About

Why read this instead of the news itself

A fair question, and the honest answer is that we are not trying to replace the newsroom that did the reporting — every story here credits and links the outlet that filed it. What we do is four things a news site cannot do for you:

We take the drama out, and show our working. Every story is the outlet's report with the evaluative adjectives and loaded verbs removed, and Every rule the engine works to is listed, with its code, at what we change. Show what we removed prints the original wording struck through beside ours. Nobody else lets you see the edit.
We say how the same event was written by everyone who filed it. One story, every outlet, measured the same way — and we count newsrooms, not mastheads, so four Nine papers carrying one report are one newsroom, not four.
We fit the time you have. The Daily Brief will tell you the day in three minutes or ten, ranked by how many newsrooms thought a story mattered, never by what will hold your attention longest.
We keep watching for you. Follow a story and we email you when another newsroom files on it. We also keep the headline an outlet published before it quietly rewrote it.

And the ordinary daily reasons: your suburb's weather, warnings and transport beside the news; no advertising; no autoplaying video; no reading data sold to anyone.

What we do to a story, in one gesture: from emphasis to a full stop.

What we do not do

Most of this list exists because somebody told us, at length and in public, what they hate about a news app. None of it is a promise about the future; it is a description of what this site is today, and each one is checkable.

No AI model writes anything here. Not a hosted one, not our own. Every word in our version of a report is a word the outlet filed; the engine only removes and swaps, and every rule it works to is published with a code you can quote back at us. The browser extension carries the whole engine with it, which is why it can score a page without sending the page anywhere.
No advertising, and no selling of reading data. Advertising pays for attention, so it rewards the headline that makes you click — the thing this site exists to measure and remove. We would be selling the disease and the cure.
No notifications, no streaks, no badges, no unread count. Nothing here is built to bring you back. The front page says where the day stops rather than scrolling for ever.
No comments, and no most-read list. Neither tells you what happened.
Nothing is ranked by what you clicked. The Brief is ordered by how many independent newsrooms filed a story — counting newsrooms, not mastheads, so four papers with one newsroom behind them count once. Your reading does not change what anybody else sees, or what you see next.
No left-versus-right rating. We measure how a report is written, not which side it is on, and we do not think a political score of a newsroom is ours to publish.
We do not decide what is true. The indicators measure writing, not accuracy.
We do not edit quotations. Somebody's words are theirs.

Two things we are not going to pretend about. Reading is free and has no advertising, but without an account there is a daily limit on articles; a free account removes it. And the extension asks for access to every website, because we cannot know in advance which site you read the news on — it decides whether a page is an article, scores that page in your browser and sends us none of it.

How it is paid for

Reading is free. The browser extension is free for ten articles a day and a subscription after that, and the API is pay as you go. That is the whole business.

Independence

Mundane Read has no owners in the media, no political donors and no advertisers. The method is public (Method), the mistakes are public (Corrections), and what has and has not been measured against people is public (Accuracy).

Company

Mundane Read is a registered business name of Creditcrest Technologies Pty Ltd (ACN 702 318 778, ABN 80 702 318 778). Contact support@mundaneread.com.