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DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”

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Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”

#121

Post by cato_the_elder »

eli wrote: post #32
choward wrote: post #15

> DuckDuckGo's mission is to make simple privacy protection accessible to all. The main job of a search engine is to give me results relevant to what I'm searching for. Privacy is obviously a nice feature but if the results suck, I'm not going to use your search engine so privacy doesn't matter. Who are they to decide what is "disinformation". How do they know? I want to see all sides of a story and come to my own co…

Is this materially different from filtering other abuse like SEO spam? Would you choose to keep spam in your results to reach your own conclusion?

> Is this materially different from filtering other abuse like SEO spam?

Yes it is.

The undesirability of spam is much more universal than "misinformation", and its definition is much less controversial.

And we don't care whether the spam is Russian, American, Nigerian or whatever.

The motivation in this case is clearly more paternalistic compared to filtering spam.

Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”

#122

Post by michaelmrose »

TehShrike wrote: post #58
tpoacher wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want one which doesn't decide this for me, no-matter how "good for me" it may be, and relies exclusively on my search query to decide what is most relevant. If you really want to flag disinformation, I'd be fine with some sort percentage reliability value or something along those lines, right next to the result. Preferably something that I can also order results by. Totally happy with a 'caveat emptor' clause regar…

Exactly. If I'm searching for Russian propaganda, I should see Russian propaganda in my search results. If I'm searching for good bicycle reviews, I should see good bicycle reviews.

I don't regard carriage of misinformation used to justify genocide as morally neutral nor do I hope many others. If you feel existing search engines are insufficiently neutral towards evil you are free to start your own.

Search engines results represent and will continue to ultimately represent a human value judgement because there is no mathematical answer to what is the right answer for what is the right set of results for this query because both engineers at the search engine and the pages indexed are adjusting their software based not on mathematical correctness but instead on the first parties desire to return humanly useful results not mathematically useful results and the latter's desire to be visible regardless of utility to the end user.

If we correctly abandon neutrality as the lie it is then it is merely a question of whether lies that justify genocide have greater utility than actual facts. This is I think an easier question to answer.

Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”

#123

Post by burnished »

deltarholamda wrote: post #89
enragedcacti wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't understand this view point. Isn't a search engine's entire job to effectively 'censor' the parts of the internet that aren't relevant or helpful to your search query? Is it censorship for them to downrank flat-earth content when you are trying to learn about how to chart a flight? Flat-earthers certainly have a lot of ideas about how charting a course on a flat earth works but that doesn't mean it's he…

>but do you really want your search engine to default to providing results from someone with a very clear agenda and a history of abusing their influence to carry out that agenda Have you met the US media? If you don't look at this massive coordinated effort and smell something fishy, I just don't know what to say.

So like, what, everyones keeping this big secret and its just schlubs like you and me kept in the dark?

Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”

#124

Post by marcosdumay »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #38
eli wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does down-ranking disinformation sites globally have to do with complaining about Google customizing results based on its profile of you? EDIT: The rest of the quote is “On Google, you get results tailored to what they think you’re likely to click on, based on the data profile they’ve built on you over time.”

Downranking "disinformation" could be seen as creating the sort of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble that Weinberg often denigrates. > As a result, users become separated from information that disagrees with their viewpoints, effectively isolating them in their own cultural or ideological bubbles. The choices made by these algorithms are not transparent. I don't think it's unfounded criticism. One problem i…

No it doesn't. What creates filter bubbles is ranking sites differently for each person, what has no relation at all with the criteria you use on your rank.

Personally, I use DDG because it's useful. As long as the new ranking makes them more useful, more power to them. If they do it wrong, I'll start looking for some replacement.

If Google did that (as they do) it would require some discussion about censorship and monopolies, but yeah, there's nothing wrong with DDG doing it.

Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”

#125

Post by myth_drannon »

qiskit wrote: post #90

Is anyone really that surprised? Beware companies that sell virtue. They tend to be the least virtuous. Don't be evil? Easily one of the most evil companies to have ever existed. When DDG's prime selling point was not their service but their "virtue", you knew it was a shady company. Though I do hope DDG, Bing, etc are able to gain some market share to break google's stranglehold on search, DDG is at heart no better…

Any alternatives? Open source search...?

Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”

#126

Post by OtomotO »

chris11 wrote: post #105
tpoacher wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want one which doesn't decide this for me, no-matter how "good for me" it may be, and relies exclusively on my search query to decide what is most relevant. If you really want to flag disinformation, I'd be fine with some sort percentage reliability value or something along those lines, right next to the result. Preferably something that I can also order results by. Totally happy with a 'caveat emptor' clause regar…

> Besides, what's so bad about access to "disinformation"? Disinformation doesn't just try to present an alternative view, it also tries to drown out other viewpoints. I don't think it's possible to accurately and neutrally present search results when bad actors try to subvert rankings. I think propaganda can be interesting, I don't think it should be banned. But penalizing it seems fair to me. I don't want other sea…

"Disinformation doesn't just try to present an alternative view, it also tries to drown out other viewpoints."

