Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 865 posts

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

#201

Post by AmVess »

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…

They just murdered any goodwill they had built up.

I just switched to Yandex (Russian search). At least Yandex doesn't pretend to be something that it isn't.

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

#202

Post by blub »

Frankly I’d find it much more acceptable to label so-called sources of misinformation and link to the evidence of their past transgressions. This is the only measure which is respectful of the kind of free exchange of ideas typical of a democratic society.

That so so many jump directly to banning, silencing, downranking tells me that we’re already in big trouble, as evidenced also by the heavy-handed coronavirus-related censorship, cancelling people, etc.

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

#203

Post by tylersmith »

pessimizer wrote: post #134
eli wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you're interested in the war, but not interested in communications from the countries involved in that war, that's willful ignorance. The essence of the censorship of Russian, Chinese, and Iranian media is to keep people from media that they would be interested in, not to help people avoid media they're not interested in; people do a good job of that themselves. People who only want to read their government's appr…

I bet if they made uBlock Homeland branded as "ruBlock" people would turn using it into a status symbol.

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

#204

Post by mrguyorama »

uejfiweun wrote: post #62
12ian34 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think censorship is wrong then it follows that you would think that the Russian state is wrong given that they are going as far as denying this is even a war, and actively censoring those that call it one. Are you saying that you're still keen for them to be allowed to do so?

Yes, I say let their lies be defeated in the marketplace of free ideas. Basically everyone knows what's going on with Russia at this point. I don't think suddenly censoring their lies now is really gonna change anything.

People keep saying these kinds of things, but Russians had pretty open access to western ideas, news, propaganda, and history, but that didn't stop a huge chunk of them from either tacitly or explicitly approving of this invasion of a sovereign nation. People believe what they want to believe, not what is correct.

People keep saying "sunlight is the best disinfectant" (despite that not even being a reasonable statement in terms of disinfectants) but Russians have had access to "sunlight" for literally decades and this still happened.

It's the same with how people believed we could save china by exporting capitalism, as if that would change things. The fact of the matter is that information, misinformation, and propaganda are game theoretic; a purposely bad actor that isn't ACTIVELY pushed back against will have huge success.

Hell, it even happens here in the states. Both Fox News and MSNBC are perfectly legal to produce and view here, and yet no matter what you say on either station, roughly half of the country will believe it. That's a pretty terrible disinfectant if you ask me.

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

#205

Post by astine »

avgcorrection wrote: post #72
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…

If I am interested in Flat Earth Theory and search for that then I expect to get results that Flat Earth believers are interested in. It’s that simple.

If you're actually interested in flat earth theory you'll search for "Flat Earth." If you search for "Charting a Flight", You're probably not looking for flat earth content.

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

#206

Post by smsm42 »

kube-system wrote: post #173
smsm42 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Having worked on search engines, I know it only too well. Defining "good result" is a very complex task, that even without politics intruding involves a lot of judgement and very complex and un-obvious choices. Is good result something people would frequently click on? Then clickbait would be the best search results ever - do we really want this? Is it something a lot of people search for? Is it a popular site? Is it a site belonging to a large advertiser? And when politics comes to it, it becomes a mess. So pretending it's clear and obvious - just remove "bad results" and show "good results" - is really not understanding the problem.

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

#207

Post by pessimizer »

giaour wrote: post #81
adamrezich wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ask yourself why this particular variety of disinformation written to "go viral" on social media and in search results is different from any other. ask yourself whether your own state's government ever engages in similar activity, or whether this is something that only this specific state government in question does. ask yourself why other people making decisions about what kinds of propaganda you do and don't see is…

Did DDG say they're upranking "good" propaganda and downranking "bad" propaganda? What I understood from the tweets is that DDG is downranking propaganda. Russia happens to produce a lot of it, so they'd be more impacted.

No, what they said is that they're downranking "sites associated with Russian disinformation", not "propaganda." If what you understood is different than that, it's different that what the tweet directly says.

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

#209

Post by _vufv »

How arogant do you have to be to consider yourself to be the arbiter of Truth?

Do you really think that western media are propaganda free?

Do you think that the western propaganda is good and Russian one is bad?

If you're downranking disinformation from Russian side, shouldn't you also downrank western disinformation?

Does your assesment of truthfulness really boil-down to "in-group good / out-group bad"? If yes, why bother reading anything, you already know what your conclusion is going to be.

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

#210

Post by DFHippie »

OtomotO wrote: post #136
noyeastguy wrote: post #75

I support this as an avid DDG user. Russian disinformation is a new kind of warfare that we've not inoculated ourselves against yet. This is a step in that direction. “in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance.”

If you're intolerant you are not tolerant. If you only tolerate what you approve of, you're not tolerate at all. The definition of tolerating includes viewpoints that are not your own. Otherwise everyone in existence would be tolerant

You present tolerance as binary: you are tolerant or you are intolerant. There are degrees of tolerance. If you wish to foster a more tolerant society, you can refuse to tolerate the least tolerant people and thereby make the net level of tolerance in the society higher. Basically, you ban the bigots. Is this bigotry against bigots? No, actually, because bigotry is holding an unjustified negative opinion against someone and this would be a justified opinion, but setting that aside, it would result in less bigotry.

And tolerating people when they behave and not tolerating them otherwise is different from not tolerating people because of innocuous characteristics which are outside their control, like their skin color, their gender, or their place of birth. You can choose not to abuse the disabled and thereby make yourself less bigoted. You can't choose not to be disabled.

Post reply on HN