Right now I consider any news from the conflict area with a huge heap of salt.
But this move is a bad PR move by DDG. I don't need handhelding by a fucking search engine.
DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
161–170 of 865 posts
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#162Based on this, if you have a distaste for censorship, you probably should use Brave Search instead of DuckDuckGo. [1]
Also, if you are using DuckDuckGo to avoid gargantuan corporations, you should know that they are essentially Bing with some extra perks. Brave Search has its own index, it only falls back to Bing when it doesn't have enough results (which they claim happens only for a minority of queries).
[1]: https://nitter.net/BrendanEich/status/1501978488043020292#m
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#163I want to use a search engine that puts all its effort into down-ranking sites that I'm not searching for
Doesn't seem incompatible. I assume most people searching for general news about Ukraine are not seeking for Russian state media's take on it.
They should though. There's no other way to understand this war.
Like, to an outsider it's mistifying why Putin is doing this, but even more mystifying why Russia is letting him - reading the news from their POV helps you understand that.
Without understanding that, you can't really understand how the war is going, or what the end game is.
Western news mostly just wants to tell you about atrocities, and how wonderfully Ukraine is doing against Russia.
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
but what are the alternatives?
The selling point of DDG is "pro privacy" i.e. non-interference with its users, now that this is shown to be BS, there is no reason to use it. Might as well use Google/Bing for bigger features... But probably something better out there.
Their claim is literally:
> We don’t store your personal information. Ever.
> Our privacy policy is simple: we don’t collect or share any of your personal information.
They are absolutely maintaining their promise. There's no evidence on their site that they have a promise of "non-interference of [our] users". Whatever that means.
I read through a lot of articles on spreadprivacy.com looking for evidence to back up your claim, and came up with nothing.
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#165That's why I will keep using google. If I will use an orwellian search engine, at least I will use the original one.
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#166Good! One more reason for me to remain a DDG user. This is the behaviour of responsible and accountable adults. "Censoring" is a word very badly understood and prone to manipulation. There are a lot of circumstances where suppression of information/opinion is justified: protecting intellectual property and copyrights, blocking doxing, prevent haters from doing harm against others, protection of military secrets or pe…
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 just think censorship and cancellation is wrong and immoral, even if it is legally allowed. I think it is immoral for some business executive to make sweeping decisions about what the commoners are / aren't allowed to see
HN mods actively hide and remove content, including political content from sites like RT & Sputnik: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I don't think anyone is accusing HN of censorship or making oppressive decisions about what the commoners can / can't see. It's accepted that some level of curation and guidelines are needed to foster a healthy environment.
DDG (and HN) are not a public square, they're private companies conducting business according to their individual desires and motivations.
It would be equally folly to force HN to host political content as it would to tell DDG how they can and can't alter their proprietary ranking algorithms.
Censorship is really a problem when the government (or a monopoly) starts censoring content, with the ability to enforce that censorship nearly or practically universally. Until then, the free market will do it's work.
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've watched US propaganda from WW2, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, etc. I don't trust the US government or their news agencies anymore than any other propaganda. They'll pick the facts that support their side and mix in lies without a second thought. There are three truths in war: My side, their side, and the truth. If they feel compelled to do something, poison the well by marking sites as suspected Russian propaganda. Othe…
Any links to this? I would love to watch some old videos from that time.
It's harder to find news from that time (that time being pre-internet) that isn't based in approved propaganda than news that is.
The best thing to read about it would be Walter Lippmann in general, but starting with Public Opinion.
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#168DuckDuckGo is Bing, we know this because when Bing accidentally censored all image searches for "tank man", all image results disappeared from DuckDuckGo as well.
Bing already announced that they were doing this, so maybe DuckDuckGo doesn't have any choice about it.
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/microsoft-rem...
> The company said it would not display any state-sponsored RT and Sputnik content, de-rank their search results on Bing and not place any ads from its ad network on those sites.
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#169I 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…
Drudge Report sold out to the deep state, they didn't cover hardly any of the election integrity news at all (among other editorial decisions). The rumor is Matt Drudge doesn't even own it anymore. If you still get your "conservative" news from there I suggest switching to Rantingly.
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#170Based on this, if you have a distaste for censorship, you probably should use Brave Search instead of DuckDuckGo. [1] Also, if you are using DuckDuckGo to avoid gargantuan corporations, you should know that they are essentially Bing with some extra perks. Brave Search has its own index, it only falls back to Bing when it doesn't have enough results (which they claim happens only for a minority of queries). [1]: https…
Falls back to Google actually and semi-independent as explained here: https://seirdy.one/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexe...