I love reading about politics and recently started trying to read pieces from both sides of the aisle. Since then, I've noticed something interesting. While any individual piece can be quite persuasive, it often leaves out contrary evidence. Whereas I used to read an article and feel confident that its conclusion was fairly reached, I'm now skeptical of most news I read. How do I know the author isn't leaving out important information?

At that moment, I wished I could jot down my thoughts on deceptive articles for everyone to see. BEWARE, good sir! Half-truths ahead! And there's no reason why something like that couldn't exist. I imagined a chrome extension where I could highlight sections of any article and leave a comment. Other people with the chrome extension could see my comments and reply. Since the crowd was checking the work of journalists, I decided to name this application CrowdChecked.

Let's assume User A has installed the CrowdChecked chrome extension and visits a Vox article. They find a section of the article that they believe is deceptive. They can highlight that section and hit the hotkey CTRL-k. A drawer will slide over the page, revealing a comment box. User A can leave their comment and press enter. The drawer will disappear, and that section will remain highlighted, indicating a comment has been left.

If User B (who also has the extension) now visits that article, they'll see a section of the article with a highlighted background. If they click that section, the drawer will appear with the initial comment from User A. At this point, User B can reply or upvote/downvote the initial comment.

In a nutshell, CrowdChecked adds Reddit-like discussion features to any article on the Internet. The best part is that the discussion is connected to the specific part of the article that started the discussion in the first place. I hope that users will use this app to exchange ideas in the pursuit of truth.