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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”

#151

Post by pvaldes »

eli wrote: post #43
hombre_fatal wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 can't. A filter bubble is specifically defined as users getting personalized results for the same query based on what an algorithm knows about them. It's right there in the first paragraph on wikipedia. A hyper-partisan search engine that only showed results that favor one viewpoint would be bad, but it wouldn't be a filter bubble.

This is not an us or them case, is a true or false case. And false and true don't share a value of 50/50%. Unless we want to use a browser as moron-classifier, false results had a value of 0 in a search.

False facts are valuable in a search only as if tagged as debunked as false in the same page.

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

#152

Post by wooque »

To be honest age of DuckDuckGo as alternative search engine is over.

I switched to Brave Search and not going back. It's giving me better results, along with quick Google link to jump to Google if needed (instead of manually typing !g before result). And they maintain own independent search index compared to DuckDuckGo, which gets most of it's results from Bing.

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

#153

Post by HeckFeck »

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.

For me, this move by DDG will have the opposite effect of what is intended.

I will now trust my own media and sources even less, if they rely on silencing the competition and insist on controlling what I access "for my own good". Such dirty tactics are insulting, even more so when delivered under a sneering benevolent guise.

As if they have perfect knowledge of my motives and wishes. What if I'm genuinely curious as to how the Russian media is presenting this war? They must have access to this perfect knowledge if they are fit to decide which news sources are "correct"!

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

#154

Post by twofornone »

marcosdumay wrote: post #124
hombre_fatal wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

>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

That's assuming there's only one platform. When users can choose other search engines (or social media sites, video platforms, etc) then it absolutely creates a filter bubble when each platform injects its own bias into its content. No algorithm is perfect but I'd generally prefer my search results without deliberate bias.

Plus you'd have to be knee deep in the koolaid to think that only russian sources are propaganda. It just ao happens they are obviously on the "other side" today but let's not pretend that US and Ukranian sources aren't coming with their own healthy dose of spin.

For example, all the recent reports of civilian infrastructure being bombed are most certainly leaving out that these buildings were being used by Ukranian forces, much like reports of Israel targeting civilian buildings. That doesn't justify the russian actions since putin is fighting an unjust war of aggression, but that important context is an example of spin that is all over the "approved" sources of information.

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

#155

Post by larvaetron »

if_by_whisky wrote: post #113
Legion wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who are they to decide what is "disinformation". How do they know? Making decisions about which information to rank highly vs. lowly is, you know, kind of the definition of a search engine.

Yeah there's a lot of "anti censorship" warriors in this thread, who seem confused about what search engines are for

> there's a lot of "anti censorship" warriors in this thread

You say that as if being "anti censorship" is a weird, or bad thing. What reasonable person would agree that being "pro censorship" is an ideal stance?

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

#156

Post by beerandt »

chriscjcj wrote: post #56
uejfiweun wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird. Maybe I got unlucky with some experiment rollout. My top links are Drudge Retort (some stupid parody), the link to the Drudge app on iPhone, and the dictionary definition for "drudge". Nowhere on the page is there an actual link to the site for me.

For the last couple years, I think the Drudge Report itself has actually been a parody of the Drudge Report.

It was sold with an nda.

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

#157

Post by diputsmonro »

fuckcensorship wrote: post #110
hackyhacky wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is great value in analyzing propaganda if you know it's propaganda. The danger comes in the fact that the majority of people can't distinguish actual reporting from disinformation. That's why it gets down-ranked.

You are correct. However, the solution should be better education, not censorship.

If DDG can overhaul the worldwide education system, I'm sure we'd all be in favor of that.

But since the best solution is impossible, at least right now, a half measure like this seems reasonable to offer some amount of protection.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We should do what we can now, and keep pushing for better solutions. Holding out for perfection does nothing to help people now, or possibly ever, depending on your definition of "perfect".

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

#158

Post by carry_bit »

eli wrote: post #43
hombre_fatal wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 can't. A filter bubble is specifically defined as users getting personalized results for the same query based on what an algorithm knows about them. It's right there in the first paragraph on wikipedia. A hyper-partisan search engine that only showed results that favor one viewpoint would be bad, but it wouldn't be a filter bubble.

With search taken as a whole, the search results a person gets varies depending on a personal factor (namely, their go-to search engine) and not just the query. That's similar to a filter bubble, even if it isn't precisely one.

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

#159

Post by michaelmrose »

OtomotO wrote: post #126
chris11 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

If I want to know if a Foobar Baz Sedan is a good car then legit reviews and spam generated by paid shills aren't equally useful and since there is a finite time available to produce quality content having 1000x more spam will make it absolutely impossible for the real information to be obtained by anyone.

Searching google for war in ukraine returns over 2 billion results. It is impossible not to privilege some information over others. Believing that any software designed by people can possibly be unbiased is absolute misunderstanding.

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

#160

Post by Spivak »

mattwilsonn888 wrote: post #93
Spivak wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a weird stance to take about a search engine which is "tell me what to read as a service." Like you're literally using them to surface the wheat from the chaff. The algorithm that ranks results is already biased as hell and sometimes it's going to get it wrong. Google surfacing lots of stackoverflow spam sites isn't "unbiased" it's junk and manual correction is totally fine.

This word keeps coming in this comments section: "spam." Spam was never mentioned in the Tweet, the source of this discussion. In fact no one in the comments section is talking about spam either, unless its a pathetic debunking attempt. They are talking about genuine results being down-ranked based on their ideological, even morally unscrupulous content, and why that is harmful to intelligent people who don't need th…

I just used spam sites as an example of "site that's highly ranked by the algorithm but are uncontroversially recognized as an error."

Define a "genuine result" for a search engine that isn't the result of a process that arbitrarily ranks sites by certain metrics? Like it's humans all the way down, you can't escape that search engines are a large scale system representing "what a group of humans thinks the best results are." There's no unbiased algorithms in search, it's all curation.

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