Yandex was already my go to alternative to Google, this just reassured me in my choice
DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
481–490 of 865 posts
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#482Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if it was about misinformation than surely they would want to down-rank all misinformation equally - if they had capability to do so in the first place They don't have that capability. DuckDuckGo also doesn't have the capability to surface only correct JS code when I search for a programming concept. There isn't a binary here, all manual upranking and downranking of any content is always playing whack-a-mole, none…
> It is justifiable to critique them in whether or not they've done a good job of that, If the announcement said "all disinformation about Russian-Ukraine conflict" it would grant benefit of a doubt about their execution as you point out. But it says "Russian disinformation" thus they are making it about politics (something a search engine should not be doing), not fighting disinformation (something a search engine s…
> But it says "Russian disinformation" thus they are making it about politics
I don't follow. What specifically do you mean when you say the word "politics"? Do you mean that targeting a specific source of misinformation is political? That's literally all manual interventions, all of them target specific sources.
> However in this case, they are inferring a certain political view of the conflict, regardless of what your intent is
Well, or they're inferring that the information is factually wrong. Again, just very confused at what you mean by political here. When DuckDuckGo uses the word misinformation, what it means by that word is that DuckDuckGo thinks the information is factually incorrect, regardless of whether you are Russian or Chinese or American.
If the DOJ comes out against encryption and says that it has a special chip that's safe enough for everyone, and then a researcher says, "no, I have broken the chip" -- is that a political disagreement? If I block the DOJ source am I making a political statement, or am I saying that the DOJ's assertion in this case is factually wrong?
Of course, sorting facts often has political implications, and it is fair to ask about what the political implications and viewpoints are that DuckDuckGo has, and whether it has biases that prevent it from reacting as strongly to, just as an example, US propaganda about refugees or armed conflicts that it has initiated. However, once again, asking critical questions about bias is not the same thing as saying that there is a nebulous category called "politics" where a private company who's job it is to sort information should never sort information.
> No basis for inference can be established here. The only way this could work is by having a switch in the interface to turn such results off, so the user can opt in into it if they prefer to.
It's hard to argue about this because on one hand, having more user controls around search would genuinely be good. However, this is not really how search works right now outside of rare situations like safe-search and location, and to argue that DuckDuckGo shouldn't be making any editorial decisions about political topics until full user-transparent customization of search algorithms exist -- it's effectively the same thing as arguing that no editorial decisions should be made right now.
To me, this just kind of circles back around to what I was originally saying. Are you upset about a result-sorting business doing its job and sorting results, or are you upset with this very specific decision, or... is it possible you're just upset that we don't have a more competitive market for search engines?
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#483Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#484I 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.
Funny how most of the comments here are complaining about how this proves there is western media bias. One of the main goals of the current Russian propaganda push in the US is to get people to lose confidence in reliable news outlets. They want us to believe that our best news outlets are equivalent to their basement troll farms that just fabricate stories day in and out. The two are not the same. Giving equal per s…
Out of curiosity, what are the reliable news outlets that you subscribe to?
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#485I 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.
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.
State-sponsored American propaganda during the War on Terror is pretty routinely denounced now as incorrect to what was going on, but during the active days would have been ranked higher in results in search engines, had this kind of thing been more popular then.
(I say that as a former neocon too.)
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#486Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I will now trust my own media and sources even less, if they rely on silencing the competition and insist on controlling As you should! It's actually exactly what authoritarian governments like Russia do. They silence and control information, blocking out other sources aside from their own propaganda. Everything else is said to be dangerous disinformation.
It's insane to me that people don't think this way. The mainstream US media, in perfect lockstep with the gov, told us all that iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and then we found out it was a complete fabrication. And most of those people still have jobs!
I remember following news during the buildup to that war. It was fairly obvious that those WMD claims was weak, and that was definitely brought up in the news. While I was mostly following European sources, so American sources might have been less insistent on that. But seriously, if your country wants to go to war, and local news sources is the only thing you look at. Then you aren't trying very hard to stay informed, and if you are fortunate enough to speak English, there is so many serious news sources out there with different viewpoints it's crazy. So there is not much of an excuse.
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#487Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It is justifiable to critique them in whether or not they've done a good job of that, If the announcement said "all disinformation about Russian-Ukraine conflict" it would grant benefit of a doubt about their execution as you point out. But it says "Russian disinformation" thus they are making it about politics (something a search engine should not be doing), not fighting disinformation (something a search engine s…
> But it says "Russian disinformation" thus they are making it about politics I don't follow. What specifically do you mean when you say the word "politics"? Do you mean that targeting a specific source of misinformation is political? That's literally all manual interventions, all of them target specific sources. > However in this case, they are inferring a certain political view of the conflict, regardless of what y…
> Do you mean that targeting a specific source of misinformation is political?
In this particular case yes, proven by the fact that such source can only be 'Russian' by their definition.
> Well, or they're inferring that the information is factually wrong.
How would DDG do this even if they wanted? Send fact checkers to the ground?
> When DuckDuckGo uses the word misinformation, what it means by that word is that DuckDuckGo thinks the information is factually incorrect, regardless of whether you are Russian or Chinese or American.
I agree with the last part. The problem here is they are only expressing the intent to flag disinformation from one side as factually incorrect, and do not even bother to do so for disinformation coming from the other side, thus creating bias, which is political in nature for the reasons explained above.
> To me, this just kind of circles back around to what I was originally saying. Are you upset about a result-sorting business doing its job and sorting results, or are you upset with this very specific decision, or... is it possible you're just upset that we don't have a more competitive market for search engines?
Not upset at all, does my tone give out a different vibe? Sorry for that.
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#488DDG doesn't trust its users enough to allow us to have an unbiased algorithm? I will now stop using DDG.
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#489Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
This whole Ukraine war teached me a thing I haven't noticed before: I simply can't trust ANY media, search engine, or social network anymore. It's a sad state of affairs, but since the invasion started my only source of "news" related to the war is a few, and I a said a FEW, Youtube channels. I'm brazilian and one channel I recommend is Fernando Ulrich's channel. He interviewed (in english) a lot people (ukrainians,…
> I simply can't trust ANY media, search engine, or social network anymore.
No, you can't. It really comes down to a choice of which unhinged violent group of psychopaths do you want to believe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqKfSbhm6yo This is a great explanation of the anarchist perspective.
Great quote:
"Ukraine has been this mess for many many many years of people arguing about which of authoritarian control freaks should get violently dominate everybody. That is a question that doesn't have a right answer."
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#490Earlier 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.
No - they are explicitly adding bias here. They are coding it into their algorithm.
Frankly, I'd be surprised if there weren't implicit biases already there.
But this is something new. Its overt, explicit.