This is what drove me off the platform. Searching Bing (primary), Yandex (rarely turns up gold), and DDG (generally useless for the news) each seems to mitigate

This is what drove me off the platform. Searching Bing (primary), Yandex (rarely turns up gold), and DDG (generally useless for the news) each seems to mitigate these issues. But you really shouldn't have to check three different search engines to not feel like you're being denied information. And yes, Yandex is a Russian operation, something to keep in mind.