QUESTIONABLE SOURCE
A questionable source exhibits one or more of the following: extreme bias, consistent promotion of propaganda/conspiracies, poor or no sourcing of credible information, a complete lack of transparency, and/or is fake news. Fake News is the deliberate attempt to publish hoaxes and/or disinformation for profit or influence (Learn More). Sources listed in the Questionable Category may be untrustworthy and should be fact-checked on a per-article basis. Please note sources on this list are not considered fake news unless specifically written in the reasoning section for that source. See all Questionable sources.
- Overall, we rate Seekr as least biased based on no clear bias detected in story selection and Questionable due to a lack of transparency with inaccurate bias and reliability ratings that can mislead the reader.
Detailed Report
Questionable Reasoning: Lack of Transparency, Misleading
Bias Rating: LEAST BIASED
Factual Reporting: MIXED
Country: USA
MBFC’s Country Freedom Rating: MOSTLY FREE
Media Type: Website
Traffic/Popularity: Minimal Traffic
MBFC Credibility Rating: LOW CREDIBILITY
History
Founded in 2022, Seekr (Seekr.com) is an AI-powered news aggregation/search engine website and app launched by Seekr Technologies Inc. in partnership with self-help entrepreneur Tony Robbins. The mission of Seekr is to “combat misinformation, clickbait, and increase media literacy.” Ironically, Tony Robbins, a life and business strategist, has made false claims, promoted misinformation, and has been involved in controversies. The current CEO is Pat Condo, who was CEO and Chairman of NTENT and the founder and CEO of NASDAQ-listed search companies, Excalibur Technologies and Convera Corporation.
According to their about page, “Seekr is an internet technology company that prioritizes transparency and empowers user choice and control by streamlining access to reliable information.” The company is based in Virginia.
Read our profile on the United States media and government.
Funded by / Ownership
Seekr Technologies Inc. owns and publishes seekr.com. Seekr Technologies has raised a total of $69.3M in funding over 2 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on May 25, 2023, from a Venture – Series Unknown round. The website lacks transparency as they do not openly disclose donors and currently does not have a revenue model, but claims “in the future, Seekr will display keyword-targeted ads on the search engine.”
Analysis / Bias
Seekr.com aggregates news stories from other sources and rates them using AI on a bias scale nearly identical to Media Bias Fact Check: Left, Left-Center, Center, Right-Center and Right. They also rate reliability with a similar scale as MBFC: Very Low, Low, Medium, High, and Very High. The reader can select which bias and credibility level to filter news on the website.
Seekr claims to use AI’s natural language processing to rate individual news stories with their unique Seekr Score. They further state, “We use data scientists and a diverse range of expert journalists who train models to recognize specific Score Factors: Subjectivity, Personal Attack, Clickbait, Title Exaggeration, and the Presence/Absence of a Byline.”
A review of news stories and scoring shows that sometimes it is accurate. For example, this story from the New York Post Russian missile attack on Dnipro, Ukraine kills 2-year-old girl, injures 22 is accurately assigned a Very High Seekr reliability score. This is evidenced as the event did happen, and several news agencies reported it. However, another story by the New York Times is inaccurate as they claim it has low reliability: 3 Israeli Soldiers Killed in Rare Attack on Egyptian Border. This is false, as the event did occur and was reported by numerous outlets such as Reuters.
Because many ratings were found to be inaccurate, it is difficult to determine bias on this website. There are instances of left-leaning articles being rated right and vice-versa. We assign this site a least biased rating but rate them as Questionable due to a lack of transparency with funding and evidence of mislabeled news stories.
Failed Fact Checks
- None in the Last 5 years, as they do not produce original content.
Overall, we rate Seekr as least biased based on no clear bias detected in story selection and Questionable due to a lack of transparency with inaccurate bias and reliability ratings that can mislead the reader. (D. Van Zandt 06/04/2023)
Source: https://www.seekr.com/
Last Updated on June 4, 2023 by Media Bias Fact Check
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Left vs. Right Bias: How we rate the bias of media sources