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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”

#591

Post by fyzix »

colinmhayes wrote: post #507
JasonFruit wrote: post #480

Earlier 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.

This act by definition cannot be unbiased because only one side decides what information is false.

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

#592

Post by hedora »

pydry wrote: post #472
hedora wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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. If western news outlets focused a little more on actually being reliable and objective maybe people wouldnt lose confidence. I hardly think Russian propaganda is required for people to do this.

True, but "not great" is different than "maliciously bad".

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

#593

Post by paulmd »

mardifoufs wrote: post #430
pessimizer wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck searching for someone who shares the first name of someone who has been in the news lately.

That's if they don't disregard your query and just return results for whatever they deemed to be close enough. So if you search for Simone Something, it will just disregard what you wrote and just return tons of Simon Something even if there's no shortage of results for your actual query! It's incredible that even when searching for a specific real person/name Google still assumes it knows better and just throw out l…

it's done that for a long time, and you've always been able to force a match by wrapping a word in quotes.

(I don't think it's a 100% "must have this keyword" in the boolean sense, but it is an extremely strong suggestion to the engine.)

Maybe we have finally reached the point where people don't know boolean operators anymore though

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

#594

Post by gibrown »

verisimi wrote: post #490
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.

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.

> they are explicitly adding bias here.

All search engines are explicitly biased. That is the point, they generate a ranking of results. Heck even how you tokenize text is an explicit bias of what you match against.

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

#595

Post by ohashi »

hnuser847 wrote: post #18
diego_moita wrote: post #11

Good! One more reason for me to remain a DDG user. This is the behaviour of responsible and accountable adults. "Censoring" is a word very badly understood and prone to manipulation. There are a lot of circumstances where suppression of information/opinion is justified: protecting intellectual property and copyrights, blocking doxing, prevent haters from doing harm against others, protection of military secrets or pe…

> In case someone hasn't noticed, there is a war going on in Europe. That is a circumstance where some of these cases apply. Indeed, there's a war going on and there's a tremendous amount of propaganda being circulated from both sides. The question is, why is DDG okay with amplifying Ukranian/NATO propaganda and not Russian propaganda? Is it because NATO is the "good" guy and Russia is the "bad" guy? When the US inva…

The whataboutism is incredibly strong here.

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

#596

Post by armitron »

mopsi wrote: post #541
kikokikokiko wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. It's one of the key goals of Russian information warfare: to create a feeling that you can't tell truth apart from fiction, and to force you into apathy and paralyze you, so you become unable to act and protect your interests. Russians are among the largest pushers of conspiracy theories from Covid to QAnon, and have been for a very long time…

> Mearsheimer is an idiot and nobody takes him seriously in Eastern Europe

Because .. you say so? His argumentation stands on its own. Yours on the other hand, doesn't. I suggest you practice what you preach after toning down calling your betters "idiots" and educate yourself.

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

#597

Post by crayboff »

HeckFeck wrote: post #153
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.

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…

I've been waffling between whether or not I think this is a good thing. I am curious on your thoughts:

A lot of malicious actors have learned how to game the search ranking algorithms by making carefully crafted lies that are easily spread as truths online quickly. They are able to get their fake news to spread (and this rank higher) in ways that legitimate sources can't.

Most people only ever look at the first page of results when searching for answers, and, let's be honest, take those answers for the truth.

If you were a search engine provider and knew that viral, fake stories were able to do that, wouldn't not taking action also be making a decision about what you can and can't see? Inaction, in this case, would be tacit approval.

Also you can still search for stories about how Russia is presenting the war, but you have to specifically look for it

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

#598

Post by zmgsabst »

colpabar wrote: post #580
einarfd wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 informe…

> Then you aren't trying very hard to stay informed I don’t disagree with this, but I don’t think the burden should entirely be on us common folk. We are the ones being lied to. We can’t only focus on “staying informed,” it is critical that we start demanding the truth from the institutions we’re supposed to trust. If they don’t change, we need new institutions.

https://www.SpacePowerMonkey.com

I agree we need new and federated institutions — particularly around things like intelligence.

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

#599

Post by username3 »

danShumway wrote: post #585
username3 wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I shouldn’t get American disinformation, but your trusted sources are untouchable.

All general critiques about DDG aside, it is absolutely untrue that search engines never target American news sources for downranking. Google/DDG and other sites have removed and downranked American news sites on multiple occasions. Scroll through this very comment section and you'll find someone complaining about DDG's handling of Drudgereport[0]. It was not that long ago that we were having really fierce debates ab…

They won’t down-rank American disinformation from sources they trust or sources they favor.

This can all be solved by adding an option for results without down-ranking political disinformation.

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

#600

Post by Spellman »

JakeAl wrote: post #566
kelnos wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ne…

AP News is generally what everyone pulls from and reports mostly straight facts
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