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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”

#631

Post by stale2002 »

Arnavion wrote: post #467
stale2002 wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It does not. 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 trut…

helen___keller wrote: >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.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/february-12” But this is a false dichotomy. There are more options than either an infobox that say…

> But this is a false dichotomy. There are more options than either an infobox

I am not saying that there is only a singular way of displaying information.

Instead the point here is that Yes, users who search that are actually trying to use Google as an Oracle of Truth here, and if the top results are anything other than what his actual birthday is, then that is a problem.

So in other words, yes it is being used as an oracle of truth, even if there are different ways of precisely displaying that.

> I think you can agree that a link to the Wikipedia article on Abraham Lincoln will be a fine search result

Only if the article links is actually the truth, and not some other number. So yes the search engine is being used as an oracle of truth, to find out what the actual answer is to what his actual birthday is.

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

#632

Post by pasquinelli »

pie42000 wrote: post #570
skinnymuch wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

wasn't nato created to counter the ussr?

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

#633

Post by hedora »

freediver wrote: post #484
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…

Out of curiosity, what are the reliable news outlets that you subscribe to?

Good question. I tend to read primary sources when possible. Propublica isn't bad. Outlets that syndicate them are often good.

Also, organizations that still have journalists on staff, and win awards such as the Pulitzer Prize are a good bet.

Edit: https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/2021

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

#634

Post by rdw »

Clubber wrote: post #616
santoshalper wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"My only exception is things I don't like" How is blocking spam and advertisement materially different than blocking a foreign actor's propaganda?

Blocking spam is done by the consumer of information, blocking a foreign (and domestic) actor's propaganda is done by the entity with the power of dissemination of information. You don't see Google censoring ads much.

Google spends most of their time blocking ads. "Spam" is ads.

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

#635

Post by julianlam »

hfsh wrote: post #615
uejfiweun wrote: post #3

I like DDG, but honestly, this is a really bad move. It is already harder for me to find certain sites in the rankings. I mean look at this, even searching for "drudge" doesn't even bring up a link to Drudge Report: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=drudge&t=h_&ia=web I liked DDG because it respected the user. Limiting what I can see in order to make sure I don't see "Russian disinformation" seems to me like the exact opposi…

> I liked DDG because it respected the user. Unless you were searching for anything recipe-related, in which case they will push results from their partner 'yummly'. Or if you were trying to get literal result from you search string, which it will apparently silently ignore if it doesn't find enough results. Honestly, I'll dump DDG in a heartbeat whenever I find something even marginally better. Their only edge is th…

But why aren't bangs more ubiquitous? Did DDG patent them or something?

The actual logic behind it isn't anything stunning, it finds a bang, removes it from the query, then forwards the query to the search engine that was requested.

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

#636

Post by mherdeg »

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…

Depends!

If the first page of search engine results about a question contains the answer I wanted to hear (i.e. it confirms my existing biases), I won't often look at page 2.

If the first page "feels wrong" -- like I have a hunch that things are a different way -- I'll read more results or write new queries. I'll also, I would say, 90-95% of the time, consider the possibility that I was wrong. But I'll keep looking for evidence that confirms my own biases, too.

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

#637

Post by CyanBird »

archagon wrote: post #504
hnuser847 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 question is, why is DDG okay with amplifying Ukranian/NATO propaganda and not Russian propaganda? Because one side is busy shelling and starving civilians right now? Are you seriously suggesting that "NATO propaganda" (WTF?) and Russian propaganda are somehow equivalent? There is very, very obviously a "bad guy" here, and most of the world (even outside the US/NATO sphere of influence) seems to agree on this po…

> Because one side is busy shelling and starving civilians right now?

And Ukraine had been doing that since 2014 to Donetsk and Luhansk

What does that make them? "Good guys"?

What about US helping Saudi Arabia commit genocide in Yemen what does that makes them?

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

#638

Post by username3 »

danShumway wrote: post #624
username3 wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 se…

> Why would they?

They should down-rank their trusted sources when their trusted sources publish disinformation. The problem is they don’t.

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

#639

Post by Nursie »

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…

> "silencing the competition"

Hyperbole much?

Putting known-bad information sources further down the result list is hardly silencing the competition, in fact it's likely making the results a lot better for the majority of users.

> What if I'm genuinely curious as to how the Russian media is presenting this war?

Then I imagine you can search for that and find it just fine.

> They must have access to this perfect knowledge if they are fit to decide which news sources are "correct"!

Then search rankings are all wrong, from the very concept of such things upwards, because they all seek to rank information quality in various ways, and you should never use them. Any of them.

Honestly these reactions are ridiculous.

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

#640

Post by hluska »

tonguez wrote: post #587
mopsi wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

“ It's one of the key goals of Russian information warfare” were you born yesterday? do you not remember the iraq war? babies in incubators? vietnam? syrian gas attacks? russiagate? qanon? the 2014 ukraine coup? these are all things created by western TLAs. im not gonna read anything else you wrote but i noticed at the bottom you said “knowledge is power” wow thanks for that powerful insight!

Wow, thanks for an incredibly boring addition.
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