DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation” • Hacker News Board

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

#731

Post by cutemonster » Fri, Mar 11, 2022, 8:18 AM UTC

JakeAl wrote: post #579

cutemonster wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called psychological warfare, what Putin is doing. And you're asking for an enemy state to be allowed to do that warfare, against Ukraine, Europe, the US, unhindered. This is not comparable to a company tricking people in buying more of their pointless stuff. > but of political bias nature No, what you're saying, would help a dictator that attacks another country.

The same could be said of the US, especially since the NDAA made it legal for the government to use propaganda on the domestic population.

The US is not currently invading Canada and bombing Toronto.

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

#732

Post by soueuls » Fri, Mar 11, 2022, 8:19 AM UTC

hedora wrote: post #619

soueuls wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Western media helped start a war with Irak based on fake weapons of mass destruction. If people lost trust on Western medias, it's not because of Russians, it's because we are constantly producing propaganda as well. It's just different.

The western media is not a monolith. Fox News was the primary source running the fake WMD story, and is the only mainstream outlet running pro Russian opinion pieces. They're also foreign owned, and promote policies that would prevent people from voting, allow counts to be ignored. Since they're Australian, they're not even geographically "western".

The WMD scandal was recorded live during Colin Powell at a UN conference. It was broadcast by pretty much all American news outlet.

The only difference between the US and Russia is the the US is a lot more subtle when it comes to generating propaganda.

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

#733

Post by hackyhacky » Fri, Mar 11, 2022, 8:22 AM UTC

tonguez wrote: post #613

hackyhacky wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is great value in analyzing propaganda if you know it's propaganda. The danger comes in the fact that the majority of people can't distinguish actual reporting from disinformation. That's why it gets down-ranked.

the problem is the stuff getting downranked is going to be the real information. the powerful people who control everything, including the news, are going to push propaganda and censor in whatever way makes themselves richer at the expense of everybody else, which is how they got to be in that position in the first place

Are you claiming that the search results currently being downranked, i.e. Russian propaganda, is the "real information?" If so, who is that making richer?

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

#734

Post by hackyhacky » Fri, Mar 11, 2022, 8:23 AM UTC

fuckcensorship wrote: post #110

hackyhacky wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is great value in analyzing propaganda if you know it's propaganda. The danger comes in the fact that the majority of people can't distinguish actual reporting from disinformation. That's why it gets down-ranked.

You are correct. However, the solution should be better education, not censorship.

Educate who and how? What concrete steps should be taken right now instead of downranking manipulative information warfare?

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

#735

Post by kkjjkgjjgg » Fri, Mar 11, 2022, 8:28 AM UTC

jollybean wrote: post #675

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 obvious…

In the war situation, I assume everything is potentially misinformation, and want to see statements from all sides.

I mean if you read Western media, they will literally write "Russia is putting out a lot of disinformation", so that would be at least one claim I could try to verify myself, by looking at actual Russian media.

But the more important point is, how does DDG decide what is misinformation and what is not? Sure a search engine always has to try to rank information by some criteria. The issue I have here is with a manual interference in the algorithm that seems politically motivated.

Realistically, I guess we should be thankful that at least DDG points out that they are doing that, whereas others are simply doing it without telling anybody (on all sorts of issues, not just this war).

Also, I think some "internet savvyness" has to be expected from search engine users. The assumption that just because some statements by Putin show up in search results, people would just flat out believe them, is rather insulting and belittling.

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

#736

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Mar 11, 2022, 8:31 AM UTC

JakeAl wrote: post #555

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

I think https://50kft.com/ removes filters from Google, but you may have to change your clock to use it.

[deleted]

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

#737

Post by kkjjkgjjgg » Fri, Mar 11, 2022, 8:33 AM UTC

bena wrote: post #497

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

I think you're framing the discussion in the wrong way. Yes, if you're looking for "Russian Disinformation", you should be able to find it. But if I'm looking for "U.S. midterm elections", I shouldn't get Russian disinformation. What is the problem with modifying the algorithm to favor actual information over disinformation? Or sites that are known to propagate disinformation? The only thing I could say is that it's…

Why would they show Russian information about the war when you search for Midterm elections?

