Is that true? You tell us.

SpinSpotter is people-powered. It relies on people like you to use our tools to help make the Web a more truthful place. You see, every time someone puts words up online–whether a journalist or a marketer or even you, they ought to be held to some kind of standard. If not, then how can we trust what we read?

So we built Spinoculars. They snap into your Web browser to let you highlight and share the spin you find and also let you see what other SpinSpotters have deemed biased, dubious, or patently false while you’re surfing the Web.

Here’s how it works:

You sign up. You download Spinoculars and sign up to become a SpinSpotter.

You mark the spin. Most importantly, you can put up your own spin markers. Whenever you read something that leaves you asking “Is that true?” whether because of glaring personal bias, unsupportable marketing claims, or outright lies, just highlight it right there on the page and use your Spinoculars tool bar to mark it for the masses. Better yet, edit it on the spot and let the truth be told. And share it with the world.

You see the spin. You surf the Web, and wherever one of your fellow SpinSpotters has flagged a passage or phrase as being biased, misleading or false, you’ll see it marked with a red highlighter. You can also read the notes they leave behind, join a discussion on the topic, and vote on the quality of other SpinSpotters’ work.

You make your mark on the world. The more spin you and others mark, the smarter SpinSpotter gets as our SpinBot goes out and marks spin automatically. You can think of it as a sort of truth-seeking robot. Eventually we hope to have the whole Web de-spun. Imagine that. The Web, a more truthful place. Crazy huh?

Who keeps you accountable? Good question. SpinSpotter relies on people like you to feed the SpinBot with real world examples of bias, misinformation, and omission, and to fuel our “Trust Engine” by rating each other’s spin markers – the higher the rating, the more trusted the SpinSpotter. But we also call upon an advisory board of prominent journalists, academics, and other standards setters who like to spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff.

Any more questions? Ask away, or visit our FAQ.