbart shills have a lot of mod points today.
And of course the anontrolls are out (Score:2)
Uhh . . thanks for trying? (Score:1)
The people who would have this app installed and be included to enable this in settings represent the smallest market share also are probably the demographic least affected by Fake News.
people-older-than-65-share-the-most-fake-news-study-finds [slashdot.org]
For some hilarity, I would love to see the telemetry data on this. 0.00000000001% of market share.
Thanks for trying Microsoft, but this
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If you want to believe it.... (Score:2)
This comes down to:
If you want to believe it, no amount of other people telling you its fake is going to change things.
I wish all people would approach all new with skepticism and do a bit of homework before believing mydumbnews.com, but that isn't going to happen.
Shouldn't news reporting be better? (Score:1)
Maybe we should stop giving credibility to bloggers, journalism hacks, and stories that lack any factual presentations. Some people seem OK with tabloid style journalism just because it supports their belief system. Doesn't matter if a hint of it is true, factual or has any real credible sources. So the solution is fake news filters? Maybe demand better journalism would be a better option.
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Maybe we should ditch the 24/7 news cycle, too. Where does this need for breaking news come from, anyway? Very, very few stories suffer for being held back for a couple days or a week to confirm facts, or to spend time putting the story in context.
All the Edge users jubilate (Score:2)
Both of them.
Censorship is stupid (Score:1)
Now, if the government and people are afraid too many will be fooled...then all that money they take from us by force to indoctrinate our kids must be getting wasted doing that instead of teaching critical thinking and other useful skills - we make them so stupid they take out huge non recourse loans and overpay to get degrees in things that there are no jobs doing, in an economy that now requires every adult in a household to hav
Ummmm (Score:2)
This seems like a good feature to make their browser more attractive. Do they still report everything you do and everywhere you go back to Microsoft?
Where will The Onion fit in? (Score:4, Interesting)
They aren't real news, and they aren't fake news....
they're satirical news for purposes of humor, with such absurd topics that any literate person should immediately recognize the article content as satire past the first paragraph or so, even if they were living under a rock and didn't know what TheOnion was. Are they going to get the dreaded "Fake News Warning" anyways?
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from the newsguard site;
"orange rated sites indicate satire sites"
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We have a sitting Congressperson telling us that the world is going to end in 12 years due to global warming. How exactly do we tell news from satire these days?
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Which of TheOnion political headlines sounds more believable to you?
Defiant Pelosi Begins Swimming To Afghanistan After Trump Denies Use Of Government Plane
Lincoln Memorial Empty After Former President’s Statue Furloughed
New Hampshire Legislature Passes Bill Naming Fentanyl State Opiate
Presumptuous Congressional Freshman Thinks She Can Just Come In And Represent Constituents
Poll Finds 100% Of Americans Blame Shutdown Entirely On Colorado Representative Scott Tipton
John Bolton Insists Iran Likely Harbo
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I am guessing The Onion will be called a legit news source. Here is an eerie example of their prescience, note that the article was written before any of the shit they mention happened.
https://politics.theonion.com/... [theonion.com]
The news that got approved (Score:3)
With an OS level GUI direct over your browser on your smart phone.
They seem shady (Score:5, Insightful)
For a tool that claims they care about transparency [newsguardtech.com] they really do their best to prevent you from looking up a list of sites and their ratings.
If anyone is interested, I dug into the code for the chrome extension and grabbed their API URL so you can look up sites without having to install their extension:
- Trusted: CNN [newsguardtech.com]
- Trusted: Daily Caller [newsguardtech.com]
- Trusted: The Independent [newsguardtech.com]
- Trusted: Mother Jones [newsguardtech.com] (lol)
- Trusted: Huffington Post [newsguardtech.com] (lol)
- Trusted: The Daily Beast [newsguardtech.com] (lol)
- Trusted: BuzzFeed News [newsguardtech.com] (ok this is just sad)
- Not Trusted: Breitbart [newsguardtech.com]
- Not Trusted: Daily Mail [newsguardtech.com]
Looks fair and balanced to me.
Re:They seem shady (Score:4, Informative)
On the other hand, they aren't wrong in some cases:
From the Daily Mail results: "The site repeatedly publishes false information and has been forced to pay damages in numerous high-profile cases."
Yup.
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My list was by no means supposed to be exhaustive. My intention was to give everyone else access to the API so they can form their own opinions. I suppose I could write up a script to generate a google sheet from every news source on google news / slashdot / reddit, or something, but I'm far too lazy.
If it makes you feel any better, I'll drop the dailyKos one here.
- Not Trusted: Daily Kos [newsguardtech.com]
Propaganda (Score:2)
More censorship (Score:2)
Not a Bad Idea (Score:1)
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So they go direct into the OS to control the browser and watch every link.
Click some news and an OS level GUI drops down over any browser used.
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To win over hearts and minds the idea is to go to the OS direct.
A GUI will drop down over any browser and alter the way the user interacts with the WWW on their own computer.
That will remove any ability to view and enjoy funny memes about wars, politics, to LOL at politicians who cant give a speech.
NGO/gov/mil/NATO and think tank control at the OS level over every link and OS connects to.
C