The issue is that they are introducing a manual intervention in the algorithm out of political motives.

They are not automatically a great authority on correctness of information regarding the war. I don't think DDG has investigators on the ground in Ukraine.

Of course ultimately all search engines will apply some criteria for correctness or relevance of information. Maybe we should applaud DDG for at least being transparent about it.

So in the end presumably you have to pick the search engine just like you pick your other news sources.

It is just a pity that DDG previously advertised itself as "unbiased", and now they throw that goal out of the window.

Still it feels like the search engine feeding me results that they want me to find, not the ones that I most likely would want to find.

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

#738

Post by pvaldes » Fri, Mar 11, 2022, 8:44 AM UTC

mardifoufs wrote: post #537

pvaldes wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If supporting means driving a tank in Berlin and bombing an hospital, yes, most probably you will go to jail. For a long, long, time. If it means saying that Russia is right, definitely not.

Not really, it really is just supporting russia even without any violence. For example in lithuania: >The decision bans to organize or gather at assemblies “aimed at supporting, in any form or scope, the actions of the Russian Federation and/or the Republic of Belarus, which caused the introduction of the state of emergency” while this state of emergency remains in place. https://www.baltictimes.com/lithuania_extends…

Well, for Lithuania is personal. I can't blame them for not wanting to support their own destruction falling in a 'Donbas trap'

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

#739

Post by grey_earthling » Fri, Mar 11, 2022, 8:54 AM UTC

Is it actually common to seek information about news from a search engine? I find that kinda surprising.

I get news from outlets I'm already reasonably familiar with, so that I know how much to trust them, and what to trust them about.

It hadn't occurred to me that people might take apparently-factual information at face value when they find it via a search engine (without recognising the source site).

The whole point of a search engine is that it finds anything that any old person put on the internet, so why would anyone think a search engine is a reliable source of trustworthy assertions that accurately describe the real world?

Like, even in a physical library, just because a book is in the “factual” section doesn't mean that every assertion in the book is genuinely true — maybe it's out of date, or just plain wrong. All the library is asserting is that this book exists.

Twenty years ago people seemed to need to be told that, despite stuff on the internet being in written/printed form, that didn't automatically mean it was actually an authoritative newspaper. Have people forgotten that? Like, do people actually believe any old shite they read on the internet?

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

#740

Post by native_samples » Fri, Mar 11, 2022, 9:01 AM UTC

paulmd wrote: post #581

gruez wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "unbiased" doesn't mean "unfiltered". For example, I don't want spam or malware in my search results. That seems like a cop-out to me. They're not filtering "spam or malware", they're filtering "Russian disinformation". What's next? Maybe OAN is "right-wing disinformation" and we should "filter" that too? What about fox news? How far can you use that excuse to say you're not biased?

I mean, do you feel that Fox and OAN deserve the same "reputation score" as Nature ? If so, why? For as much whining here about the importance of free and open discussion, it's unfortunately verboten to say it, but fortunately people will usually bring it up of their own volition. It is like the "why are all the highly educated people so liberal!?!?" thing, deep down you know the answer, and it's not actually "becaus…

I think you're under-estimating the quantity of articles Nature and associated journals publish that aren't scientific, or are outright wrong, just because they flatter the preconceptions of their readers. There's even a cute saying in science, "Just because it's published in Nature, doesn't mean it's wrong".

Example: Nature published Flaxman2020, a modelling paper by the epidemiology team at ICL which claimed lockdowns saved 3.1 million lives. People who actually read the article realized that it was a massive exercise in circular logic - the model assumed that any reductions in case numbers could only be due to government intervention. It was then presented as proof to the media that lockdowns saved lives. It had many other problems - in fact the authors themselves in the paper itself that it was illustrative only and that in reality, the effectiveness of NPIs would be lower. The circular nature of the argument was pointed out immediately but Nature only published a response letter 8 months after publication, and never retracted it.

As for your legal point, that doesn't mean much. Lawyers try any argument that might work. Facebook have argued in front of the court that their fact checking isn't actually fact checking at all, that it's in reality merely corporate political opinion, and that no reasonable person could possibly construe otherwise!