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Popular Pirate Sites ‘Disappear’ from DuckDuckGo’s Top Search Results

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Re: Popular Pirate Sites ‘Disappear’ from DuckDuckGo’s Top Search Results

#11

Post by bko »

textgel wrote: post #9
bko wrote: post #4

I made an app that lets you compare duck-duck-go results with that of google, side by side [0][1]. One thing I found is how bad ddg is at removing conspiracy theories and other misinformation. Google is, for better or for worse, much more managed. For instance, search "are vaccines dangerous", google replies with .org and .gov sites, while ddg promotes dangersofvaccines.com. Even if you search "dangers of vaccines" i…

Some people are fine with making decisions for themselves and don't need a net nanny to say "mummy thinks you shouldn't be reading this".

I agree in general. But what if I did want to know if vaccines are dangerous, so I search "are vaccines dangerous". If I want to find an anti-vaccine site, I should be able to do so, but the search term "are vaccines dangerous" should be viewed neutrally, in which case I would find links from cdc or .gov sites to be more useful that anti-vaccines sites

Re: Popular Pirate Sites ‘Disappear’ from DuckDuckGo’s Top Search Results

#12

Post by bko »

diggan wrote: post #5
bko wrote: post #4

I made an app that lets you compare duck-duck-go results with that of google, side by side [0][1]. One thing I found is how bad ddg is at removing conspiracy theories and other misinformation. Google is, for better or for worse, much more managed. For instance, search "are vaccines dangerous", google replies with .org and .gov sites, while ddg promotes dangersofvaccines.com. Even if you search "dangers of vaccines" i…

That's a cool site, you should submit it to "Show HN" if you haven't already :) Not sure if your site is taking the location into account, but when I do the "are vaccines dangerous" search on the search-compare website, I get .gov and .edu domains as the top 5 hits or so.

Glad you like my site. It was fun to build. I remember bing use to have a site years ago where you would search for a term and see bing vs google results and you'd pick the one you preferred, and apparently 2/3 people preferred bing results. But I couldn't find it, so it gave me an idea to build a site but I didn't build the gamified portion.

Yeah, you're right about search results. I'm seeing more normal sites now as well. The results are not deterministic. I'm not sure whats causing it, but I saw different results for the vaccines query earlier. "Flat earth" still gives me a fair amount of flat earth content.

From the FAQ:

> For Duck Duck Go, search-compare searches the html version (e.g. duckduckgo.com/html/?q=search). The results are different than the canonical duckduckgo search, but its easier to scrape. For Google, search-compare uses the main google site (e.g. google.com/search?hl=en&q=search), but it doesn't pass any personally identifiable information

Re: Popular Pirate Sites ‘Disappear’ from DuckDuckGo’s Top Search Results

#13

Post by textgel »

bko wrote: post #11
textgel wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people are fine with making decisions for themselves and don't need a net nanny to say "mummy thinks you shouldn't be reading this".

I agree in general. But what if I did want to know if vaccines are dangerous, so I search "are vaccines dangerous". If I want to find an anti-vaccine site, I should be able to do so, but the search term "are vaccines dangerous" should be viewed neutrally, in which case I would find links from cdc or .gov sites to be more useful that anti-vaccines sites

That's fair; I suppose it's inevitable that search engines move more in a similar direction to what we know as the main high street when it comes to high profile searches, keeping more mainstream stuff while losing the off the wall areas but it does seem a shame to loose some of the weirder side streets in the process (the sort of weirdness from the early 2000s internet for example).

Re: Popular Pirate Sites ‘Disappear’ from DuckDuckGo’s Top Search Results

#15

Post by nvrspyx »

Semaphor wrote: post #10
abc-xyz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One thing I found is how bad ddg is at removing conspiracy theories and other misinformation. You should probably blame Microsoft for that. I mean DDG is just a Bing API wrapper.

Yes, that’s why [0] and [1] show the same results. Only, they don’t. They are more similar than DDG vs. Google, but not the same and DDG has (for me) more relevant results closer to the top. [0]: https://www.bing.com/search?q=css%20center%20text [1]: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=css+center+text

Weird. The results are in the exact same order for me when I clicked both of your links. The only difference is that the bootstrapshuffle.com result is below (or rather, on the second page) the stackoverflow result on Bing. Considering the former is specific to Bootstrap, it's less relevant than the stackoverflow result.

Anyways, DDG does mainly use Bing, but they also do their own modifications to the rankings, which is sometimes for better and sometimes for worse.

