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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”
#312Suppose I go off and make a search engine, with my own algorithm for ranking search results. At first it works great. And then five years later, I find that, by a quirk in my algorithm, I find that a new site has risen to the top of all my results. This new site was created as a prank, and it contains authoritative-sounding but incorrect answers to common questions. The results returned are still relevant to my users…
>Should I simply accept that this site is the correct top result for my users' queries, Yes, your users aren't using your search engine as an oracle for the truth, they're using it to find pages with similar text. It's their job (and specifically not yours) to determine how well the text they find corresponds with reality. Perhaps they're even aware the site is factually incorrect and enjoy reading it for the novelty…
I’m rarely an expert on the broad keywords I search for. That’s why I’m searching: to learn.
I would use a search engine that makes some attempt to rank higher quality, more accurate information higher than others.
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#313I 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.
> "unbiased" doesn't mean "unfiltered". For example, I don't want spam or malware in my search results.
That seems like a cop-out to me. They're not filtering "spam or malware", they're filtering "Russian disinformation". What's next? Maybe OAN is "right-wing disinformation" and we should "filter" that too? What about fox news? How far can you use that excuse to say you're not biased?
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#314I 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.
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…
The free market will decide what's a valuable search result or not, and I trust the freedom and liberty of people over any kind of curated, mutated ranking system.
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Should I simply accept that this site is the correct top result for my users' queries, Yes, your users aren't using your search engine as an oracle for the truth, they're using it to find pages with similar text. It's their job (and specifically not yours) to determine how well the text they find corresponds with reality. Perhaps they're even aware the site is factually incorrect and enjoy reading it for the novelty…
> Yes, your users aren't using your search engine as an oracle for the truth, they're using it to find pages with similar text. I’m confident this is factually incorrect for a very very large subset of searches. Probably a majority.
It's never going to work for that though. This is like changing a hammer design because some people are hurting themselves using it as a comb.
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#316Lot 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.
Info from both sides are supposed to go viral. Why does that part matter?
What matters is that SEO spamming techniques are used to force it to go viral. It's not about sides, though one side in this conflict uses spam much more than the other.
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#317Good! 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…
This narrow "Free Speech == First Amendment and nothing else" interpretation is quite common with those that advocate controlling the speech of others.
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#318Suppose I go off and make a search engine, with my own algorithm for ranking search results. At first it works great. And then five years later, I find that, by a quirk in my algorithm, I find that a new site has risen to the top of all my results. This new site was created as a prank, and it contains authoritative-sounding but incorrect answers to common questions. The results returned are still relevant to my users…
>Should I simply accept that this site is the correct top result for my users' queries, Yes, your users aren't using your search engine as an oracle for the truth, they're using it to find pages with similar text. It's their job (and specifically not yours) to determine how well the text they find corresponds with reality. Perhaps they're even aware the site is factually incorrect and enjoy reading it for the novelty…
>they're using it to find pages with similar text.
This is one vision of what a search engine's job is, but I'm not sure it's what most users are looking for. Even barebones pagerank goes far beyond just finding similar text - it uses structure of the web's link graph to estimate the quality of a page. Now obviously pagerank is not directly trying to ascertain which pages are truthful and which are not, but it is arguably using connectedness as a proxy - the assumption is that people tend to link to reliable, useful pages and tend not to link to incorrect, harmful ones.
Does vanilla pagerank also violate your boundaries for what a search engine should do?
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#319I 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 was literally the first link in my results. Haha.
Look again! The first result is "Drudge Retort", a "wrecker" website designed to take clicks away from the actual real Drudge Report.
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
I want one which doesn't decide this for me, no-matter how "good for me" it may be, and relies exclusively on my search query to decide what is most relevant. If you really want to flag disinformation, I'd be fine with some sort percentage reliability value or something along those lines, right next to the result. Preferably something that I can also order results by. Totally happy with a 'caveat emptor' clause regar…
Exactly. If I'm searching for Russian propaganda, I should see Russian propaganda in my search results. If I'm searching for good bicycle reviews, I should see good bicycle reviews.
What is a query you would use to search exclusively for Russian propaganda?