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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”

#211

Post by empressplay »

awb wrote: post #166
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 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 censor…

Hacker News is not a search engine.

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

#212

Post by slim »

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.

it would be unbiased if they weren't specifically targeting russian disinformation

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

#213

Post by Tainnor »

avgcorrection wrote: post #118

The war is two weeks old and some people seem to want to inject the news from Ukraine straight into their veins. That also makes it easier for disinformation and propaganda to spread. Both sides have an incentive to spread propaganda (although moreso for Russia since this is not a righteous war on their part by any stretch of the imagination). The Wikipedia page for the Ghost of Kyiv currently says that some sources…

Most Western media that I follow are very quick to point out that information from Ukraine is not necessarily trustworthy. They're quite likely to portray the situation in a way that makes it look like they're winning. The number of reported Russian casualties is very likely to be exaggerated and this is pointed out rather consistently.

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

#214

Post by prvc »

mywittyname wrote: post #164
pphysch wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

>we don’t collect or share any of your personal information

Their lawyers must have a very specific definition of "share" in mind, since they are definitely exposing that information via how their ad system functions.

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

#215

Post by bobobob420 »

paxys wrote: post #194

Judging by the replies to this thread, I don't think anyone here knows what an algorithm is. How do you think any search engine on the planet "objectively" decides how to show you the top 10 results for a search term out of billions of possibilities? There are a thousand knobs constantly being turned behind the scenes depending on the preferences of the operator. "Non-biased search results" are impossible by definiti…

And making some stance about what results you should see based on a war that is going on is wrong. If someone searches for a keyword they should get back results that are relevant to the keyword. They should not have results filtered on this impression that those results come from paticular sources that are deemed by DDG as russian propaganda. Search engines are not supposed to filter out propaganda. That propaganda article could be the most relevant article even if every word in the article is a lie. Also what if you are specifically looking for disinformation? Now you can’t use the search engine properly. If they are such transparent kings give us the option ourselves to press the button to filter russia out but they wont because they know we will do a diff and expose the political bias

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

#216

Post by WheatM »

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.

No post body was provided.

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

#217

Post by diego_moita »

ricardo81 wrote: post #17
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…

I don't get the comparison with newspapers, maybe 40 years ago that was one of the limited ways of information discovery but we've had the web since then. People are free to discover the world's information and given the saturation of that information, differing points of view on it. However, with two dominant search engines (Google and Bing/DuckDuckGo/Yahoo) there is little diversity and so censorship has more impac…

> I don't get the comparison with newspapers,

The point is not newspapers "per se".

The point is private entity, as opposed to public state. As I stated clearly, freedom of speech is a principle applied upon public law, not private law. Therefore, "censorship" is something the state does, not something private parts do among themselves.

Are anti-spam filters "censorship"? No, because they're implemented by private citizens to benefit other private citizens.

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

#218

Post by avgcorrection »

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…

> Also, freedom of speech is a principle applied on the relation of people with the state, an issue for public law. This is about a private enterprise and its relations with its users, subject to the regulation of private law.

Have you been living under a rock? This narrow, don’t-tread-on-me version of freedom-of-speech has been criticized in the Zeitgeist for a good while now; many people want the same principles to apply to private as well as state actors, equally.

Most people talk about the concept of free speech. Not whatever federal law that deals with it in the US.

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

#219

Post by bobobob420 »

bobobob420 wrote: post #215
paxys wrote: post #194

Judging by the replies to this thread, I don't think anyone here knows what an algorithm is. How do you think any search engine on the planet "objectively" decides how to show you the top 10 results for a search term out of billions of possibilities? There are a thousand knobs constantly being turned behind the scenes depending on the preferences of the operator. "Non-biased search results" are impossible by definiti…

And making some stance about what results you should see based on a war that is going on is wrong. If someone searches for a keyword they should get back results that are relevant to the keyword. They should not have results filtered on this impression that those results come from paticular sources that are deemed by DDG as russian propaganda. Search engines are not supposed to filter out propaganda. That propaganda…

They are censoring russia and it is wrong in the global scheme of what the internet is supposed to give us access too. We are going backwards with this bullshit. Educate people dont hide stuff from them, its annoying

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

#220

Post by dragonwriter »

diego_moita wrote: post #217
ricardo81 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get the comparison with newspapers, maybe 40 years ago that was one of the limited ways of information discovery but we've had the web since then. People are free to discover the world's information and given the saturation of that information, differing points of view on it. However, with two dominant search engines (Google and Bing/DuckDuckGo/Yahoo) there is little diversity and so censorship has more impac…

> I don't get the comparison with newspapers, The point is not newspapers "per se". The point is private entity, as opposed to public state. As I stated clearly, freedom of speech is a principle applied upon public law, not private law. Therefore, "censorship" is something the state does, not something private parts do among themselves. Are anti-spam filters "censorship"? No, because they're implemented by private ci…

> Therefore, "censorship" is something the state does, not something private parts do among themselves.

Censorship is not defined with respect to the right of free speech; public censorship may be where those two issues collide, but it's not the only kind of censorship.

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