PolitEcho

PolitEcho

Visualize the political leaning of your Facebook friends.

What is PolitEcho?
PolitEcho is a revolutionary Chrome extension that clearly demonstrates political inclinations among your Facebook friends, and reveals the political bias found within your Facebook news feed. Utilizing the Facebook pages your friends follow, PolitEcho generates a political score. This score enables you to assess their political leanings while comparing it with your news feed's political bias. Private, secure, and user-friendly, all data processing is done on your device. Aid your understanding of political bias in social media with PolitEcho.
Merlin
Stats
Users: 7,000+
Rating: 3.48 (29)
Version: 1.0.4 (Last updated: 2017-03-20)
Creation date: 2017-03-20
Risk impact: High risk impact
Risk likelihood: Very low risk likelihood
Manifest version: 2
Permissions:
  • tabs
  • https://*.facebook.com/*
  • storage
Size: 359.42K
URLs: Website
Stats date:

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Merlin
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.

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User reviews
User reviews summary
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.
Pros
  • Instructive and insightful graphics.
  • Impressive speed.
  • Easy to install, no junkware.
Cons
  • Stopped working and developer is not responding.
  • Categories for news sources and political figures are considered inaccurate.
  • The app can be unreliable as it only takes into account of well-known US sources.
Most mentioned
  • The tool provides a visual representation of political leanings.
  • Helpful in understanding user's own bias.
  • Classification of news outlets and their associated political bias is questionable.
Recent reviews
LEANED LEFT!!! THEN STOPPED WORKING- GEEZE EVERYTHING IS LIBERAL ON CHROME EXTENSIONS!
by Shannon Knight Shannon Knight, 2022-11-22

Loved it when it worked. Has stopped working recently and no answer from developer.
by Stacia Harger Stacia Harger, 2021-09-01

It's a neat extension at most. Don't take it seriously or you're gonna shove yourself into a bubble very quickly.
by Little Dog Little Dog, 2020-11-10
View all user reviews
Safety
Risk impact

PolitEcho 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 PolitEcho if you trust the publisher.

Risk likelihood

PolitEcho has earned a good reputation and can be trusted.

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Screenshots
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