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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”

#411

Post by empthought »

jaywalk wrote: post #286
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…

> maybe DuckDuckGo doesn't have any choice about it. Did you read the linked tweet? "At DuckDuckGo, we've been rolling out search updates that down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation." Sounds like they very much had a choice, and chose censorship. If they didn't and are actually just subject to Bing's whims, then they're lying. Neither of those are good.

>chose censorship

This is not what the word "censorship" means.

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

#412

Post by sidibe »

vogre wrote: post #375
adventured wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all disinformation is created equal, and that's a critical difference. The Russian and Ukrainian sides are not moral equals. If Russia says Ukraine is full of drug addicts, whores and nazis, and that bombing hospitals is necessary to protect itself from Ukraine - that's of course disinformation. If Ukraine says they have killed 10,000 Russian soldiers, when the real number is closer to 5,000 - that too is disinfo…

>If Russia says ... that bombing hospitals is necessary to protect itself from Ukraine - that's of course disinformation. Actually this story is really "wag the dog" style https://waronfakes.com/civil/fake-russian-aviation-struck-a-... Every story you read now is propaganda. West is just better and more experienced in this stuff than Russia. >I'm interested in Russia losing in humiliating fashion, getting isolated, h…

>Every story you read now is propaganda. West is just better and more experienced in this stuff than Russia

You have such a good eye for propaganda! Congrats. Thanks for the education I will make waronfakes.com my homepage. From flipping link to link it looks perfectly fine, covers everything from all parties: Ukraine lying, NATO lying, lies about Russia lying, lies about DNR/LNR. Perfectly balanced

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

#413

Post by s1artibartfast »

endymi0n wrote: post #265
AmVess wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So you think it‘s better to use a search engine openly spewing propaganda than one that tries to curb it? It sounds like the Putin fans who seem to like him „because he‘s a strong willed man who does not change his mind“ as if that was some kind of qualification.

Different filters for different purposes.

Results are often banned by topic or keyword, not publisher or context.

At this point I don't trust US search engines not to censor official public statements and announcements from the US government.

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

#415

Post by jawerty »

One problem with platforms having a clear bias in their search results is their classification of concepts like "disinformation" aren't what they say. They can't be. A business that needs to increase profits every quarter is never going to be charitably filtering data to get rid of "bad actors" (unless it's enforced by the law), they're going to do what they can to make more money. I don't think the owners of DDG are making this mistake maliciously. However, controlling information based on subjective opinions on narratives like the Russia/Ukraine conflict (which 99% of people talking about haven't even been to the region) is short sighted unless they're openly stating "We have a clear bias and are making our own claims on what good information is."

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

#416

Post by empthought »

deltarholamda wrote: post #408
empthought wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This strategy is vulnerable to supply-chain attacks on your information sources... which is exactly what Russian information warfare carries out. The credibility of American and European "mainstream media" is oft-maligned but rarely actually d…

>This strategy is vulnerable to supply-chain attacks on your information sources There is no single strategy, there is no silver bullet. I certainly didn't intend to imply that there was. One can only make their best effort. Any strategy is going to have flaws. >which is a far cry from astroturfing and falsehoods made out of whole cloth that Russian sources typically engage in American mass media has historically don…

> I wouldn't downplay the editorial decisions that you mention either. That is a hugely powerful lever of control. Yanking RT or whoever from search results is exactly that, only this time it is exercised by corporate tech companies.

The costs of letting disinformation flow freely are far greater than the costs of downranking sources known for disinformation. One only need look at the antivax movement to confirm this.

> Finally, one can always find a reason why this thing is worse than this other thing, and one is therefore justified in doing whatever it is one wanted to do anyway. This line of argumentation rarely impresses me.

Good thing the responsible parties have no interest in or duty regarding impressing you, then. Whatabouters don't impress me, personally.

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

#417

Post by yifanl »

gruez wrote: post #362
kube-system wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> So where does that leave us? Everything is biased?

Search results are created by humans and intended to be consumed by humans, so yes. (And just to head it off, a web crawler is ultimately just an abstraction for the humans who will later consume the search results, it just happens to have particularly fast and strict browsing habits)

Now that said, accepting that "(un)biased" is an extremely broad term, I'd very easily believe that the intent of the tweet was to point at some specific type of bias that DDG (at the time) intended to avoid.

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

#419

Post by giantrobot »

shadowgovt wrote: post #400
danShumway wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire quote in context: > “[W]hen you search, you expect unbiased results, but that’s not what you get on Google,” Gabriel Weinberg, founder of DuckDuckGo, a privacy-focused search engine, writes on Quora. “On Google, you get results tailored to what they think you’re likely to click on, based on the data profile they’ve built on you over time.” "Unbiased" is a bad word to use, but what they were getting at is t…

I assume it's the "law of conservation of expertsexchange." They don't downrank w3schools because something will just replace it. ;)

I still can't read that site name as anything but "expert sex change".

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

#420

Post by doitLP »

nimbius wrote: post #388

Its really shocking to me just how many western companies have capitulated to the wholesale censorship and shunning of Russia for this war. DDG and others snored through the bush era disinformation campaign that led to the war in Iraq that killed countless civilians, yet somehow have a sterling enough moral terpitude to suddenly care about truth now?

To be fair DDG was founded the year Obama took office.
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