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DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation”

• dominojab 5y ago
• dominojab 5y ago
• throwawaybutwhy 5y ago
  So long, ducky. I have switched to Brave (until they give in to the propaganda machine, that is) and won't be coming back. This is a terribly misguided decision.
• z3ncyberpunk 5y ago
  Goodbye duck duck go, One less search engine you can trust
• mkr-hn 5y ago
  A good move. Way too many people think unbiased means unfiltered. If outright propaganda overwhelms good information, that is bias. It's a relative of the paradox of tolerance: if you don't clean the garbage out, everyone else will leave.
• abdellah123 5y ago
  This is just outrageous. Disinformation is an undefined word. History is written by the winner. So even historical "facts"... Are not facts. I am being more and more skeptical about the internet as a whole. The internet is owned by a couple of actors... Too sad!
• meerita 5y ago
  It's a sad day. I had hopes from DDG, but with this, they join the same train as the rest. There will be no unbias internet with this mindset.
• miked85 5y ago
  I guess I will try out brave search for now. I don't want to deal with tech companies deciding what information is accurate or not.
• TrapLord_Rhodo 5y ago
  How does duck duck go know? Do they have a link to the highest levels of governments with a team of experts certify what's true and what's false? ...Or are they algorithmically deranking sites that don't fit the narrative of their customer base? Last one seems more likely. This tangent of virtue signalling these last few years has been.... constant and tiring. Lately, every thing claiming to be a rebel is a tyrant.
• h2odragon 5y ago
  Can we hope this will lead to some transparency about what sites are donwranked; how they are misinformation or otherwise worth the downranking; and maybe even some insight into what facilities there are for weighting the rankings and how those are otherwise used?
  • rich_sasha 5y ago
    Yeah... it's probably better to show a link saying "we downranked [...], click here to uncensor". I think in this particular case it's a good thing as is, but next time I might not think that, and I'd rather have the "full shebang" available too. Though, from a philosophical point of view, search engines are supposed to find us "good" content. They try to guess our intentions and serve up the stuff we should see. In this is a massive implication that search engines already make a lot of judgment calls; just usually along less identifiable features. Here they're explicitly crafting a feature called "disinformation" and downgrading on that basis. But otherwise, is it so different to rating based on other arbitrary criteria that we don't even have any insight into?
• uejfiweun 5y ago
  I like DDG, but honestly, this is a really bad move. It is already harder for me to find certain sites in the rankings. I mean look at this, even searching for "drudge" doesn't even bring up a link to Drudge Report: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=drudge&t=h_&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=drudge&t=h_&ia=web I liked DDG because it respected the user. Limiting what I can see in order to make sure I don't see "Russian disinformation" seems to me like the exact opposite of respecting the user. Will be uninstalling soon if this intensifies.
  • soundnote 5y ago
    Went with Brave, I like the effort of building their own index.
  • snowman-yelling 5y ago
    Drudge was literally the first link in my results. Haha.
    • uejfiweun 5y ago
      Weird. Maybe I got unlucky with some experiment rollout. My top links are Drudge Retort (some stupid parody), the link to the Drudge app on iPhone, and the dictionary definition for "drudge". Nowhere on the page is there an actual link to the site for me.
      • bmarquez 5y ago
        I clicked on that link for "drudge", the search results vary every time I reload the page. I always get the iOS app, the retort parody, and the dictionary definition as the top 3. But the position of all 3 links vary every time I click reload. Still don't see the link to the actual site either.
      • chriscjcj 5y ago
        For the last couple years, I think the Drudge Report itself has actually been a parody of the Drudge Report.
• sshine 5y ago
  Like Signal, I approve of DuckDuckGo generally, and sometimes they make bad moves. This is one of them. Censoring the baddies may seem obvious, but once you open this can of worms, there's no closing it.
• JohnDeHope 5y ago
  My question is: DDG is to Google, as ___ is to DDG. What is ___?
  • jcadam 5y ago
    Google.
  • TehShrike 5y ago
    I recently discovered Kagi and got into the beta in the last week. So far I've been happy with the results. https://kagi.com/ https://kagi.com/ I haven't been very happy with my ability to find things with DDG or Google lately, if Kagi can deliver good search results, I'll happily pay whenever they go out of beta
• awglkjl34kj 5y ago
• awglkjl34kj 5y ago
• jcadam 5y ago
  Goodbye, DDG.
  • livinglist 5y ago
    but what are the alternatives?
