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

701–710 of 865 posts

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

#701

Post by eyelidlessness »

csande17 wrote: post #680
TechBro8615 wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_mich…

And this is a good reason that cries of censorship on tech platforms often sound naive. Most of us don’t want to be served known disinformation.

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

#702

Post by _-david-_ »

colinmhayes wrote: post #518
Gareth321 wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Also, freedom of speech is a principle applied on the relation of people with the state, an issue for public law. This is about a private enterprise and its relations with its users, subject to the regulation of private law. This is absolutely not what the principle of free speech is. Private companies censoring information can be every bit as insidious and damaging to society, and of course falls under the umbrella…

Imagine thinking that excluding literal disinformation when it is not requested is a poor search result. The job of the search engine is to provide people the information they want. Not showing people lies when they want facts seems to be exactly the correct decision.

I don't think most people would have an issue if DDG and whoever else only removed disinformation and they never had any false positives. The problem is DDG is not perfect and will censor real information while calling it disinformation.

Look at all the covid disinformation that turned out to be accurate or potentially accurate. The media and fact checkers have been completely awful at determining facts. Why do you think DDG will have any better luck?

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

#703

Post by yellowapple »

Good. When I search for things on DDG, I expect relevant results. Disinformation (from Russia or elsewhere) is the precise opposite of relevant results, for the same reason as SEO spam pages and malware sites and clickbait articles are the precise opposite of relevant results.

So now the question is whether this will indeed apply to all disinformation or just Russia's.

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

#704

Post by eli »

misslibby wrote: post #540
eli wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but it just isn't the same. Russia made it illegal -- punishable by 15 years in prison -- to accurately describe their invasion of Ukraine.

Officially they made it illegal to inaccurately describe their invasion.

For example by calling it an "invasion" as you just did.

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

#705

Post by Lascaille »

paulmd wrote: post #593
mardifoufs wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>you've always been able to force a match by wrapping a word in quotes

This no longer works very well. A while ago I was searching for the linux syscall which is identified in the manpages as 'splice(2)'

If I didn't include quote marks, I basically got pages of junk.

If I did include quote marks I basically got a page of junk and then a single relevant link halfway down the second page followed by another page and a half of junk.

I know to use 'verbatim' now but still very much a downgrade in terms of user experience.

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

#706

Post by _-david-_ »

wnevets wrote: post #82

Anyone upset about down ranking propaganda need to get their priorities straight. Why would you want to use a search engine that serves intentionally bad information?

First let me just say, nobody wants to see bad information, intentional or not (unless they want to get an understanding of what the propaganda is).

My reasons to be upset are

1. What they call misinformation / disinformation may turn out to be accurate in the future

2. I have no way of knowing what they are actually removing. They may call stuff that they just don't like disinformation

3. I want to hear not just one side of an argument. You can't form a fully fledged understanding of a complicated subject like this without seeing the other side.

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

#707

Post by jrnichols »

spiderice wrote: post #500
snowman-yelling wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drudge was literally the first link in my results. Haha.

I can almost assure you it wasn't. I'm guessing the top result is > drudge.com Which is not the Drudge Report, but the Drudge "Retort". The Drudge Report, seems to be completely removed, obviously intentionally. If I'm wrong, let me know. But I'd be very surprised if you're getting the Drudge Report at the top hit, and everybody else isn't getting it on the first multiple pages.

I do not see it on the first page of my results at all.

What I did notice was that if I go directly to the Drudge Report, it's "not secure." Seems to only be happening the first time I load the page. I wonder if that has something to do with it.

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

#708

Post by _-david-_ »

giaour wrote: post #81
adamrezich wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ask yourself why this particular variety of disinformation written to "go viral" on social media and in search results is different from any other. ask yourself whether your own state's government ever engages in similar activity, or whether this is something that only this specific state government in question does. ask yourself why other people making decisions about what kinds of propaganda you do and don't see is…

Did DDG say they're upranking "good" propaganda and downranking "bad" propaganda? What I understood from the tweets is that DDG is downranking propaganda. Russia happens to produce a lot of it, so they'd be more impacted.

When you downgrade one site another site is upranked.

If you have a basic result

1. Good 2. Bad 3. Good

And downrank the propaganda, the #3 result will now be #2. This is up ranking the good by default.

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

#709

Post by rixed »

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…

What you say about information warfare is certainly true, but one would be a fool to think only Russia does it.

Controlling opinions is a more terrifying weapon than even atomic bombs, because you can actually make use of it, every day, every minute, and it cannot be that easily regulated.

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

#710

Post by rixed »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #698
kuraudo wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There isn't going to be one for Russia either. That doesn't mean that the news media in the US is tightly controlled government propaganda or that the news media in Russia isn't.

> There isn't going to be one for Russia either.

I'm not so sure about this. What makes you believe so?

Post reply on HN