About
The True Story is a nonprofit news aggregation platform developed by Lev Gershenzon and his team to combat censorship and information manipulation. The platform’s mission is to empower readers to form their own understanding of the news by presenting events from multiple perspectives. It operates by curating and clustering news coverage from a wide range of global media outlets, offering users a comprehensive and balanced view of current events on a single page. With several language editions, True Story serves around 8,000 daily active users, including professional news consumers, media analysts, and editors.
Challenge
The True Story faced the significant challenge of accessing structured and reliable data from top-tier news websites, many of which are protected by paywalls and technical restrictions. Key media sources were difficult to index, creating a barrier to providing a truly comprehensive global news perspective. The platform needed a consistent, high-quality feed of news articles across multiple languages and regions. Through its partnership with The Bright Initiative, The True Story utilized Bright Data’s Web Unlocker API to navigate these complex barriers, successfully overcoming its data acquisition challenges without getting blocked.
Impact
The platform now consistently accesses and parses publicly available content from major international news outlets that were previously inaccessible. This has enabled The True Story to provide its “World Edition” with the comprehensive coverage necessary to fulfill its mission. By presenting news from multiple viewpoints, the platform empowers its users to see the full picture and form their own informed opinions, free from information manipulation.
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