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

521–530 of 865 posts

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

#521

Post by freediver »

danShumway wrote: post #506
freediver wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you mean that targeting a specific source of misinformation is political? In this particular case yes, proven by the fact that such source can only be 'Russian' by their definition. > Well, or they're inferring that the information is factually wrong. How would DDG do this even if they wanted? Send fact checkers to the ground? > When DuckDuckGo uses the word misinformation, what it means by that word is that Duc…

> How would DDG do this even if they wanted? Send fact checkers to the ground? If you want DDG to independently verify every decision it makes via primary sources, you are going to get less useful search results. DuckDuckGo doesn't have a team of scientists to reproduce every research paper they see. Nevertheless, they can decide to intervene in situations where they are reasonably certain that a source isn't trustwo…

> How do you make the jump from disapproval of DDG's standard for misinformation and how it's applied to the idea that they shouldn't be involved in filtering of misinformation at all?

It is quite easy to disapprove their current standard on record because according to it, misinformation can be coming from a "Russian" source only and we all know there is much more misinformation in the world than that. Can we agree on this?

I am not saying that a search engine shouldn't be involved in filtering of misinformation. On the contrary, I think that DDG (and any other search engine) should absolutely be in the business of filtering all misinformation they can. Key here is "all".

But by being selective, and in this case based on a particular political view (and I use the word political in the context of world politics), introduces a bias which may negatively affect its users, without any particular benefit.

Makes sense?

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

#522

Post by yupper32 »

moltke wrote: post #374
helen___keller wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does work for that. For a large number of searches, on relatively uncontroversial topics, search engines have effectively become oracles of truth. This is how google ended up with their modern design that discourages website clicks, they did research into their users and realized most people searching “Abraham Lincoln’s birthday” want to see the top result “February 12, 1809” and not the top result “ https://www.l…

>It does work for that. It does not. I used the moon thing from last year as an example. Here[1] is a very noncontroversial query that still yields factually incorrect results in the box at the top. Yes if you read the results carefully and think about it you'll realize it's wrong but then you're doing the same thing you would be doing otherwise. [1] https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=APq-WBv0RNgr6Q3zUOjDc1lM...

"The Covid vaccine doesn't prevent deaths 100% of the time. So it does not work."

Something doesn't need to be perfect to work well.

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

#523

Post by justnotworthit »

malwarebytess wrote: post #514

Looks like DDG and I are breaking up. I used DDG precisely to get around this kind of manipulation -- i can make my own assessments. What good alternatives are there even left these days?

Wasn't DDG a privacy layer on bing? Does bing do this?

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

#524

Post by goatcode »

Imnimo wrote: post #290

Suppose I go off and make a search engine, with my own algorithm for ranking search results. At first it works great. And then five years later, I find that, by a quirk in my algorithm, I find that a new site has risen to the top of all my results. This new site was created as a prank, and it contains authoritative-sounding but incorrect answers to common questions. The results returned are still relevant to my users…

What would you direct searches for "strawman" to?

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

#525

Post by goatcode »

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…

> In case someone hasn't noticed, there is a war going on in Eurasia.

I thought it was Eastasia.

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

#526

Post by wsgeorge »

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 am shocked. I followed the link and thought I'd hit the Drudge Report, saw this link and had to double check. I am shocked.

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

#527

Post by ensan »

archagon wrote: post #504
hnuser847 wrote: post #18

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. Indeed, there's a war going on and there's a tremendous amount of propaganda being circulated from both sides. The question is, why is DDG okay with amplifying Ukranian/NATO propaganda and not Russian propaganda? Is it because NATO is the "good" guy and Russia is the "bad" guy? When the US inva…

> The question is, why is DDG okay with amplifying Ukranian/NATO propaganda and not Russian propaganda? Because one side is busy shelling and starving civilians right now? Are you seriously suggesting that "NATO propaganda" (WTF?) and Russian propaganda are somehow equivalent? There is very, very obviously a "bad guy" here, and most of the world (even outside the US/NATO sphere of influence) seems to agree on this po…

No post body was provided.

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

#528

Post by username3 »

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…

I shouldn’t get American disinformation, but your trusted sources are untouchable.

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

#529

Post by danShumway »

freediver wrote: post #521
danShumway wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How would DDG do this even if they wanted? Send fact checkers to the ground? If you want DDG to independently verify every decision it makes via primary sources, you are going to get less useful search results. DuckDuckGo doesn't have a team of scientists to reproduce every research paper they see. Nevertheless, they can decide to intervene in situations where they are reasonably certain that a source isn't trustwo…

> How do you make the jump from disapproval of DDG's standard for misinformation and how it's applied to the idea that they shouldn't be involved in filtering of misinformation at all? It is quite easy to disapprove their current standard on record because according to it, misinformation can be coming from a "Russian" source only and we all know there is much more misinformation in the world than that. Can we agree o…

Sure. I think it's reasonable to ask DuckDuckGo to apply more rigorous standards across the board.

I'll offer a weak note in their defense that I suspect part of the reason they don't is specifically to avoid sliding down a slippery slope and breaking this balance between neutrality and editorial decisions about content. I suspect that DuckDuckGo would say that there is a volume and kind of misinformation happening here that they are willing to address, but that applying the standards too broadly would result in them making decisions in other contexts where they feel less confident and in pushing their editorial line too far.

However, I don't think it's unreasonable at all to disagree with them on that assessment, and I think it's extremely reasonable to ask why DuckDuckGo feels safer about downranking certain kinds of misinformation and feels nervous about taking stances about other misinformation.

My hope is that if it's somehow possible for anything positive at all to come out of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it's in part that people become more conscientious and critical about other conflicts (and narratives about conflicts) that we tend to take for granted or ignore.

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

#530

Post by tomc1985 »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #492
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

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…

> 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 individual's responsibility to make sense of that in a civilized fashion.

My only exception to this rule is for things that are irrelevant to seeker's intent to acquire more information, advertising falls into this bucket.

Post reply on HN