The mechanism
Four signals per outlet, aggregated from trust-weighted reader votes, with distribution visibility and brigading defenses. No editor in the loop.
Star rating + bias slider + accuracy radio + one sentence. Quick path takes under 30 seconds. Detailed reviews (dimension ratings, evidence URLs, pros/cons) are opt-in.
Your vote weight scales with review history quality — outlets reviewed, helpful votes received, consistency across the bias spectrum. New accounts count less than long-tenured reviewers.
Every outlet page shows the full vote histogram, not just the median. Polarized outlets look polarized. Consensus outlets look consensus. Outliers self-disclose.
No single coordinated day can shift the public score more than about 5 points. Sustained shifts require sustained crowds — not pile-on raids.
Overall trust score (0–100)
Composite of factual accuracy + bias moderation + transparency. Trust-weighted across reviewers. Scaled 0–100 for legibility.
Political bias (7-point spectrum)
Far Left, Left, Lean Left, Center, Lean Right, Right, Far Right. Computed via weighted median (not mean) for brigading resistance. Confidence levels: Hidden (<20 votes), Low (20–99), Moderate (100–499), High (500+).
Accuracy score (0–100)
Reader-aggregate "how often does this outlet's factual claims hold up under verification?". Normalized to 0–100. Labels: Unreliable, Questionable, Mixed, Mostly Accurate, Highly Accurate.
Crowd tags
Community-submitted labels (clickbait, well-researched, well-sourced, opinion-heavy, etc). Each tag appears publicly only after crossing a voting threshold.
A 5-editor team (AllSides) can rate ~600 outlets in 10 years. A single-researcher operation (MBFC) can hit ~5,000 with consistency questions. A paid journalist staff (NewsGuard) caps at ~10,000 behind a paywall.
Crowd-sourced ratings with proper defenses scale without those caps. The trade-off: brigading is a real risk. Our three-layer defense (trust weighting + distribution visibility + temporal smoothing) is documented in the methodology page and explored in depth in this post.
Three ways to start: browse the bias map, take the 2-minute quiz, or paste a news URL on /rate.