Balancer

Analyzes your newsreading history, shows your balance.

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Stats

This extension was removed from Chrome Web Store on 2022-12-25

By: http://balancestudy.org/balancer

Users: 143

Rating: 2.50 (6)

Version: 0.6.4 (Last updated: 2015-06-04)

Creation date: 2015-06-04

Risk impact: High risk impact

Risk likelihood: High risk likelihood

Manifest version: 2

Permissions:

http://www.balancestudy.org/*
https://balancestudy.org/*
http://balancestudy.org/*
history
tabs
storage

Size: 425.98K

URLs: Website

Stats date:

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Summary

Analyze keywords

Balancer analyses your web browsing to show you the political slant of your reading history. If you get way out of balance, we may even give you reading suggestions.

HOW IT WORKS Balancer classifies pages based on their address: does this source tend to get linked to by mostly liberals or conservatives? Is it regularly visited by liberals, conservatives, or a mix? This is imperfect, but in aggregate, it's pretty good.

YOU SHOULD KNOW This is a research project. Balancer transmits a portion of your browsing history — sites matching a list of known news sites — to us. We do not ask for any personally identifiable information and cannot link your history back to you, only to your extension.

After you install the extension, you'll be asked to complete a brief (4 minute) survey. This helps us with our research. You may stop participation at any time by uninstalling the extension.

If you have questions, you can email us at [email protected].

User reviews

It's a great idea but it's poorly executed. The conservative news suggestions are horrible. Breitbart, Rush Limbaugh, Human Events and Drudge are among the least credible political sites. Suggest instead WSJ, The American Conservative, National Review, Reason, etc. There's enough conservative outlets with integrity to not have to point viewers to journalism cancer.

Phillip Reed, 2016-11-29

Getting balanced information is more nuanced than this App allows. Many news sources, which many would consider unbiased, are considered to have liberal bias (and yes, the mainstream media does a pretty good job of keeping bias out of their reports). However, if you are interested in whether you are getting a balanced view of world events, and take the above into account, pretty good app.

Patrick Gauch, 2012-11-18

I think it's getting more accurate the longer it's installed. At first it was leaning heavily right (even though I would rate such content visited at about 10%). However, it's been showing me mostly balanced for the past week or so.

by A Google user, 2012-10-12

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Safety

Risk impact

Balancer is risky to use as it requires a number of sensitive permissions that can potentially harm your browser and steal your data. Exercise caution when installing this extension. Review carefully before installing. We recommend that you only install Balancer if you trust the publisher.