Fact Checker

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The FIRST community-driven fact-checking platform! Flag incorrect or fake news articles wherever they are published for all to see!•View your and others fact-checking annotations on any web page!
•Get direct links to evidence documents and data that either support or contradict assertions
•Full citations for any published source: news, scholarly, video, audio, etc.; online or off
•Fully Internationalized (i18n) - suss-out any page in any language or script (for now, menu items, etc., are still in English)

It's time to get exCited!

Our Fact Checker browser extension is the only workable fact-checker software of any kind. Combining a wiki with a browser extension, it's just the latest "no duh" great idea that can't be beat, so install it now and get on the right page of history and current events!

**The Basics**

The fact checker works by watching for links that are known to have been fact-checked. If a fact-checked link is on a page, it will have a CiteEvidence icon to the left of it letting you know that the page the link points to has been fact-checked. When you go to that page, and if Auto-connect is on, the Fact Checker will download the evidence for all the SUS and create a footnote next to each of them which, when hovered over with the mouse, pops-up the evidence bubble displaying the sources cited as evidence for that SUS. Neat-o!

The Fact Checker local MicroDB (in your browser) can store up to 2 million URL "hashes" per 2 MB RAM. This maximum size can be increased in the future without significant impact on performance. If there are no SUS on the page, then only the link scan will occur with no performance impact. With Auto-connect off, no evidence will be downloaded, but a link scan will still run. There should be no noticeable performance impact while downloading and inserting evidence content except for extremely large pages or with a ton of SUS. If the page updates itself with new content (Twitter, Facebook, some news sites) then a link scan will run again, or else it should be doing nothing other than periodically checking the SUS server for new links for newly fact-checked pages; about every 10 minutes.

No information about browsing history is sent and the Fact Checker does not scan or send page content since it only scans for URLs which are all stored locally. However, with the short-cut menu, you can have selected text sent for a SUS check. This is handy if the page is from a private host on a private network, or a local text/html file on your computer opened in your browser. The SUS server will scan the text for SUS and return any evidence it finds as usual.

**More Details**

SUS (Statement Under Scrutiny) are identified wherever they may be reprinted on the Internet. If you think there is SUS on a page that we don't know about, click the "Recheck Page" button to tell our server to download its own private copy of the page and return any results it finds to your browser. The extension does not need to send text from the browser to the SUS server to accomplish its task except when explicitly and manually told to with the "Check Selected Text" function. All SUS submissions by the community are confirmed as valid and present on the page before being made available to the extension. For pages behind pay or subscription walls or other non-public pages that our servers cannot access, you can help us identify new SUS locations by sending the page content (select text -> Right-Click -> Check Selected Text) to our server for analysis and any SUS found will be made available to all other Fact Checker users on subsequent visits to the page (sometimes requiring further verification by others).


Where does the evidence come from? The evidence citations come from a crowdsourced citation database with a focus on citing evidence for any non-fiction work. The entire database is viewable through the custom wiki at http://www.citeevidence.org.

Offline sources can also be cited. It is still important to know where evidence can be found even if it is not immediately available online. Any historical document may be cited. If and when the publication is made available online, CiteEvidence will be ready to discover their link(s) and provide them to you.

**All suss'd pages are archived at http://archive.is ! If a page that contains SUS or evidence ever changes or is no longer available, viewing its original version is just a click away from the Fact Checker toolbar button. Now *that's* powerful!

Note: CiteEvidence depends solely on contributions from the Fact Checker user community for its content.

**Becoming a CiteEvidence contributor**

Adding new SUS to an article is easy through the shortcut menu (select text -> Right-Click -> Create SUS from Selected). But, there are rules which must be followed in order to add new citations to the system. If you would like to contribute, please learn how by first reading the Help page on the CiteEvidence wiki. For now, registration is not required to submit a new SUS and cite evidence for (or against) it.

**Tips on how to contribute**

1.) If you find a news article that contradicts another news article on significant facts, then create a Statement Under Scrutiny (SUS) with a "Contra" or "But see" citation to the contradicting statement(s).
2.) If you find an assertion that you know has good documentary evidence to support it and you know where to find that evidence, then create a SUS with an "According to" or "See" citation for support.
3.) If you see something else wrong with or missing from a story, then a "But consider" citation might be useful.

See https://www.citeevidence.org/wiki/index.php/Help:Contents for more info.
Feel free to ask your question at https://www.citeevidence.org/wiki/index.php/Help_talk:Contents for further help.

Veritas Salvi



What's next for Fact Checker

-Proxy support
-Mobile and tablet support
-Embed video for video citations, Youtube, Vimeo, etc..
-Flag Video New Releases (VNR) and other "news" (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_news_release)
-Add other citation styles
-Localization
-Personal SUS watches per category



Release Notes

v 1.3.5 - Released 1/6/17 1250
------------------------------
New Features & Improvements:
NONE

Fixed Bugs:
1.) Bad URL to backlinks wiki page

Code Changes:
NONE


v 1.3.4 - Released 1/5/17 1723
------------------------------
New Features & Improvements:
NONE

Fixed Bugs:
NONE

Code Changes:
1.) Removed trace messages


v 1.3.3 - Released 1/5/17 1549
------------------------------
New Features & Improvements:
NONE

Fixed Bugs:
NONE

Code Changes:
1.) Changed some wiki links to http


v 1.3.1 - Released 7/17/16 2051
-------------------------------
New Features & Improvements:

Fixed Bugs:
1.) Special announcements page was opening every time.

Code Changes:

Past Release Notes: https://www.citeevidence.org/wiki/index.php/Fact_Checker_Release_Notes



Plain Language Privacy Policy

°Using the CiteEvidence browser extension does not require registration to use and user browsing history is not tracked in any way
°All data sent/received via SSL
°Server logs are purged every 30 days
°The extension downloads a microDB (very small database) that contains the signatures for all web pages on the Internet that contain evidence citations in the system. URLs are checked against the extension's microDB before contacting the CiteEvidence server. If the browser microDB doesn't return any hits for the page, then the server is not contacted. What this means is the extension only connects to the CiteEvidence server when necessary, otherwise it displays a "?" on its toolbar results button. This keeps bandwidth usage to a minimum and further adds to privacy.
°Extension-server communication can be turned off by clearing the Auto-check checkbox.
°The extension only sends information directly related to its obvious and apparent functions
°Adware-, malware-, and bundleware-free.