    • pphysch 5y ago
      The selling point of DDG is "pro privacy" i.e. non-interference with its users, now that this is shown to be BS, there is no reason to use it. Might as well use Google/Bing for bigger features... But probably something better out there.
      • mywittyname 5y ago
        Their claim is literally: > We don’t store your personal information. Ever. > Our privacy policy is simple: we don’t collect or share any of your personal information. They are absolutely maintaining their promise. There's no evidence on their site that they have a promise of "non-interference of [our] users". Whatever that means. I read through a lot of articles on spreadprivacy.com looking for evidence to back up your claim, and came up with nothing.
        • prvc 5y ago
          >we don’t collect or share any of your personal information Their lawyers must have a very specific definition of "share" in mind, since they are definitely exposing that information via how their ad system functions.
    • CyanBird 5y ago
      Kagi They are in beta right now, If memory serves they will charge around 200usd/year I will be happy paying that to avoid all that other free search engine bullshit, such as this perfect example of ddg destroying their own ethos for.... I am not even sure what they are getting in return for this
• diego_moita 5y ago
  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 people in danger, etc. In case someone hasn't noticed, there is a war going on in Europe. That is a circumstance where some of these cases apply. 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. If this sounds just like "legalese" to you consider this: a newspaper has the right to select and editorialize the news it publishes, a bookseller has the right to choose what books to sell, a movie theatre or a movie producer also has rights to choose what to exhibit or produce. The same principle applies to what dang does here at HN. So why shouldn't DDG have the right to choose what search results to display?
  • LudwigNagasena 5y ago
  • z3ncyberpunk 5y ago
    Wow you have no intelligence whatsoever. You're basically advocating for one team's propaganda because you don't like the other teams. YOU are the problem.
  • eric_cc 5y ago
    > 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”.
  • soundnote 5y ago
    > 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. Freedom of speech is a philosophical principle. Laws based on the philosophy have been written, but they are not the broader principle itself. The laws are just one instance of the principle. So when we criticize a private actor for going against freedom of speech, we are not saying that they break the law, or that they aren't allowed to do what they do. They plainly are. What we are saying is that we like the principle, and would like to see the private organization act so as to uphold the principle. This is especially true if they have advertised themselves as being pro the principle before but have backtracked since. A huge part of DDG's position before was to escape your results being shaped for you by the search provider. Now DDG is doing that on top of whatever Bing does. Maybe they're just complying with EU sanctions that demand suppressing RT and Sputnik, but I haven't really seen/checked other communications by them on the subject. EDIT: There's also the issue of determining what is factual and what is misinformation on a contested subject. Not easy, especially algorithmically, and something I'd rather do myself.
• fossislife 5y ago
  I used DDG in the past, because they did not tamper with the search results. Privacy is secondary to me. Now I switch to another search engine.
  • sp332 5y ago
    "they did not tamper with the search results" DDG has always been bold about downranking and deleting spam.
• ColinHayhurst 5y ago
  Is there any statement from Microsoft since or beyond that from Feb 28 where they mention de-ranking search results from two news sites, on Bing? https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2022/02/28/ukraine-russia-digital-war-cyberattacks/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2022/02/28/ukraine...
• bumblebritches5 5y ago
• choward 5y ago
  > DuckDuckGo's mission is to make simple privacy protection accessible to all. The main job of a search engine is to give me results relevant to what I'm searching for. Privacy is obviously a nice feature but if the results suck, I'm not going to use your search engine so privacy doesn't matter. Who are they to decide what is "disinformation". How do they know? I want to see all sides of a story and come to my own conclusions. I don't need big tech babysitting me.
  • eli 5y ago
    Is this materially different from filtering other abuse like SEO spam? Would you choose to keep spam in your results to reach your own conclusion?
    • cato_the_elder 5y ago
      > Is this materially different from filtering other abuse like SEO spam? Yes it is. The undesirability of spam is much more universal than "misinformation", and its definition is much less controversial. And we don't care whether the spam is Russian, American, Nigerian or whatever. The motivation in this case is clearly more paternalistic compared to filtering spam.
      • eli 5y ago
        Yeah I just don't agree with any of that. Spam is infamously hard to identify and consistently define. My spam is your content. I'd argue what Russia is doing here is spam. They're laundering their message through media outlets with domains with much stronger SEO positioning than any official government domain. (You may disagree this is "spam" but that's kind of my point.) Meanwhile I think there's pretty broad consensus that if you doing a general search (and not specifically seeking out opposing information or alternate views) that you do not want the top results to be intentionally false.
