Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

621–630 of 865 posts

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

#621

Post by oefnak »

Clubber wrote: post #614
crayboff wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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. Do you? The argument I'm hearing is that most people are stupid and those stupid people aren't smart enough to know better, so the smart people need to control their lives to "protect them." I'm not sure if you realize this but this was the same argument used to perpetuate slave…

For most of my search queries, yes?

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

#622

Post by Clubber »

einarfd wrote: post #486
colpabar wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 informe…

Back then, news was thought to be a counter to government. Government had its power and news told the truth about that power. This turned out to be an illusion and that illusion has been breaking down over the last 20 years, but it's very stubborn. I first remember it during the Clinton / Monica Lewinsky scandal. All the news outlets chose to ignore it. Drudge ended up getting the scoop at which point the news had to cover it. If it weren't for Drudge, it might not have ever come out. This was what, 1996?

There isn't much in the way of alternatives either. When they do pop up, they are coincidentally labeled as "misinformation," and censored.

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

#623

Post by Clubber »

pasabagi wrote: post #546
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…

I'm reminded a little bit of a clip[0] in which an AP reporter challenged a State Department official about some of his claims about the Russian plans for a war on Ukraine. It's aged in a weird way, because of course, the war happened - but it does show the weird dynamic at play between journalists, the people, and the state security apparatus. Essentially, they can't give you the details. Sometimes they lie, for nat…

Did Russia ever stage a false flag operation before their invasion of Ukraine? I don't recall hearing about it.

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

#624

Post by danShumway »

username3 wrote: post #599
danShumway wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Nobody suppresses a source that they trust. Of course search engines don't downrank sources that they think are trustworthy. Why would they? There's also nothing specific to America about that, DDG also doesn't suppress foreign news sources that it personally trusts as accurate, because... they're sources they trust.

That sentence is a frankly kind of impressive effort to rephrase a critique that is essentially, "I disagree with their decisions, and I think the sources they trust aren't actually trustworthy" as some kind of much broader general criticism, like search engines are bad for not making editorial/ranking decisions that are the opposite of what they think are the correct editorial/ranking decisions to make.

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

#625

Post by Morgawr »

Clubber wrote: post #614
crayboff wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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. Do you? The argument I'm hearing is that most people are stupid and those stupid people aren't smart enough to know better, so the smart people need to control their lives to "protect them." I'm not sure if you realize this but this was the same argument used to perpetuate slave…

The vast majority of people, absolutely, yes. I try to always look for alternative sources and look for "all sides" when it comes to news and stuff, but even I will admit 100% that I will not bother going past the first page of search results. If anything I'll make another search with more biased keywords to look for what I am actually interested in, but I'll rarely if ever go past the first page of results. I consider myself to be aware of most online misinformation or tactics and I still fall for this, I'd be surprised if the vast majority of "normal" users would be even more affected by it.

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

#626

Post by Clubber »

InvisibleUp wrote: post #442
somenameforme wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not videos, but these two articles played a formative role in my worldview (related to Iraq): WaPo: "Irrefutable" : https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/02/06/i... NYTimes: "Irrefutable and Undeniable" : https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/opinion/irrefutable-and-u... I find it extremely interesting to occasionally reread those knowing what we know now. And nothing has changed, except for now there is…

It's worth noting that both of those examples were from the opinion section. Those aren't intended or required to be objective truth. And even then, they're just commenting on what Congress's position was at the time.

>It's worth noting that both of those examples were from the opinion section.

I mean that's a common refute. It wasn't news, it says opinion. Would you defend Fox News with that same argument? Also, opinion is just as curated as the news. You don't seen any editorials by David Duke on the NYT.

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

#628

Post by voldacar »

I want my window into the internet to be completely unmediated. A search engine should just search the web for information that you type in, and then show you the results. It should be a pure function. The opinions or desires of any corporation, advertiser, or government should not come into play.

Would such a search engine even be allowed to exist now?

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

#629

Post by zokula »

2-718-281-828 wrote: post #268

DDG is already censoring. You won't f.x. find sanctioned-suicide.org when searching for "sanctioned suicide". But you can search that forum via the site keyword. Google completely removed that forum from its results. It's hard to say - I suppose - what that tweet means practically. F.x. searching for "ukraine bio weapon laboratories". Will there be any sites discussing this without just dismissing it? And if yes, how…

No post body was provided.

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

#630

Post by rootusrootus »

There aren't enough bits on the Internet nor hours in a day to cover every bit of news, so it is a given that every single source of news is biased. They have to choose what to cover, what not. This is fundamental reality.

Given that unbreakable constraint, all I ask is that the editorial choices are described. And in a perfect world, a toggle to turn them off if I really do want to see the flow of sewage.

Post reply on HN