So, basically what is done now by downranking "disinformation", right?

Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”

#127

Post by smsm42 »

kube-system wrote: post #66
freediver wrote: post #22

I guess this did not age well: “[W]hen you search, you expect unbiased results, but that’s not what you get on Google,” @matthewde_silva quotes @yegg https://twitter.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1114524914227253249 Also, they probably do not realize that they will have to start with Twitter if to be consistent.

"unbiased" doesn't mean "unfiltered". For example, I don't want spam or malware in my search results. Search results should return good information that is relevant to your query, and filter out anything that is not that.

"Good information" is very subjective. Some people think Fox News information is good, others think it's all lies. Some people think Wikipedia is the closest thing to Word of God that we can get, others think it's a bunch of kids with too much free time on their hands writing about things they have no idea about. Some people think the US government is trustworthy, others think it lied so many times only an idiot can trust it again. Which information is "good"? If a hundred newspapers publish the same article because they are all owned by the same company which told them to - is it "spam"? If a hundred TV anchors all read the same message while pretending it's local news - is it "spam"?

I am not saying there's nothing to be done here - but let's not pretend it's easy and obvious and there's some objective way to see what's "good information" that does not involve a lot of human judgement and a lot of bias that comes with it.

Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”

#128

Post by sdoering »

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #100
uejfiweun wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong that they absolutely have the right to choose what results to display. Just like Twitter has the right to choose what content appears on their platform, and same with YouTube, etc. But my opposition is not from a legal standpoint, it is from a moral standpoint. I just think censorship and cancellation is wrong and immoral, even if it is legally allowed. I think it is immoral for some business executi…

> I think it is immoral for some business executive to make sweeping decisions about what the commoners are / aren't allowed to see I used to have this point of view, but it's clear lately that certain types of information do not result in good outcomes if processed by the uneducated. The U.S. is already going in the direction of a dystopia if you haven't noticed. More free speech isn't going to help gas, housing, or…

> I used to have this point of view, but it's clear lately that certain types of information do not result in good outcomes if processed by the uneducated.

I am watching a lot of historic documentaries. I studied history (and literature) originally. I read a lot of historic sources and accounts.

This argument, that the powerful and educated need to protect the dumb masses by censoring what they are allowed to know/read isn't new. It is used by the powerful way before the medieval age but was (just to name an example) used by the catholic church against the translation of the Bible. It was used by western governments during the cold War. It is still used by the British government with their ability to silence editorial boards on specific topics. It was used by the US against Wikileaks. It was used by the GDR against their own people who also were officially banned from watching western TV/listen to western radio. It was used by western Germsn media when they decided to not publish the RAF terrorists' letters where they declared their reasoning for bombs or killings.

I don't buy it in historic context and I don't buy it today.

Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”

#129

Post by uejfiweun »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #73
uejfiweun wrote: post #3

I like DDG, but honestly, this is a really bad move. It is already harder for me to find certain sites in the rankings. I mean look at this, even searching for "drudge" doesn't even bring up a link to Drudge Report: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=drudge&t=h_&ia=web I liked DDG because it respected the user. Limiting what I can see in order to make sure I don't see "Russian disinformation" seems to me like the exact opposi…

Yep, search is getting more and more broken... I remember all the "trump vs reporters" etc. compilations, that were funny... now searching for any of those terms (basically anything at all involving trump, or now russia) ignores almost everything in the searchbox, ignores all the small creators, just picks out the one keyword (trump/russia/putin/...), and show the CNN/MSNBC/... news related to that one term, and unre…

FYI, assuming you're talking about YouTube, you can still see these funny compilation videos by being smart with the way you apply filters to the search. To be honest I am actually reluctant to tell you this online because I think if YouTube knew about this they would remove it, just like dislikes.

Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”

#130

Post by avgcorrection »

coffeefirst wrote: post #35
eli wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does down-ranking disinformation sites globally have to do with complaining about Google customizing results based on its profile of you? EDIT: The rest of the quote is “On Google, you get results tailored to what they think you’re likely to click on, based on the data profile they’ve built on you over time.”

And in this specific case, it feels more like quality control of state-sponsored spam. You can still find these sites—they come up first if you look for them directly, they're just treated as the low quality information than they are.

Some people consume information from outlets like Al Jazeera because they would like something which might be a little more distanced from the West than things like Anglo outlets.
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