Introducing Bias Buster, a unique way to see news across the political spectrum.
The Internet has made information more freely available than at any other time in history, but at the same time digital tools make it easy to put blinders on to differing viewpoints. It has never been easier to reduce our exposure to alternative thoughts and opinions that can challenge our own biases.
It is no secret that in general, society is growing more and more polarized. As we become more entrenched in one corner or another we often seek out news sources and information that further confirm our own views. The effect is that it reinforces the growing divide. Furthermore, the attention economy (driven by the ads model) has meant even more polarization – more extreme views are highlighted everywhere making it harder to see different viewpoints. As a result, it gets more and more difficult to understand where members in our community come from on a range of issues.
At Neeva, we would like to try something different.
We work for our members, and one thing we heard loud and clear is that news search needs a change. Users would like to see something different. They would like to see a full spectrum of viewpoints and they want a bit more control to do it.
We are excited to bring our members Bias Buster, a new way to look at the news. Bias Buster allows you to instantaneously see what’s being said on the left, in the center, and on the right. Starting today with the shift of a slider, members will have an option to control and see what is happening in the news across the political spectrum. Simply holding down and moving the slider will swap news sources in and out reflecting their generally accepted positions on the political spectrum. And it’s just as easy to reset the news to the original setting to see articles from all top sources mixed together.
Neeva is only able to provide this unique feature because we have built an independent search stack that serves our own results at scale. By crawling and indexing a vast number of news sources ourselves, we can build rich experiences like Bias Buster that deliver a better news experience. Importantly, unless you're actively using Bias Buster, your experience viewing and finding the news on Neeva won't change. We will still provide users with a wide variety of sources similar to what they might see in other places.
While there is no silver bullet to solving polarization, we hope a tool like Bias Buster can begin to help mend the gap, or at least, help us see the size of it.
Let us know what you think, and stay tuned for more!
