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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”

#421

Post by AnthonyMouse »

vkou wrote: post #197
burnished wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So like, what, everyones keeping this big secret and its just schlubs like you and me kept in the dark?

I don't think it's some kind of backroom secret that most media, US, Russian, or otherwise, is utter shit. It should be pretty evident from looking at its coverage of any subject of which you have a better-than-average understanding of, or from contrasting how media produced in different parts of the world looks at the same exact events. Or even from applying a little bit of critical thinking. From looking at what it…

The advantage of getting information from a diverse set of random sources is that they're often pretty good at exposing the misinformation of other sources.

Mainstream sources keep talking about a particular bill and then you read, "hey, that's a misrepresentation, here's the text of the bill and it doesn't say that." They link to the text on the government website and it turns out, they're right. The bill doesn't say that.

Then the same guy starts talking about vaccines and you have to go somewhere else to see the debunk of that.

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

#422

Post by yurish »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #263
hammock wrote: post #94

There's really nowhere reliable on the web you can get non-Western sanctioned news about the Russia-Ukraine conflict. If you are interested in alternative viewpoints, don't bother with any of the search engines. All the sources I've seen are on, e.g. Telegram.

This is an odd viewpoint. To me, "news" means "what is happening". I'm aware that the American news media does tend to mix a fairly heavy dose of opinion into that, but that isn't your only choice. The wire services like AP, or non-US news organizations like the BBC or Japan's NHK provide alternatives. But these aren't "alternative viewpoints". They're just news with less opinion. Are you actually looking for news? O…

News may be filtered to create skewed view. Note that the "alternatives" you list are all from US or its allies.

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

#424

Post by avgcorrection »

diego_moita wrote: post #392
avgcorrection wrote: post #218

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. Have you been living under a rock? This narrow, don’t-tread-on-me version of freedom-of-speech has been criticized in the Zeitgeist for a good while now; many people want the same principles to…

> Have you been living under a rock? > has been criticized in the Zeitgeist Zeitgeist? As in Twitter/FB/Whatsapp and other social networks' blabbering? Then yes, I've been living under a rock. I proudly refuse to be part of that cacophony.

Well, you are on this site, no? I’m referring to the HN Zeitgeist (in part).

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

#425

Post by joe_the_user »

KarlKemp wrote: post #223
smsm42 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Good information" is very subjective. Some people think Fox News information is good, others think it's all lies. Some people think Wikipedia is the closest thing to Word of God that we can get, others think it's a bunch of kids with too much free time on their hands writing about things they have no idea about. Some people think the US government is trustworthy, others think it lied so many times only an idiot can…

"Good information", almost synonymous with "truth", is not subjective. It is objective, observable fact. The fact that is a lot of disagreement, propaganda, and lies concerning that truth does not render it subjective.

"Good information", almost synonymous with "truth", is not subjective.

Truth is "not subjective" in the sense that force of will can't change the answer to even very fraught questions like "what programming paradigm works best in situation X" or "which running back would do best on team X in superbowl Y".

But one's judgement on the truth of complex question depends on one's opinions on the meaning of various terms, reliability of various individuals, the dynamics of human psychology, etc. This overall situation results in people's opinions being hard to compare and "truth is subjective" is often shorthand for this, although it would be nicer to have a different word.

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

#426

Post by danShumway »

freediver wrote: post #330
p1necone wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Search results have to be "biased" towards being related to your query to be useful, I would argue that state sponsored Russian propaganda is probably not particularly related to most queries.

How about state sponsored Chinese propaganda? Or how about state sponsored New Zealand propaganda? Or state sponsored German propaganda? How about a corporation XYZ sponsored propaganda? What if you are Russian, Chinese, Kiwi, German or XYZ employee in these situations - or simply want to have equal access to information so you can make up your own world view? If you choose to go down this path - what propaganda is O…

Hrm. I always wonder in these situations, what about the slippery slope in the opposite direction? "Political bias" is not a well-defined term; different people have different opinions about what topics are political and about what counts as bias.

So let's say that DuckDuckGo commits to not doing any filtering or sorting based on a nebulous term like "politics". If you choose to go down that path - what concepts are political and who is supposed to be the judge of that?

It seems to me that in order to have any web search engine of any real use, we necessarily have to accept that we are on some level ranking facts based on how relevant they are to queries, and we have to accept that we're going to try and strike a balance between neutrality and usefulness, and that different people/engines will have different ideas about what that balance is. Of course it would be better if consumers had more choices about different search engines to use in situations where they feel the rankings are bad, but... is it necessarily DuckDuckGo's fault that there aren't more search engines?

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

#428

Post by ohCh6zos »

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #100
uejfiweun wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong that they absolutely have the right to choose what results to display. Just like Twitter has the right to choose what content appears on their platform, and same with YouTube, etc. But my opposition is not from a legal standpoint, it is from a moral standpoint. I just think censorship and cancellation is wrong and immoral, even if it is legally allowed. I think it is immoral for some business executi…

> I think it is immoral for some business executive to make sweeping decisions about what the commoners are / aren't allowed to see I used to have this point of view, but it's clear lately that certain types of information do not result in good outcomes if processed by the uneducated. The U.S. is already going in the direction of a dystopia if you haven't noticed. More free speech isn't going to help gas, housing, or…

I'm ok with this as long as I get to be the gatekeeper. Otherwise I would prefer we look at principles instead of consequences. Let's stand by our principles even if it dooms us.

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

#429

Post by hobs »

skinnymuch wrote: post #310
ScarletEmerald wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you trust a source of medical information less if it declined to present or link to information that breathing CO is healthy, drinking mineral spirits is fine, and handling mercury with bare skin is safe and fun?

I don’t know. Since this sort of thing isn’t happening and the general atmosphere of everything is unlike your hypothetical. I’m not sure it much matters.

The united states has several states passing laws so doctors can proscribe ivermectin for covid, we genuinely live in a world where homeopathy is a the option Steve Jobs took instead of cancer therapy.

I have no understanding of why you would say this is not happening when product brands like GOOP make tons of money from outright hocus pocus health bs.

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

#430

Post by mardifoufs »

pessimizer wrote: post #176
orhmeh09 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also tends to prioritize recency a lot. Good luck searching for something with terms that have been in the news lately.

Good luck searching for someone who shares the first name of someone who has been in the news lately.

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 letters arbitrarily. It would only be reasonable to do so if there are 0 results for the exact name or maybe just a "did you mean?" prompt for suspected typos.

It never used to do that before and that's the most frustrating part imo

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