Do we like them?

Would we support them? Type any of these:

A famous person, like Martha Stewart
A character from a film, show, book or game, like Ellen Ripley
A company, like Netgear
A film or TV show, to see who's in it and who made it, like Firefly

You get the goss with a verdict, a score out of 10, and the sources to check us.

Do we like Big Brother?

A character from Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)

Our score: 0 out of 10. No. He is a watching, lying figurehead for a regime that polices every thought, and he is hard to back.

Big Brother is the leader of Oceania, one of three superstates in Orwell's 1949 novel. His face looks out from posters captioned 'Big Brother is watching you', and telescreens in homes and offices carry his name. The story follows Winston Smith, a low-level Party worker in London who begins to doubt the system.

He is more symbol than person. Nobody in the story can say for sure whether he exists, and that fits his purpose. He is a figure to fear, to love and to obey, and he stands in for the Party's total power over what people do, say and think.

He scores zero because everything he stands for is harmful. The people around him live under surveillance, with no privacy and no freedom of thought. No real kindness or protection shows up to balance that. He has become shorthand for abuse of government power, especially mass surveillance.

Queue a list of names

One name per line (or split with commas), up to 100 at a time. They're checked a few at a time in the background and land on the scoreboard as they finish. Names already on the board are skipped.

Suggest names

Add names here for the team to review: famous people, characters or companies, one per line (up to 20). We check the ones we pick, and they land on the scoreboard.

Suggested names

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The scoreboard

Everyone checked so far, by score, 10 at the top. Typing a name up top filters the board too. Tap a score to see who's there, and a name for the whole card.

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Our take, from what the sources we read say on the day we checked. It can miss things; tap a source to read it.