This extension gets four stars, for now.
Most of this accolade is for the idea and some of it is an encouragement to further development into a truly impartial algorithmic guide (insofar as this is possible).
I think the red-and-green categorisations are a little too black-and-white and likely to be controversial (because, increasingly, almost nobody among the general population reads "the news" without some acquired bias). Perhaps *White* should mean "so far as can be detected this site is trying to get it right" and *Amber* should mean "there is some doubt about the veracity of some items on this site" with, in both cases, a link to more detail. A third colour (Blue?) would be useful to indicate news aggregators with a legend along the lines of "This is a news aggregation site. Please check source articles on the originating sites".
Finally, it is disappointing that a particular print-and-online "news" publication recently had it's rating changed from "Red" to "Green" without changing its editorial stance in any way. To my mind "Red" was thoroughly deserved because the publication presents opinion as if it were fact and habitually spins news to such a degree that it winds up seeming to mean the opposite of the original facts. Others will disagree with me on that assessment but independently verifiable "facts" are "the news" which the reader should interpret whereas "opinion" is someone else's (often malicious and politically motivated) interpretation. When opinion is dressed up as the news it is *fake news*; when a fact is twisted it becomes a lie. If, under the colour scheme suggested above, the publication in question were to be marked "amber" (with straight-forward explanation) - No Red, No Green, - NewsGuard's rating would be less likely to seem biased, even to some of the One-Star Generals who, in this comment space, have denigrated this nascent attempt to differentiate information from disinformation.

This widget requires massive amounts of work. Classifying news sources as "outright 100% true" and "outright 100% false" with their green/red mark label system is not the right way to do things.

They have very complete "Nutrition Labels" which allow for more complex ways to classify sites, so why don't they use them?

This can work but not for the time being. I highly discourage anyone from trying to get source guidance out of this widget in it's current state.

Based on the forementioned Nutrition Labels, they clearly have plenty of information on the sites they rate. All they have to do is use them more openly and make them simpler for a user to understand, instead of just putting them side to side and saying "This is great", "This is terrible".

Thank you for creating this add-on. It will reduce misinformation. DO NOT listen to those who are giving this add-on 1 star.

This addon had a lot more 1-star reviews than it currently does. They have presumably been removed at the request of NewsGuard.

The reasons why I would urge people to avoid this add-on:

1. Serious privacy problem: sends the sites you visit to NewsGuard's servers - there's no reason why this addon cannot work without such reporting.

2. The people involved with this addon (see their advisory board and read the reporting that's been done on them) are, I'd argue, not the people who should be entrusted with deciding what is/isn't a reliable source of news.

3. A site which refuses to participate in this scheme will get flagged as unreliable (see what happened to Boing Boing when they were approached)

4. Mozilla/Firefox co-founder Brendan Eich has commented on this company: "This is a bad operation all around"

wow, they deleted so many 1-star reviews. Seems like a desperate move.

Minor newspapers or independent journalists are hampered by this extension.

It is harmful. And it aims to discredit other relevant sources.

There are already many one-star reviews for this Add-on, with most of them writing it off as leftwing propaganda or conspiracy. The creators have clearly outlined transparent and objective criteria for judging news-websites, which also can be viewed for each website with a detailed report on how and why the judgement was constructed in an understandable manner. These judgements have nothing to do with political orientation, but are based on general good practice in journalism (proper citation of sources, conflicts of interest and source of money made by website).

There criteria can be very helpful in identifying fake or misleading news as well as propaganda. No contents are blocked, so censorship is not an issue. It is a highly informative application.

helps u fighting lies and fake news. dont forget to use your brain and check information u get.

This is an artifact of the current social mass hysteria against independent investigative reporting. Given the controversial reputation of the add-on no major surprises. Note there is no 'Yellow' tag, only Green or Red. The ratings are laughable. Many Green-rated sites were once-reputable but have abandoned journalistic standards such as: excessive reliance on anonymous sources, presenting opinion as fact, sourcing other media vs original sources, and failing to correct verifiable false statements.

I see that some people don't understand how news and information sites are rated by Newsguard. Please RTFM. You may not like CNN or FoxNews and each are biased but Newguard is providing detailed data on why, for instance, both of those pass muster. Read it!

Could be quite useful but doesn't respect user privacy nearly enough.

Dispite the far right hating it - this is suprisingly useful. There's no accountability in the world and it's led to lies and properganda. This is a great step towards something constructive and works really eligantly.

For sites like YouTube, it could do with going a layer deeper, and start looking at individual users.

brilliant should be mandatory for all browsers and news outlets

Fairly accurate rating for most sites. I personally disagree with some of the detailed assessments but the Green / Red assignments are pretty spot on. No news source is perfect but this extension easily identifies a news organization versus a tabloid infotainment site.