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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”

#471

Post by ashwagary »

mardifoufs wrote: post #398
empthought wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The BBC is literally the UK state media.

You ignored the "slave state with an absolute monarchy" part I think. Not like they are even comparable, unless you are saying the BBC journalists could justifiably be fearing for their lives if they criticize the UK government? All state media aren't created equal, and aren't equally independant. Otherwise the BBC, aljazeera and RT would be all equal since they are all state media after all.

You stated that you aren't British. You should probably ask some Brits what they think about the BBC and understand their criticisms. You may be surprised by the response.

They generally do not consider it unbiased at all and many would call it false propaganda, especially if they are Irish or Scottish.

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

#472

Post by pydry »

hedora wrote: post #449
freediver wrote: post #22

I guess this did not age well: “[W]hen you search, you expect unbiased results, but that’s not what you get on Google,” @matthewde_silva quotes @yegg https://twitter.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1114524914227253249 Also, they probably do not realize that they will have to start with Twitter if to be consistent.

Funny how most of the comments here are complaining about how this proves there is western media bias. One of the main goals of the current Russian propaganda push in the US is to get people to lose confidence in reliable news outlets. They want us to believe that our best news outlets are equivalent to their basement troll farms that just fabricate stories day in and out. The two are not the same. Giving equal per s…

>One of the main goals of the current Russian propaganda push in the US is to get people to lose confidence in reliable news outlets.

If western news outlets focused a little more on actually being reliable and objective maybe people wouldnt lose confidence.

I hardly think Russian propaganda is required for people to do this.

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

#473

Post by orthecreedence »

spoils19 wrote: post #344
colinmhayes wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is people choosing which search engine they use based off the results it returns not the free market in action?

It is not transparent what kind of curations take place to return the results. You cannot have a free market without transparency, and while DDG are announcing this now, they have no obligation to in the future. Previously the status quo was "we don't curate", now it's "we curate but announce it". What's the chance that they will no longer announce it in the future?

> You cannot have a free market without transparency

I've not heard this before. So I need to know the wages of the workers, what the CEO had for breakfast, the favorite color of all employees, the inventory and sales, etc for every single company in order for it to be a free market?

I'm not arguing that knowing these things would be bad but actually curious of the boundaries you would draw when you say "transparency" such that it would encompass the exact algorithms used in a privately-owned search engine.

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

#474

Post by freediver »

danShumway wrote: post #462
freediver wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A search engine should have ranking factors that tie to the end goal of providing the most relevant results to their users. However this decision is about unilaterally down-ranking a subset of results because of the political view expressed on them (if it was about misinformation than surely they would want to down-rank all misinformation equally - if they had capability to do so in the first place). This is at the s…

> if it was about misinformation than surely they would want to down-rank all misinformation equally - if they had capability to do so in the first place They don't have that capability. DuckDuckGo also doesn't have the capability to surface only correct JS code when I search for a programming concept. There isn't a binary here, all manual upranking and downranking of any content is always playing whack-a-mole, none…

> It is justifiable to critique them in whether or not they've done a good job of that,

If the announcement said "all disinformation about Russian-Ukraine conflict" it would grant benefit of a doubt about their execution as you point out. But it says "Russian disinformation" thus they are making it about politics (something a search engine should not be doing), not fighting disinformation (something a search engine should be doing), so we are justified to critique them on that basis.

> You know that most search engines downrank non-English-language sources for you if you're located in America, right? They try to return results in languages that you're likely to be able to read.

Correct. Because they can rightfully infer that the user is searching in english and likely wants results in english. However in this case, they are inferring a certain political view of the conflict, regardless of what your intent is (what if you are a Russian or Chinese DDG user, or simply someone who is agnostic and wants to read what all sides have to say to form a world view?). No basis for inference can be established here. The only way this could work is by having a switch in the interface to turn such results off, so the user can opt in into it if they prefer to.

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

#475

Post by codedokode »

ummonk wrote: post #305
kmlx wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Russian propaganda is more or less banned from German viewers (with RT and others being banned). is rt.com also banned?

Yes, the EU required internet providers to ban RT and other Russian state media. Elon Musk notably tweeted that Starlink was going to attempt to fight the censorship.

Interesting. I thought only authoritarian regimes decide for citizens what they should or should not watch.

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

#476

Post by RealStickman_ »

awb wrote: post #282
empressplay wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News is not a search engine.

It has search and I’ve used it as one.

Hacker News is a site with a specific niche audience. If this is your only source of news I'm afraid you're getting a very one-side picture on many topics. A search engine on the other hand is supposed to present the information you seek from various sources, so you can read different opinions.

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

#478

Post by freediver »

pvaldes wrote: post #470
freediver wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many problematic aspects of DDG's decision, but here are just a couple of angles. Both sides in the conflict spread disinformation. DDG desides to downrank only results related to disinformation from one side. This makes it a decision based on a political bias and not search quality bias (which would cause all disinformation to be downranked - which is OK and actually a desireable thing in a search engine).…

> Both sides in the conflict spread disinformation. One of them does not have free press and kill journalists. Both cases are not even remotely comparable.

But a general purpose web search engine should not be in a business of determining which side has a higher moral ground in a human conflict?

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

#479

Post by atlantas »

kikokikokiko wrote: post #437
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…

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 replaced mainstream media with Breaking Points (https://www.youtube.com/c/breakingpoints). I've found them to be far more reliable.

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

#480

Post by JasonFruit »

kube-system wrote: post #66
freediver wrote: post #22

I guess this did not age well: “[W]hen you search, you expect unbiased results, but that’s not what you get on Google,” @matthewde_silva quotes @yegg https://twitter.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1114524914227253249 Also, they probably do not realize that they will have to start with Twitter if to be consistent.

"unbiased" doesn't mean "unfiltered". For example, I don't want spam or malware in my search results. Search results should return good information that is relevant to your query, and filter out anything that is not that.

When a search provider decides to allow one side of a story to be presented but to remove sites that present the other side, that's pure bias. It may be justifiable bias; that's arguable. But you can't call that unbiased by any sensible definition.
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