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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”

#221

Post by diego_moita »

mattwilsonn888 wrote: post #112
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…

> Comparing a search provider to a Journalism Outlet rather than a Librarian. Well if you're going to start there its no surprise you reached the conclusion you did.

Librarians work for the state, therefore their acts are covered by public law that regulates censorship.

DDG is a private company, therefore their acts are covered by private law that doesn't regulate censorship.

I stated that before on my previous comment. I recommend you to improve your text comprehension skills, they're lacking.

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

#222

Post by bobobob420 »

pphysch wrote: post #65
gibrown wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people writing the search algorithms decide, just like they decide what a "good" algorithm is.

I would bet you $50 that DDG was handled/requested a blocklist of domains from a spooky US/UK govt associate and did not unilaterally create it themselves.

That is most likely what happened and the naivety around it is annoying.

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

#223

Post by KarlKemp »

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…

"Good information", almost synonymous with "truth", is not subjective. It is objective, observable fact. The fact that is a lot of disagreement, propaganda, and lies concerning that truth does not render it subjective.

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

#224

Post by willcipriano »

eli wrote: post #190
dylan604 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I'm doing research on the specific types of misinformation? I don't want results of sites telling me the misinformation is going on, but I want the actual bits of misinformation for proper attribution. There's always edge cases

If you search "Ukraine news RT" on DDG you get Ukraine news from RT. It's still there if you look for it. It just isn't near the top of a "Ukraine news" query (I assume you'd find it there eventually if you scroll enough)

All you have to do is scroll past the US misinformation, on past EU misinformation and you'll find it right there. Easy.

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

#225

Post by therein »

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…

You are absolutely right. Such hubris on Gabriel Weinberg's end. Today marks the last day I will ever be using DDG.

We knew they weren't really actually in it for privacy anyway. This just settles it.

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

#226

Post by mountainb »

bmarquez wrote: post #108
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 is a weird stance to take about a search engine which is "tell me what to read as a service." If users don't like the change in the search engine algorithm (for whatever reason), they'll stop using the search engine. It's not a weird stance to take. At the very least this HN submission is surfacing search engine competitors like Startpage, Brave, and Kagi.

People can want a search engine that does stuff without running it through a Politburo filter. For a very long time that was the social norm in search engines. DDG marketed itself as "we follow the old norm, pick us and not the other bad guys." Now they are adopting the political censorship norm, contrary to their earlier marketing.

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

#227

Post by prvc »

uejfiweun wrote: post #3

I 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…

>I liked DDG because it respected the user.

Is there any evidence that they actually fulfilled their promises?

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

#228

Post by freediver »

cycomanic wrote: post #137
giaour wrote: post #33

Lot of hot takes and hostility in these comments, which is honestly kinda surprising. If your reaction to this news is negative, ask yourself, should DuckDuckGo downrank SEO spam? Then ask yourself how disinformation written to "go viral" on social media and in search results is different from SEO spam.

Thank you! This really needed to be said. This is about political SEO Spam nothing else.

This would not be a problem if all SEO spam was treated the same. But in this case DDG would only consider disinformation coming from one side as "SEO spam" thus making a political stance and not a search quality stance, which would consider all disinformation equally (leaving aside the question how would DDG even be able to tell what is disinformation in the first place)

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

#229

Post by avgcorrection »

12ian34 wrote: post #34
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…

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?

That’s a complete derailment. This is about the experience that search users should have. If they want to search for “russia official statements ukraine” then they should get results about that.

The fact that Russia has decided to outlaw the truth is completely besides the point.

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

#230

Post by timeon »

myth_drannon wrote: post #125
qiskit wrote: post #90

Is anyone really that surprised? Beware companies that sell virtue. They tend to be the least virtuous. Don't be evil? Easily one of the most evil companies to have ever existed. When DDG's prime selling point was not their service but their "virtue", you knew it was a shady company. Though I do hope DDG, Bing, etc are able to gain some market share to break google's stranglehold on search, DDG is at heart no better…

Any alternatives? Open source search...?

Alternatives? like you are really longing for lies?
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