NewsGuard Consider Using UK ISPs to Warn Users of Bad News Sites

The co-founders of NewsGuard, which analyses and ranks websites in order to identify whether or not they’re trustworthy for news content, are reported to be discussing with broadband ISPs the possibility of introducing a new system that would alert users when they try to access an untrustworthy site.

At present it’s already possible to use the NewsGuard system by installing a plugin for your browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari etc.) and Microsoft even does this by default in Edge, although the feature itself is optional. However, this sort of approach is not without its own issues of accuracy and political sensitivity, as shown when users of Edge were recently warned not to trust the Daily Mail website (Guardian).

Now the team behind NewsGuard hope to go even further and a report in The Guardian claims they’ve begun talks with major broadband ISPs, which could result in an automated system of alerts (e.g. warning pages) being presented to users whenever they attempt to access an untrustworthy news site. Customers would be given the option to turn this on or off, although it’s not yet known whether the feature is to be enabled by default.

At present NewsGuard seems to be more focused upon large mainstream news sites, although it’s unclear how this will work when they squeeze down to focus upon smaller sites and blogs. In any case ISPs have generally tended to resist the notion of becoming gatekeepers for online content, except where law and legislation demand, so it will be interesting to see whether the current talks actually result in a workable service.

On the other hand the Government’s recent Online Harms White Paper has made no secret of its desire to tackle fake news and hate speech, which is one area where the aforementioned approach could find its niche.