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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”

#671

Post by zuminator »

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…

Have you not experienced an avalanche of friends and family members sending you sketchy videos of dubious provenance? The past two years have illustrated to me that the majority of people are just not equipped to distinguish good and bad sources of information, particularly on the internet. That doesn't make them stupid. It just means they are deficient in the particular skill of distinguishing disinformation campaigns. It's a skill that can be learned but people often don't have the time or inclination to do so. Much in the same way that people will put on FOX or CNN and rely on those news sources because they don't have the time, money, or newsgathering ability to do their own investigative reporting. People end up generally picking sources they trust and then relying on them. But that leaves room for disinformation, especially on online sites where untrained people can let their guard down to bad information that has been unwittingly endorsed by a trusted source, whether a friend, or in this case, a familiar search engine. The reason disinformation/propaganda is ubiquitous online is because it works, and it's cost effective.

As far as slavery goes, that's one hell of a slippery slope. Owning a website and curating the information on it is tantamount to kidnapping people and exercising ownership over them and their children? That's like saying someone who "hurt" your feelings is engaging in literal torture and murder.

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

#672

Post by kuraudo »

pydry wrote: post #469
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!

Meanwhile Russia concocts evidence of chemical weapons labs and those same people who believed in WMDs cant fathom how Russians could fall for this shit....

Biological; nuland admitted that the US did fund those labs and that they did deal with dangerous viruses, but that they weren't for biological warfare. Either way, the charge has a lot more weight since the us funded labs exist. Biological weapons?? Probably not.. but here is the thing: Meanwhile here in the west, I am reliably told those labs don't exist while Russians are getting ready to use chemical weapons, just like in syria. Except the Russian chemical weapon charges were found to be bogus just like the Syrian ones. This comes AFTER Russian mod warns its people that the US will be attempting to false flag them with another "chemical weapon attack." Who do I believe? The west is at the bottom of that list.

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

#673

Post by kuraudo »

shapefrog wrote: post #520
pydry wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile Russia concocts evidence of chemical weapons labs and those same people who believed in WMDs cant fathom how Russians could fall for this shit....

While simultaneously people who rant constantly about "mainstream meadia" claim that because RT broadcast it, that it must be true and can in no way be propaganda.

I don't think anyone has ever said that. Even people who enjoy rt understands who funds it.

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

#674

Post by kuraudo »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #649
tonguez wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ 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!

Except for Fox News, which breathlessly covered every new possible chemical weapons facility that the US captured, mainstream media pretty quickly concluded that there was no extant chemical weapons program in Iraq after the US entered. Russian media is still pretending that Ukraine is the aggressor, and there is no war.

Still waiting for the war crimes tribunal for the American military + Bush and friends.

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

#675

Post by jollybean »

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #459
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'd say a good search engine should try to deliver the results the user is looking for. Simple as that. It probably can never be perfect, as the search engine can only guess what the user is looking for. But it can try to do its best. There is no rule that it should rank sites by page rank or number of keywords or whatever. If I don't want to see "Russian Disinformation", I probably won't search for it to begin with.…

"If I don't want to see "Russian Disinformation", I probably won't search for it to begin with."

? Nobody is really searching for 'disinformation'.

That's the whole point.

Is 'disinformation' really 'what they were looking for'?

Or were they looking for good information, and the 'misinformation' - which doesn't appear as 'misinformation' comes up first. They click it and become unwittingly 'misinformed'.

It's obviously very nuanced, but there is definitely such a thing as misinformation and especially propaganda.

For example, I see a ton of feeds sharing RUS losses with video snippets etc. but not a lot of UKR losses. Unless it's civilians in which case they want the information out there i.e. 'war crimes'.

Or more nuanced: the words of Putin himself. He 'misinforms' arguably by misrepresenting literally every thing he talks about, and obfuscating other realities. There are 100% pro-Nazi sympathisers in UKR forces. But it's also pretty clear that the government is not a 'Nazi Regime' by any stretch.

Issues such as 'NATO Threat' which is in some ways real, but used as an excuse really, because there is no material threat of the invasion of Russia.

So it's complicated.

There's also the fact that little bits of misinformation can contribute a lot to public opinion. I can just be 'populist' stuff. Like a funny picture oof Biden next to a 'strong and commanding Putin'. Charicatures influence people. That's a bit of a different domain, but also relevant.

When wars break out, we have to be a bit more pragmatic and also vigilant.

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

#676

Post by [deleted] »

spiderice wrote: post #503
hammock wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't see the relevance. The issue is that DDG is intentionally preventing people from finding a website that they're looking for. Worst, the top result is a look-alike website that would confuse a lot of people in to thinking it is the real thing. I never get new from Drudge, but that doesn't mean I can't see the issue with my search engine trying to hide what I'm looking for from me.

[deleted]

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

#677

Post by lmm »

kuraudo wrote: post #670
lmm wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. T…

> 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.

Sure, and I think that's why Russia more or less got away with Crimea and Donbas. But this kind of open invasion seems like a different level, something we haven't seen (post-9/11 notwithstanding) since Serbia/Kosovo, and indeed that's the parallel Russia often draws - but the justification for that was a well-documented massacre of civilians. Is that kind of thing evidenced in what the Azov Battalion et al are accused of? (Genuine question, I'm interested to hear what's being said on every side).

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

#678

Post by searchableguy »

criddell wrote: post #41
andrew_ wrote: post #25

Prior submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30624320 Brave Search has been gradually improving and I'm pleased with the quality of their results as of late. I encourage folks to give it a spin.

You might want to give Kagi a try. I've been using it for a few weeks and I think it's better than Google for my needs.

They use google search API for their results so it's really rebranded google with tweaks on top.

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

#679

Post by trhway »

mc32 wrote: post #659
HeckFeck wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you want a dose of flip flop, now services which banned calls for violence, in a very odd about face, will allow calls for violence against Russians. Sure, yes, the guys and gals calling the shots are baddies, but your everyday Ivan and Katia are not. So you know the whole thing is not principled but rather political.

>will allow calls for violence against Russians. Sure, yes, the guys and gals calling the shots are baddies, but your everyday Ivan and Katia are not

FB seems to be pretty clear that the calls for violence are allowed only in the context of the Ukrainian war and only against invading forces plus Putin himself.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exclusive-facebook-inst...

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

#680

Post by csande17 »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #492
8note wrote: post #436

Earlier 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…

> By default, the client already expects the server to fulfill a gatekeeping role in filtering (censoring!) spam.

This is how a lot of email clients currently work, but it is not a fundamental law of the universe. Back in the day, you could run programs on your computer that would filter spam automatically based on criteria and examples you specified. For example, see https://daringfireball.net/2003/09/interview_michael_tsai

The fact that people would pay money for such a program highlights the difference between spam filtering and censorship: spam filtering hides things that I don't want to see, while censorship hides things that other people don't want me to see.

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