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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”

#771

Post by tomc1985 »

santoshalper wrote: post #556
tomc1985 wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It sounds like you're advocating for pushing censorship responsibility to the user. It is really irresponsible to be phrasing censorship as a "responsibility". Censorship is a tool of the weak and simple-minded so that they can maintain the illusions of a shared reality promulgated by whoever is in charge. The only responsibility should be towards the free and unadulterated flow of information, and yes, it is the i…

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

That is an extremely uncharitable reading of my words

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

#772

Post by native_samples »

dTal wrote: post #752
native_samples wrote: post #740

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lockdo…

>As for your legal point, that doesn't mean much. Lawyers try any argument that might work. No, I'm not willing to let them off the hook so easily. Why were they in a court of law in the first place? Because they lied to such an extent that it's literally illegal . If this hail-mary legal argument of "no reasonable person would believe us" was the best defence they could come up with, then that is approximately the m…

It wasn't illegal, was it? Fox won that court case, because they stated that Tucker Carlson is commentary and not factual news reporting. Which is exactly what his show is, and the judge agreed.

At any rate, do you really think other news companies or talking heads never say things others think are untrue? The reason Fox ended up in a lawsuit is because people on the left are much more determined to take out anyone saying things they don't like than the other way around. It's not because CNN is actually more reliable.

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

#773

Post by Clubber »

tomnipotent wrote: post #655
Clubber wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> You don't see Google censoring ads much. There's nothing in their business they censor more.

In search results?

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

#774

Post by eric_cc »

diego_moita wrote: post #11

Good! One more reason for me to remain a DDG user. This is the behaviour of responsible and accountable adults. "Censoring" is a word very badly understood and prone to manipulation. There are a lot of circumstances where suppression of information/opinion is justified: protecting intellectual property and copyrights, blocking doxing, prevent haters from doing harm against others, protection of military secrets or pe…

> So why shouldn't DDG have the right to choose what search results to display?

They do have the right to participate in censorship. I don’t see anybody suggesting otherwise. Now we know that they can no longer be trusted to serve unbiased information. And now we can tag your account as “pro censorship”.

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

#775

Post by eric_cc »

colinmhayes wrote: post #350
choward wrote: post #16

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. There's a saying: "Truth is the first casualty in war." The last thing I want during a war is censorship. Why should I magically start trusting the government and media now? > If this sounds just like "legalese" to you consider this: a newspaper has the right to select and editorialize the news…

> They are a search engine. Exactly. people go to search engines looking for information about things. If the search engine returns lies it's completely failed. > who cares if the results are manipulated? Not sure if you've noticed, but there's an entire industry built around manipulating search engine results. If the search engines don't fight back the only thing that will be left is corporate and government bullshi…

> If the search engine returns lies it's completely failed.

How does a search engine know what is true?

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

#776

Post by eric_cc »

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.

> excluding literal disinformation

Who decides what is literal disinformation?

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

#777

Post by snowman-yelling »

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.

Wow, you're right. My mistake!

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

#778

Post by colinmhayes »

Gareth321 wrote: post #723
colinmhayes wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

First, define “disinformation.” Second, prove that only this disinformation is being suppressed. Lastly, prove that I don’t actually want to see some of this disinformation. I write articles and checking official Russian media is part of ensuring I’m writing factually. Your problem is thinking that I don’t have the right to see media I want to see.

You think that ddg not showing as much disinformation is intruding on your right to see the media you want to see? You know that you can still find disinformation by explicitly searching for it right?

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

#779

Post by freediver »

danShumway wrote: post #562
freediver wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The correct analogy in this case would be if there were both 'square earthers' and 'flat earthers' and DDG decides to penalize only results from 'flat earthers'. Both sides produce factual untruth but only one gets penalized.

I do want to interject here: there is propaganda coming out of all sides during this war, that is unequivocally true. However, it is also unequivocally true that some of the issues/narratives here are not both-sides-are-equally-wrong issues. Russia didn't invade Ukraine to get rid of nazi influence, for example. This is not a territory dispute, it's an unjustified invasion. I want to be careful while we're talking ab…

Who has higher moral ground in a human conflict should be irrelevant from a standpoint of a general purpose web search engine, which DDG used to be.

The moment it starts to openly prefer one kind of misinformation to other, it is basically stopping to be a general purpose web search engine (optimizing for search quality) and starts being a publisher with an agenda (optimizing in this case for a political outcome), becoming a part of the propaganda itself.

Having said that, some DDG users may be fine with this, but many aren't obviously. And I am afraid that those that are fine with it now, are likely to be fine only until the exact same process is used against them, their own interest or political/idealogical/religious beliefs in the future, which in the case of DDG is now a matter of when, because a precedent has been set with this.

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

#780

Post by adventured »

rixed wrote: post #713
adventured wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all disinformation is created equal, and that's a critical difference. The Russian and Ukrainian sides are not moral equals. If Russia says Ukraine is full of drug addicts, whores and nazis, and that bombing hospitals is necessary to protect itself from Ukraine - that's of course disinformation. If Ukraine says they have killed 10,000 Russian soldiers, when the real number is closer to 5,000 - that too is disinfo…

Please we don't need more hatred nor more call for escalation.

Nice try.
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