Raising awareness of quality and responsibility in online media

In their relentless quest to attract readers, online media often publish content that is negative, sensationalist and manipulative. Page traffic, ad exposure and revenues are more important than content quality and responsibility towards the reader. Both content and information design are optimized to perpetuate the vicious cycle: First, an addictive algorithm repeatedly triggers curiosity, after which outrageous click-bait raises red flags in our brains. The process continues by confirming biases, tapping into fear and anger, entrenching opinions and ideas — estranging us from our fellow human beings. If that wasn’t enough, this kind of media is knowingly wasting our time. It keeps us busy, glued to our screens, absorbed in anger.

Such content influences opinion, stimulates consumption, or coerces people in one way or another. It lacks quality attributes, such as validity of information, traceability of arguments, separation of facts and opinion. It lacks a wider view, it deliberatly over-simplifies topic matter, and ignores essential complexities.

The content providers work with sophisticated manipulation techniques, tapping, among others, our cognitive reward system and the human tendency towards laziness. Accordingly, readers fall in the “can’t stop reading” trap but without getting sound information. In sum, people continue harmful reading behavior by feeding their brain with negative, manipulating, superficial and short-lived information.

Radicalization and censorship come into play here. As presented by sociologist Zeynep Tufekci, modern censorship works by creating confusion, cynicism, mistrust. This leads to resignation and disempowerment. As such, media using these methods form a direct threat to democracy, social cohesion, and the mental well-being of the reader.

But how does one become a more self-determined reader? By filtering content, by assessing its quality, and by interrupting digressive reading behavior.

Awareness creates change. That’s why Hetzblocker Media Safeguard helps readers become aware of publishers with bad media practices. It uncovers content from problematic publishers and media organizations. This helps the reader to become aware of manipulation, and allows readers a conscious decision whether to view the content.

Hetzblocker Media Safeguard: Available for Firefox and Chrome

How does the extension work?

Hetzblocker Media Safeguard is a browser extension that flags web pages based on a block list. This is a curated collection of web addresses. An entry in the block list can be either a full domain, which covers an entire organization, or a single URL, covering one exact page. The first are used for flagging entire organizations, the latter for flagging a specific author, account, or blog.

Visits to flagged web pages are marked as dangerous, and links to such web pages are clearly indicated by color, type setting, and icon. This offers the reader the insight of looming danger, without being exposed to it. This allows the reader to re-assess the quality of the current page by looking at the referenced sources, for example.

What qualifies a web page for the block list?

A web page can only be included in the block list when the flagged content is published publicly, and is intended as such.

Secondly, a web page is flagged if one or more of the following rules apply:

Repeating patterns of hatred, propaganda, or rabble-rousing occur.
Repeating patterns of exclusion, such as racism, sexism, and shaming occur.
The content does not follow sound and comprehensive reasoning.
The content pursues deliberately hidden aims, such as generating revenue, data collection, political influencing, or the dispersal of misinformation.
The content presents provable lies as truth.
Opinions or beliefs are being presented as proven truth.
The content is accompanied by a comment section where any of the above rules apply.

Contributing to Hetzblocker Media Safeguard

The rules and the block list are not perfect, nor are they complete. This is a first step, and both should be improved upon by the community. Hetzblocker Media Safeguard’s community is a place for open-minded, constructive people to develop a shared vision of quality and responsibility in online media.

Contributions are encouraged and welcome, which is why the extension is available as free libre open-source software. Hetzblocker Media Safeguard’s source code is available under a GPL 3 open source license. Collaboration takes place on GitHub at https://github.com/marklindhout/hetzblocker, and you are free to clone, fork and contribute code to the repository as you please.

The block list is curated by the Hetzblocker Media Safeguard team. If you would like to join the curation team, you can send an email or open a request on the issue tracker at: https://github.com/marklindhout/hetzblocker/issues

We hope to see you there!