AdEater
A web-based, advertisement-free, kick-butt search engine that provides users with the unbiased news they didn’t know they needed
The Problem
Politicians and big corporations use the fabrication of news as a tool to promote their companies and campaigns. Governments and large-scale corporations are able to pressure or pay out the media into providing them with “favorable coverage”, which is generally called “media capture”. Search engines, such as Google, tend to amplify the stories that are ‘sponsored’ by large operations; in particular, the stories that paint them in a flattering light.This hinders the truth in journalism, greatly affecting the media’s mass audiences, and the journalists themselves.
Our Research
As of 2017, 615 million internet users had turned on a feature that blocked ads from appearing with content. This shows people are increasingly fed up with advertisements. In addition to this problem, advertising in journalism actually affects the content within an article. Big business influence may cause bias. News organizations are seeing a constantly decreasing ad revenue stream. They’re essentially desperate to bring in more advertising dollars. As noted on journalists.org, many advertisers feel that the classic ads are no longer effective. They want ads to be more similar to editorials. They buy these editorial ads, and the news organization writes up an “article” portraying the advertiser in an ultra positive light. This is the exact problem that AdEater is trying to put a stop to.
Our Mission Statement
Our goal is to see a decrease in biased journalism related to advertising. By creating a database filtering out any pieces influenced by businesses, we are hoping to give users a search option free of any outside influence. AdEater is to do for journalism what has long been awaited: put content back in the control of the journalist.
What is AdEater?
AdEater is a web-based search engine that filters through news stories that have been heavily advertised on, endorsed by large scale companies, or present biased and inaccurate information. While it has a format similar to Google and DuckDuckGo, AdEater is specific to journalistic pieces and current news topics. AdEater features no advertisements in its content, and provides users with the most accurate and unbiased resources as possible. While we are not against advertisements as a whole, we do strive to separate them from journalism in order to protect the industry’s reliance on truth rather than monetary influence.
Who is AdEater For?
Advertisements have been proven to be incredibly unpopular, and generally disliked, with the majority of media consumers. Popular plugins like AdBlock prove this sentiment. AdEater was specifically designed with the modern information consumers who are tired of advertisements in mind. Ads on YouTube and music services have been looked down upon for some time. Now, the same is happening in journalism. By filtering out content that has been influenced by big business, AdEater creates a spectrum of news stories that are as accurate as possible, which assists readers in obtaining the entire truth of whatever it is they are searching for. AdEater is a tool for anyone who wants to view unbiased and uninfluenced news.
How Does AdEater Work?
The creation of AdEater was based off of the platform ‘DuckDuckGo’, which is a search engine that prevents the “filter bubble of personalized speech”. Essentially, AdEater will also be a web-based search engine used to filter out new stories that have been heavily promoted or endorsed by large scale companies or governments. The website will function similarly to platforms like Google or Bing, but will not have any reliance on advertisements. By using an algorithm that analyzes and filters through stories based off of their language, level of advertisements, and the endorsements behind them. The results from our search engine will, ideally, be ad-free and uninfluenced by big business.
Where Does Our Funding Come From?
Of course, nothing is free. Due to the fact that AdEater’s content will not include any advertisements, we must rely on fundraising programs such as Kickstarter and GoFundMe in order to generate enough revenue to develop and continuously improve our website. We also hope to find and create partnerships with other platforms that have similar goals to AdEater so we can ensure the best possible quality and level of accessibility for our users.
What Do We Hope To Achieve?
AdEater was created not only as a response, but a solution to the many journalistic outlets that are currently controlled by big business advertising. For example, BuzzFeed recently published a number of articles obviously being sponsored by Coca Cola. The articles all painted Coca Cola in a very positive and promotional light. By using AdEater, a reader will no longer end up seeing a story that was bought by a company. AdEater supports real journalism. When searching for news on AdEater, you are guaranteed stories with integrity. No longer will journalism be run by big business advertisements.
Our Team
From left to right: Miles Schuman, Robert Dziejma, Anna Hamre, Georgia Helvadjian, and Caitlyn Ong
