Quite sad this is happening so soon after they introduced translations. Looks like I’ll have to move on to something else again.
DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
561–570 of 865 posts
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#562Earlier quoted context omitted.
flat-earthers would probably also feel they're being unfairly downranked because "the CEO does not like flat-earthers", however. Factual untruth is a good reason for a result to be considered low-relevance to a tangentially related search.
The correct analogy in this case would be if there were both 'square earthers' and 'flat earthers' and DDG decides to penalize only results from 'flat earthers'. Both sides produce factual untruth but only one gets penalized.
I do want to interject here: there is propaganda coming out of all sides during this war, that is unequivocally true. However, it is also unequivocally true that some of the issues/narratives here are not both-sides-are-equally-wrong issues. Russia didn't invade Ukraine to get rid of nazi influence, for example. This is not a territory dispute, it's an unjustified invasion.
I want to be careful while we're talking about misinformation to be clear that there is a difference between wartime propaganda (which is still misinformation) and narratives about why Russia invaded in the first place -- the second category is not a debate where every side is equally guilty of misinformation, Russia is a clear aggressor in this conflict.
That being said, of course Russia and Ukraine are both engaged in propaganda around the current status of their troops, how the war is going, etc...
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#563Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is what the ukrainian embassy in slovakia claimed. I guess official ukrainian sources have been incredibly unreliable but I haven't seen any fact check on their claims >Czech law enforcement warns that public approval of Russia's invasion of Ukraine could be classified as a "crime of denial, questioning, approval and justification of GENOCIDE." There are already the first two cases of detainees incriminated in t…
Shouldn't it be the embassy in the Czech Republic or is it really the Ukraine embassy in Slovakia commenting on Czech law? Not trying to be difficult just generally wondering. Tried looking at the link but twitter wants me to sign up to view it.
Sorry, my mistake! I think it's in the Czech Republic (though I think slovakia did something similar too), I'm only relying on Google translate so I might be very wrong
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#564Earlier quoted context omitted.
>but do you really want your search engine to default to providing results from someone with a very clear agenda and a history of abusing their influence to carry out that agenda Have you met the US media? If you don't look at this massive coordinated effort and smell something fishy, I just don't know what to say.
That's just dull contrarianism: suspecting "something fishy" just because everyone's opinions happen to line up. (As opposed to, I dunno, an obvious collective response to a nation doing something incontrovertibly wrong?)
>As opposed to, I dunno, an obvious collective response to a nation doing something incontrovertibly wrong?
Can you explain how this is incontrovertibly different than other foreign war entanglements from the past few decades?
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#565Earlier quoted context omitted.
When a search provider decides to allow one side of a story to be presented but to remove sites that present the other side, that's pure bias. It may be justifiable bias; that's arguable. But you can't call that unbiased by any sensible definition.
But that's not what DDG is claiming to be doing. They're claiming to remove outright falsehoods, not anything that could be considered favorable to the russian position.
since when falsehoods are only on one side?
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#566Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Good information", almost synonymous with "truth", is not subjective. It is objective, observable fact. The fact that is a lot of disagreement, propaganda, and lies concerning that truth does not render it subjective.
Absolutely, but then who is responsible for judging what is true and what is false? And why should I trust those people not only to be correct all the time, but also to never fall victim to their own biases when making these decisions? The point is that there is no such thing as a perfect arbiter of truth. I may trust a friend with whom I have a close personal relationship to always tell me the truth, but it seems fo…
Back during the first Iraq war (Kuwait) my sociology class did an analysis of all the news to see how they reported it differently. We look at the 6:00 news on ABC, NBC, and CBS and I asked if we could also add CNN because this was when cable was still being adopted. What we learned was back then CNN largely reported the facts/observations with qualified statements and not much commentary at all, and all the other news outlets got the bulk of their facts (except for local news) from the CNN newswires/people on the ground and then fluffed them with their own subjective language. That was when CNN was just Headline News. They've really lost credibility since then. I'm not even sure if Headline News even exists anymore. It used to just be every 30 minutes the news cycled over and over and updated as new info came up.
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#567Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's just dull contrarianism: suspecting "something fishy" just because everyone's opinions happen to line up. (As opposed to, I dunno, an obvious collective response to a nation doing something incontrovertibly wrong?)
>As opposed to, I dunno, an obvious collective response to a nation doing something incontrovertibly wrong? Can you explain how this is incontrovertibly different than other foreign war entanglements from the past few decades?
What was the last war that had such an overwhelming and unanimous international response?
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#568Earlier quoted context omitted.
What I really want is to have a setting where I can turn these kinds of filters on and off, or to different/customized priorities. Search is a tool for me to use: give me better control of the results that I can get. Choosing between different ranking algorithms would be wonderful too, to skip around different SEO strategies
It sounds like you're advocating for pushing censorship responsibility to the user. I agree this would be nice — in fact you could consider uBlock Origin a form of client-side censorship that already exists. In practice, I'm not sure how much adoption such a system would get, if used for censorship purposes. The main problem is the underlying truth that most censorship proponents are not actually pro-censorship of th…
Stopped reading at “censorship responsibility”.
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#569Earlier 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…
" their successes have been remarkable and have shown Russia to be mismanaged, incompetent, weak, and everything else one would expect of a typical authoritarian regime" And doesn't make you excited for the war and enthusiastic about joining the fight for Ukraine? Great - but having only information and announcements from one side would give me pause. Somehow the war hasn't ended yet, despite of the zillions of Russi…
"Somehow the war hasn't ended yet, despite of the zillions of Russian tanks that have been destroyed by now."
Well if we're going to be pedantic and childish, then for your information, Russia started the war with 12.3 zillion tanks and the war is still going on because the Russians still have more tanks. The fact that zillions of tanks have been destroyed and that Russia still has plenty more tanks is not somehow a proof that the information about destroyed Russian tanks is false...
Re: DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”
#570Earlier 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…
Forget leveling the playing field. Removing western disinformation is still important too. Forget specific positives or disinformation about Russia specifically attacking Ukraine. There’s plenty of other misinformation from western powers relating to Russia. I haven’t seen much chatter at all about the western specifically America’s role in what Russia is today. How often is the IMF and related neoliberal capitalist/…
"The non mention of NATO being a pointless organization today but especially in a collapsed Russia world would be good to know."
WHY ISNT MY RIDICULOUS OPINION BEING PRESENTED AS FACT BY THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA??????????????
You realize how insane your arguments are, right?