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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”

#661

Post by ece »

prox wrote: post #548
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…

I see this comment in so many forms across many channels. “Oh no, there is no truth anymore!” (Sorry if I sound a bit pedantic) But that’s not truth either. While gaining a 20/20 truth picture is hard, it’s not impossible to get a picture that’s accurate enough . Lots of information can be lock-stepped into a picture that gives enough clarity. A combination of experts, reports and documentation, high quality sources,…

I feel like good news can distill down to: if there's not enough fact checking in the right domain(s), the editor fucked up. Conspiracy theories, and propaganda obviously fail this test, but do not do so online often enough. Especially not when grifters/propagandists are trying to make money through ads or are state funded by an autocratic government.

Should DDG take into account what is and isn't fact-checked? Absolutely, and if DDG gets better at this, their users will benefit.

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

#662

Post by FastMonkey »

lynndotpy wrote: post #653
Imnimo wrote: post #290

Suppose I go off and make a search engine, with my own algorithm for ranking search results. At first it works great. And then five years later, I find that, by a quirk in my algorithm, I find that a new site has risen to the top of all my results. This new site was created as a prank, and it contains authoritative-sounding but incorrect answers to common questions. The results returned are still relevant to my users…

I think the role of a search engine is to index the page, and to help users find what they're looking for. It's a difficult task that requires somehow quantifying relevance of answers for a given text string. Whatever quantification is used is an implicit kind of 'censorship', and the 'relevance' of results for a given string is inherently a value-judgement. That's where the value of a search engine comes from. We ch…

That sounds about right. A search engine has to try and intuit what users are going to want. Decisions have to be made to show one thing above another. In order for us to trust the engine though, we should have a way of knowing what values are referred to when making these decisions.

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

#663

Post by sarchertech »

hammock wrote: post #169
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…

Drudge Report sold out to the deep state, they didn't cover hardly any of the election integrity news at all (among other editorial decisions). The rumor is Matt Drudge doesn't even own it anymore. If you still get your "conservative" news from there I suggest switching to Rantingly.

Just because Matt Drudge stopped agreeing with Donald Trump doesn't mean he "sold out to the deep state". Drudge is just as conservative as he ever was. Many conservatives just pulled a hard shift in a different direction.

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

#664

Post by [deleted] »

username3 wrote: post #638
danShumway wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

[deleted]

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

#665

Post by [deleted] »

ricardo81 wrote: post #340
Imnimo wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I could only detect this one prank site, but did not have a way to detect and downrank all prank sites at once, you would say it's invalid for me to just take action against the one I know about, since that's not a universal solution?

define prank. dictionary definition (according to Google) >a practical joke or mischievous act. Maybe if that's the definition then all Twitter parody accounts need to be removed. Would you agree?

[deleted]

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

#666

Post by [deleted] »

giantrobot wrote: post #419
shadowgovt wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume it's the "law of conservation of expertsexchange." They don't downrank w3schools because something will just replace it. ;)

I still can't read that site name as anything but "expert sex change".

[deleted]

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

#667

Post by shadowgovt »

HideousKojima wrote: post #495
shadowgovt wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the "JournoList scandal" just "There was a Google Group that lots of journalists on the left subscribed to?" Journalists have always talked to each other. The fact that we have an auditable mailing list of one instance of it just tells us something we already know.

"If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they've put upon us. Instead, take one of them – Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares – and call them racists" Yes, that sounds like journalists just "talking to each other."

It definitely sounds like off-the-record talk.

Oh course, they forgot that everything on a mailing list is definitionally on-the-record.

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

#668

Post by gammarator »

tonguez wrote: post #605
archagon wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?” well technically the ukranians were doing the shelling first, starting on february 17th, killing ethnic russians in donbas. but you probably dont know that bc of the censorship. so basically you want propaganda amplified because you arent aware it’s propaganda, and have no way of figuring out it’s propaganda bc you want everything else to be censo…

> well technically the ukranians were doing the shelling first, starting on february 17th, killing ethnic russians in donbas.

Many sources argued both in advance and at the time that these were false-flag attacks designed to create a pretext for the invasion. (Eg, https://www.voanews.com/a/shelling-mortar-fire-intensify-in-...)

So the accusation of propaganda can go either way.

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

#669

Post by Retric »

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…

Should DDG show flat earth websites on basic searches about the earth?

That’s not about silencing the competition that’s about doing the basic functions you’re looking for in a search engine. Delisting would be another story as people may legitimately want to find flat earth content, but this isn’t delisting the content is still there you just need to specifically look for it.

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

#670

Post by kuraudo »

lmm wrote: post #647
Clubber wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Depends what exactly you mean by "false flag operation". But South Ossetia seemed to follow much the same playbook as Ukraine.

Russian/orthodox world perspective: whether the west likes it or not, ukraine's illegal coup government went out of its way to oppress Russians all over the country. Azov was on a campaign of war crimes against the east long before the current war: "russia instigated the ethnic Russians in the east to rebel!" Come the cries, but, even if true, our answer is to shrug and say the United States does this all the time. Turn about is fair play. Moreover, the view from Greece and Serbia is that the United States and Europe are causing needless Ukrainian deaths by encouraging them to fight a hopeless war. Western propaganda claims lives in this case.

Just FYI as how the east is looking at this.

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