Re: Popular Pirate Sites ‘Disappear’ from DuckDuckGo’s Top Search Results

#16

Post by dmurray »

mellosouls wrote: post #6
bko wrote: post #4

I made an app that lets you compare duck-duck-go results with that of google, side by side [0][1]. One thing I found is how bad ddg is at removing conspiracy theories and other misinformation. Google is, for better or for worse, much more managed. For instance, search "are vaccines dangerous", google replies with .org and .gov sites, while ddg promotes dangersofvaccines.com. Even if you search "dangers of vaccines" i…

Speaking as somebody who goes with mainstream expert opinion by default, I nevertheless think there's enough censorship from the big tech providers, at the very least let's have such "filter out stuff that annoys us" initiatives as optional.

Google has to choose something to prioritize. It's good that in this case it chose the authoritative site over the conspiracy theory one. Even better if they chose it because it was more authoritative rather than because they calculated they could show you more ads that way, but I won't give them credit for that just yet.

They didn't censor the other site completely. If I search with site:dangersofvaccines.com I get results from it. I can't get results from it any other way though, including searching text that only appears on that site - they'd rather tell me there are no results - so I agree that's an unpleasant level of censorship/nannying.

Re: Popular Pirate Sites ‘Disappear’ from DuckDuckGo’s Top Search Results

#17

Post by abc-xyz »

Semaphor wrote: post #10
abc-xyz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One thing I found is how bad ddg is at removing conspiracy theories and other misinformation. You should probably blame Microsoft for that. I mean DDG is just a Bing API wrapper.

Yes, that’s why [0] and [1] show the same results. Only, they don’t. They are more similar than DDG vs. Google, but not the same and DDG has (for me) more relevant results closer to the top. [0]: https://www.bing.com/search?q=css%20center%20text [1]: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=css+center+text

Even Bing doesn’t display the same results that you get from their API. It’s also trivial to boost certain websites and influence rankings that way. But doing that doesn’t change the fact that it’s just a Bing wrapper with some simple boosting and a beautiful UI.

Re: Popular Pirate Sites ‘Disappear’ from DuckDuckGo’s Top Search Results

#18

Post by smaryjerry »

Is the government so inept that it can’t do it’s policing itself? Why are search companies being forced to police the internet for the police? If there was a business down the street doing illegal gambling, I would not say “hey let’s just stop buses from taking people there.” Hell no. Any decent police would go stop that business from operating, not go to the bus companies taking people there.

Re: Popular Pirate Sites ‘Disappear’ from DuckDuckGo’s Top Search Results

#19

Post by smaryjerry »

mellosouls wrote: post #6
bko wrote: post #4

I made an app that lets you compare duck-duck-go results with that of google, side by side [0][1]. One thing I found is how bad ddg is at removing conspiracy theories and other misinformation. Google is, for better or for worse, much more managed. For instance, search "are vaccines dangerous", google replies with .org and .gov sites, while ddg promotes dangersofvaccines.com. Even if you search "dangers of vaccines" i…

Speaking as somebody who goes with mainstream expert opinion by default, I nevertheless think there's enough censorship from the big tech providers, at the very least let's have such "filter out stuff that annoys us" initiatives as optional.

I can’t believe anyone is in favor of censorship in the first place. Maybe they just need to experience the harsh reality of rule by majority opinion or mob rule. Reddit is the perfect example. I can’t tell you how many times a top up voted thread or comment is 100% false. The experts aren’t the ones voting is the problem so who gets to the top is only the one most persuasive or with a comment that already agrees with expectations. This is exactly how things work with politics or news as well. I can’t tell you how many news articles I’ve read that make extremely basic mistakes and assumptions because the person writing the article has no experience in that field.

Re: Popular Pirate Sites ‘Disappear’ from DuckDuckGo’s Top Search Results

#20

Post by disown »

bko wrote: post #4

I made an app that lets you compare duck-duck-go results with that of google, side by side [0][1]. One thing I found is how bad ddg is at removing conspiracy theories and other misinformation. Google is, for better or for worse, much more managed. For instance, search "are vaccines dangerous", google replies with .org and .gov sites, while ddg promotes dangersofvaccines.com. Even if you search "dangers of vaccines" i…

> One thing I found is how bad ddg is at removing conspiracy theories and other misinformation.

Can't be any worse than google since they give preferential treatment to conspiracy theorists like CNN, MBNBC, Foxnews, etc.

> For instance, search "are vaccines dangerous", google replies with .org and .gov sites

So google should just push government and special interest groups funded by the wealthy?

> Even if you search "dangers of vaccines" in google, it still never produces that site.

You make it sound like that's a good thing...

Holy christ man. You are right, let google just show government sites. Big Brother knows best.

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