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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”

#361

Post by awb »

thepasswordis wrote: post #351
awb wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Do you do this in other elements of your life? “I’m not going to drink this veggie smoothie because they started adding honey and I don’t think sugar is healthy. I’m going to drink soda where at least they don’t try to hide that you’re drinking sugar.”

Yes, I do this with other parts of my life. One of the most frustrating experiences I ever had grocery shopping was when I tried to buy "fancy" mayonnaise at whole foods. I was trying to cook something "nice" and wanted to get the good stuff, so that's where I went. The package said in bold letters, "Mayonnaise!" or some such, and what I didn't realize until I got home was that it wasn't actually mayonnaise, but some…

OK, I could see using Yandex to search for Russian content.

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

#362

Post by gruez »

kube-system wrote: post #345
gruez wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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?

You have rediscovered why it is difficult to make a search engine. This is a problem that applies to all search results, not just politically charged content: human judgement is always required to write a search algorithm.

So where does that leave us? Everything is biased? What does that mean when applied to duckduckgo's tweet from 2019? It's just a hollow slogan? I'm not sure that changes the conclusion much. The first impression I got from reading the comment was that the tweet from 2019 was a hollow PR message that they don't stand behind.

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

#363

Post by AnthonyMouse »

bhandziuk wrote: post #325
mardifoufs wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you can go to jail for supporting the russian invasion in some european countries right now too.

Is there a source for this?

https://twitter.com/tjmcintyre/status/1501594050478153739

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

#364

Post by deltarholamda »

vkou wrote: post #197
burnished wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So like, what, everyones keeping this big secret and its just schlubs like you and me kept in the dark?

I don't think it's some kind of backroom secret that most media, US, Russian, or otherwise, is utter shit. It should be pretty evident from looking at its coverage of any subject of which you have a better-than-average understanding of, or from contrasting how media produced in different parts of the world looks at the same exact events. Or even from applying a little bit of critical thinking. From looking at what it…

>Unfortunately, the alternatives to mainstream media (Q-idiots, Zero Hedge, Info Wars, random dude with an opinionated blog, some pot comedian's podcast, viral memes on facebook, etc)

The alternative to one source of dubious information is not another source of dubious information. The alternative is to have access to all sorts of information, and piece together what you think is true, using your own critical thinking skills and ability to sniff out BS.

That used to be the Internet. It is not the Internet anymore, since the Internet has, for the first time I can think of, decided that This One Particular Country is uniquely bad, for Reasons, and should therefore be unpersoned; and also has the ability to squelch any dissent because so much of the Internet has become siloed in big corporations. It's really weird, and I find it suspicious.

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

#365

Post by mrweasel »

ColinHayhurst wrote: post #140
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.

To what extent does their agreement with Microsoft allow them to change rankings? Will Ecosia, Qwant, Yahoo! and so on be doing, or have to do, the same?

As I understand it, based on previous comments on HN they can change ranking and inject results from their crawler into the search. The assumption that it’s just Bing comes which a bunch of asteriskes.

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

#367

Post by balozi »

cato_the_elder wrote: post #162

Based on this, if you have a distaste for censorship, you probably should use Brave Search instead of DuckDuckGo. [1] Also, if you are using DuckDuckGo to avoid gargantuan corporations, you should know that they are essentially Bing with some extra perks. Brave Search has its own index, it only falls back to Bing when it doesn't have enough results (which they claim happens only for a minority of queries). [1]: https…

As soon as Brave has more than a handful of users, they will quickly metamorphize into their Do Evil phase. We are currently watching that transformation at DDG. The point is that there is no place left to turn to.

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

#368

Post by latexr »

kats wrote: post #168

DuckDuckGo is Bing, we know this because when Bing accidentally censored all image searches for "tank man", all image results disappeared from DuckDuckGo as well. Bing already announced that they were doing this, so maybe DuckDuckGo doesn't have any choice about it. https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/microsoft-rem... > The company said it would not display any state-sponsored RT and Sputnik content, de-ra…

> DuckDuckGo is Bing, we know this because when Bing accidentally censored all image searches for "tank man", all image results disappeared from DuckDuckGo as well.

We know it because they’re open about it. The information was public before that incident.

https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...

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

#369

Post by s1artibartfast »

endymi0n wrote: post #241
somenameforme wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not videos, but these two articles played a formative role in my worldview (related to Iraq): WaPo: "Irrefutable" : https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/02/06/i... NYTimes: "Irrefutable and Undeniable" : https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/opinion/irrefutable-and-u... I find it extremely interesting to occasionally reread those knowing what we know now. And nothing has changed, except for now there is…

Interesting, seems like the Russian „Firehose of Falsehoods“ model seemed to work pretty well on a sizeable demographic of even HN to make them distrust anything: https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html I‘m not saying I‘m blindly following either sides‘ narrative, but to me there is a clear trustworthyness hierarchy between the narrative of a society where I can still freely read, discuss and criticize thes…

>to me there is a clear trustworthyness hierarchy between the narrative of a society where I can still freely read, discuss and criticize these obvious pieces of misinformation

This no longer describes US society. We are better than Russia, but fall short of this description. Google actively delists information, including publications and statements from the US government and private citizens.

This extends beyond "misinformation" to categorical topics which citizens are not allowed to learn about

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

#370

Post by kyle_martin1 »

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.

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