About Candle

The pandemic of misinformation and the erosion of trust in authority is leading to a post-trust world. Without knowing what information we can trust, we're coming to trust nothing. Erosion of trust is not just a problem of the decline of media and the rise of "fake news". It is an anxiety-provoking problem that individuals feel in their daily lives.

Candle Search is a starting point for credible, trustworthy information. Our search engine empowers users with tools to make sense of the information they are offered. We show what sources are credible, biased, have an agenda, or are downright dangerous. Instead of censoring or deciding for the user, we equip them with the insight they need to decide for themselves.

With the search product, we're proposing a solution to help readers consume better information. But we also want to create solutions that help readers consume information better.

While public trust has eroded in media, government, and big business, the public still trusts science and scientists^[1] at the same levels as a decade ago. Candle's insights are based on the work of social scientists and topic experts, whose expertise we will scale up with artificial intelligence evaluation models.

Candle Search is built on Bing Search API with additional sources coming up. We include quality evaluations for news, politics, health and medical information sources.

Candle's insights are accessible by using the search engine directly, or by using our browser plugins for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge and upcoming mobile reader apps.

The team behind Candle have experience from hypergrowth at Google, modeling and analysis of language, and building meaningful consumer products.

^[1] Pew Research Center: Public confidence in scientists has remained stable for decades. Accessed Oct 16 2020.