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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”

#171

Post by wrycoder »

mrjangles wrote: post #20

Seriously what the f*ck makes Gabriel Weinberg think that myself, or anyone else, gives a damn about his personal opinion on what I should and should not be reading. The arrogance of these people is astounding. Also, absolutely zero of the standard base of Duck Duck Go users are the kind of people who don't understand what a Russian state controlled news site is, and why one would have to be careful reading it. Those…

Why use startpage? Google’s results are biased in both political and non-political ways.

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

#172

Post by ajsnigrutin »

uejfiweun wrote: post #129
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep, youtube... but google search is not much better... corporate news and pinterest on top, then everything else. Funnily enough, sometimes the pages that scrape github issues get even higher than original github issues themselves.

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

#173

Post by kube-system »

smsm42 wrote: post #127
kube-system wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Determining which search results are good to return is the hard part about creating a search engine, and it’s definitely not a problem limited to politically charged content.

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

#174

Post by MildlySerious »

kdazzle wrote: post #133
mrjangles wrote: post #20

Seriously what the f*ck makes Gabriel Weinberg think that myself, or anyone else, gives a damn about his personal opinion on what I should and should not be reading. The arrogance of these people is astounding. Also, absolutely zero of the standard base of Duck Duck Go users are the kind of people who don't understand what a Russian state controlled news site is, and why one would have to be careful reading it. Those…

> Also, absolutely zero of the standard base of Duck Duck Go users are the kind of people who don't understand what a Russian state controlled news site is, and why one would have to be careful reading it. You sure about that? I keep hearing about the Jan 6ers being big DDG users. They seem like the types that aren't too savvy when it comes to misinformation.

Exactly. The qanon conspiracy nuts have been pushing DDG as an alternative to Google for a while now, and they most definitely don't have that awareness. In fact, they tend to get ridiculously defensive when offering the thought that RT is no less "big bad MSM" than their usual targets.

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

#175

Post by OtomotO »

michaelmrose wrote: post #159
OtomotO wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 infor…

We are not talking about believing if something is unbiased, or if something can be unbiased, we are talking about said something being actively biased in the name of "the greater good"

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

#176

Post by pessimizer »

orhmeh09 wrote: post #97
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It also tends to prioritize recency a lot. Good luck searching for something with terms that have been in the news lately.

Good luck searching for someone who shares the first name of someone who has been in the news lately.

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

#177

Post by wrycoder »

gambler wrote: post #78

You know, I am beginning to see that all that talk about mass psychosis caused by social isolation due to Covid and lockdowns was onto something. It explains a lot of what is happening right now. People are hyper-focused on only one thing and pay zero attention to long-term and larger-context consequences of their actions. And proud of it.

Not only that, but I’m observing lately that Western culture is becoming increasingly juvenile and generally lacking in wisdom, apparently by deliberately forgetting the past.

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

#178

Post by if_by_whisky »

larvaetron wrote: post #155
if_by_whisky wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Anti-spam utilities exist to filter out (aka "censor") spam. Disinformation is spam. I'm pro filtering spam and perhaps even a reasonable person. There you have it.

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

#179

Post by eli »

cato_the_elder wrote: post #121
eli wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah I just don't agree with any of that.

Spam is infamously hard to identify and consistently define. My spam is your content. I'd argue what Russia is doing here is spam. They're laundering their message through media outlets with domains with much stronger SEO positioning than any official government domain. (You may disagree this is "spam" but that's kind of my point.)

Meanwhile I think there's pretty broad consensus that if you doing a general search (and not specifically seeking out opposing information or alternate views) that you do not want the top results to be intentionally false.

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

#180

Post by pessimizer »

diego_moita wrote: post #11

Good! 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…

> "Censoring" is a word very badly understood and prone to manipulation.

Search results are also prone to manipulation. I suppose you could manipulate the search results for the word "censoring" to something that people who want to censor would prefer.

> prevent haters from doing harm against others

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