PolitEcho
PolitEcho Chrome Extension: Visualize Your Facebook Friends' Political Biases
Extension stats
- tabs
- https://*.facebook.com/*
- storage
Ranking
Other platforms
Extension summary
Is your news feed a bubble?
Find out how polarizing the content on your news feed is when compared to your friends as a whole.
What is PolitEcho? PolitEcho shows you the political biases of your Facebook friends and news feed. The app assigns each of your friends a score based on our prediction of their political leanings then displays a graph of your friend list. Then it calculates the political bias in the content of your news feed and compares it with the bias of your friends list to highlight possible differences between the two.
How do I use it? PolitEcho is a Google Chrome extension. Click on the button above to find PolitEcho’s Google Chrome store page and click the “Add to Chrome” button to install PolitEcho on your computer. Once it is installed, simply log into Facebook and click on the PolitEcho icon in your navigation bar to get started.
What does PolitEcho do with my Facebook data? PolitEcho never sends your personal information to any external services, and your results stay private unless you choose to share them publicly. PolitEcho will need to look up some basic information from your news feed and friends list. In particular, it will examine what pages your friends have liked to estimate their political leaning and the sources for the posts on your news feed to figure out the relative bias of your news feed. All processing is done client-side, so data never leaves your computer.
How does the political analysis work? Your friends' political ratings are based on the political Facebook pages they like. We compare your friends liked pages to a database of Facebook pages that have been rated for their liberal/conservative bias and then compute a score based on any matches. Hovering over a person's data point will show you the reasoning behind the app's prediction.
See moreUser reviews
These summaries are automatically generated weekly using AI based on recent user reviews.
Chrome Web Store does not verify user reviews, so some user reviews may be inaccurate,
spammy, or outdated.- Interesting concept that provides insights into personal biases and social structures.
- Fast and easy to install without junkware.
- Graphical representations are informative and insightful.
- Users appreciate the attempt to keep a balance of information.
- Extension has stopped working for many users.
- Misclassification of news sources leads to skewed perceptions.
- Only well-known US news sources are included, limiting usability for international users.
- Lack of clarity regarding the categorization and confidence levels of sources.
- The extension is neat but underdeveloped and needs more work.
- The categorization of news sources is often seen as crude or misleading.
- Users report that it sometimes fails to function as intended.
User reviews
Shannon Knight, 2022-11-22 
Stacia Harger, 2021-09-01 
Little Dog, 2020-11-10Extension safety
Risk impact
PolitEcho requires some sensitive permissions that could impact your browser and data security. Exercise caution before installing.
Risk likelihood
PolitEcho has earned a good reputation and can be trusted.
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