That explains why they offer the extension. That does not explain why they make the extension the only option. It should be possible for me to evaluate their ratings without installing their extension, but for some reason they haven't made that possible.

(If you think trust and/or erroring on the side of safety is a strange attitude, I think you a strange person. I don't need to prove this extension is nefarious; they need to prove to me they aren't.)

And in that case, I wouldn't have installed it. It's the same reason I install ublock over the dozens of other adblockers on AMO or chrome store.

>As far as I can tell, you're just ignorant of this extension, and assuming it's untrustworthy because of your ignorance of its trustworthiness (and likely some preexisting bias).

For me not necessarily "ignorance", it's a combination of: a) brand new website (to me); and b) immediate prompt for additional permissions (via an extension install). It's the same reason I wouldn't for example, lend $50 to some stranger who walked up to me, even if he was someone "trustworthy" (eg. King of Liechtenstein).

>Isn't it blindingly obvious? They want to put user-friendly reputation-indicators on the page, without making their users go though a lot of extra hassle. This is a fairly common use case services that provide reputation ratings (e.g. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fakespot-analyze-f.... for another example).

>If I had to guess, the main audience for this isn't people with good media literacy skills, it's people who tend to gullibly believe sketchy websites (and who have friends or relatives with good media literacy skills who want to help them).

Sure, an extension is more user friendly, but make it mandatory when a web page would do fine? This is the "install our app" nag taken to the next level and reeks of developers forcing "what's best" upon users.