451–460 of 865 posts
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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.
Your assertion is not falsifiable, but I would otherwise take the other side of that bet.
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Search results have to be "biased" towards being related to your query to be useful, I would argue that state sponsored Russian propaganda is probably not particularly related to most queries.
How about state sponsored Chinese propaganda? Or how about state sponsored New Zealand propaganda? Or state sponsored German propaganda? How about a corporation XYZ sponsored propaganda? What if you are Russian, Chinese, Kiwi, German or XYZ employee in these situations - or simply want to have equal access to information so you can make up your own world view? If you choose to go down this path - what propaganda is O…
And you're asking for an enemy state to be allowed to do that warfare, against Ukraine, Europe, the US, unhindered.
This is not comparable to a company tricking people in buying more of their pointless stuff.
> but of political bias nature
No, what you're saying, would help a dictator that attacks another country.
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It does work for that. For a large number of searches, on relatively uncontroversial topics, search engines have effectively become oracles of truth. This is how google ended up with their modern design that discourages website clicks, they did research into their users and realized most people searching “Abraham Lincoln’s birthday” want to see the top result “February 12, 1809” and not the top result “ https://www.l…
>It does work for that. It does not. I used the moon thing from last year as an example. Here[1] is a very noncontroversial query that still yields factually incorrect results in the box at the top. Yes if you read the results carefully and think about it you'll realize it's wrong but then you're doing the same thing you would be doing otherwise. [1] https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=APq-WBv0RNgr6Q3zUOjDc1lM...
In the "Abraham Lincoln’s birthday" example that the person gave, it absolutely does work that way in regards to the user's motivations.
When a user googles for "Abraham Lincoln’s birthday" They are almost certainly attempting to use a search engine as an oracle of truth.
> that still yields factually incorrect results
Search engines aren't perfect. That does not change the fact that the oracle of truth model, is a good model to describe a user's motivations.
Such as when they google "Abraham Lincoln’s birthday".
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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?
Now blocked in several countries.
It would be wrong during peace, but we can't afford this during the Russian rampage that's happening right now.
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You ignored the "slave state with an absolute monarchy" part I think. Not like they are even comparable, unless you are saying the BBC journalists could justifiably be fearing for their lives if they criticize the UK government? All state media aren't created equal, and aren't equally independant. Otherwise the BBC, aljazeera and RT would be all equal since they are all state media after all.
Have you remembered to renew your BBC license this year?
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Sorry but it just isn't the same. Russia made it illegal -- punishable by 15 years in prison -- to accurately describe their invasion of Ukraine.
I think you can go to jail for supporting the russian invasion in some european countries right now too.
For a long, long, time.
If it means saying that Russia is right, definitely not.
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For me, this move by DDG will have the opposite effect of what is intended. I will now trust my own media and sources even less, if they rely on silencing the competition and insist on controlling what I access "for my own good". Such dirty tactics are insulting, even more so when delivered under a sneering benevolent guise. As if they have perfect knowledge of my motives and wishes. What if I'm genuinely curious as…
Would you trust a source of medical information less if it declined to present or link to information that breathing CO is healthy, drinking mineral spirits is fine, and handling mercury with bare skin is safe and fun?
Suppose 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…
There is no rule that it should rank sites by page rank or number of keywords or whatever.
If I don't want to see "Russian Disinformation", I probably won't search for it to begin with. On the other hand, maybe I want to see what all the fuss is about - then why should the search engine stand in my way?
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> In case someone hasn't noticed, there is a war going on in Europe. That is a circumstance where some of these cases apply. There's a saying: "Truth is the first casualty in war." The last thing I want during a war is censorship. Why should I magically start trusting the government and media now? > If this sounds just like "legalese" to you consider this: a newspaper has the right to select and editorialize the news…
> They are a search engine. Exactly. people go to search engines looking for information about things. If the search engine returns lies it's completely failed. > who cares if the results are manipulated? Not sure if you've noticed, but there's an entire industry built around manipulating search engine results. If the search engines don't fight back the only thing that will be left is corporate and government bullshi…
If I search for Time Cube, should a search engine refuse to show me a link to its webpage?