        • xg15 5y ago
          > My spam is your content. Tell me of one person who wants to read unsolicited viagra offers and all that stuff. > I'd argue what Russia is doing here is spam. Problem is that there are a lot of half-truths embedded in pro-russian media outlets and many things that, how false they may be, seem to be their genuine viewpoints. I think it would be better to engage with that stuff and separate the half-truths from the lies instead of simply hiding everything away.
• mrjangles 5y ago
  Seriously what the f*ck makes Gabriel Weinberg think that myself, or anyone else, gives a damn about his personal opinion on what I should and should not be reading. The arrogance of these people is astounding. Also, absolutely zero of the standard base of Duck Duck Go users are the kind of people who don't understand what a Russian state controlled news site is, and why one would have to be careful reading it. Those people may well exist, but they would be using Google. This move makes their disdain for their users obvious. There is now no reason to be using Duck Duck Go over startpage.com, which also doesn't track you, but gives you the results straight from google, which are always much better than duck duck go.
  • Minor49er 5y ago
    Edit: Retracting my advocating for using Bing directly. As ColinHayhurst pointed out elsewhere in the comments, Bing is also excluding results, specifically RT and Sputnik (see the "Protection from state-sponsored disinformation" section): https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2022/02/28/ukraine-russia-digital-war-cyberattacks/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2022/02/28/ukraine...
  • Spivak 5y ago
    This is a weird stance to take about a search engine which is "tell me what to read as a service." Like you're literally using them to surface the wheat from the chaff. The algorithm that ranks results is already biased as hell and sometimes it's going to get it wrong. Google surfacing lots of stackoverflow spam sites isn't "unbiased" it's junk and manual correction is totally fine.
    • mattwilsonn888 5y ago
      This word keeps coming in this comments section: "spam." Spam was never mentioned in the Tweet, the source of this discussion. In fact no one in the comments section is talking about spam either, unless its a pathetic debunking attempt. They are talking about genuine results being down-ranked based on their ideological, even morally unscrupulous content, and why that is harmful to intelligent people who don't need their information retrieval service helping them form thoughts.
• freediver 5y ago
  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 https://twitter.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1114524914227253249 Also, they probably do not realize that they will have to start with Twitter if to be consistent.
  • peakaboo 5y ago
    Im still against censorship but covid showed me that there are people who believe anything. :/ You can change entire elections this way, by controlling what propaganda is ok and what isn't. But make no mistake, its actually all propaganda.
  • meerita 5y ago
    Exactly. This people never realize this: 1. Who will decide what is truth or not. 2. Who will be arbiter With this decision, they join the club with Google and the rest.
  • eli 5y ago
    What does down-ranking disinformation sites globally have to do with complaining about Google customizing results based on its profile of you? EDIT: The rest of the quote is “On Google, you get results tailored to what they think you’re likely to click on, based on the data profile they’ve built on you over time.”
    • coffeefirst 5y ago
      And in this specific case, it feels more like quality control of state-sponsored spam. You can still find these sites—they come up first if you look for them directly, they're just treated as the low quality information than they are.
      • mattwilsonn888 5y ago
        And why should anyone believe that State sponsored spam doesn't come from all angles? If I'm going to receive propaganda, I at least would like consistent sampling of it. And who cares about any of that - you have admonished an information search provider to determine what information it serves you based on subjective, undisclosed criteria of which there is good reason to believe is ideologically motivated.
• myth_drannon 5y ago
  Censorship on Google Search, Youtube didn't start with the Russian invasion. It started with the need to counter Trump. Very scary times. „He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself; and if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into you.“ — Friedrich Nietzsche, book Beyond Good and Evil
  • Minor49er 5y ago
    It started long before Trump. Here is a list of just a few examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google
    • myth_drannon 5y ago
      Right, but before it was done mostly secretly, with shame. Now censorship is normalized and announced proudly.
      • Minor49er 5y ago
        I would argue that most of it is still secret, or at least not widely known about. They're only announcing this particular censorship because it falls in line with popular current events
• andrew_ 5y ago
  Prior submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30624320 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30624320 Brave Search has been gradually improving and I'm pleased with the quality of their results as of late. I encourage folks to give it a spin.
  • criddell 5y ago
    You might want to give Kagi a try. I've been using it for a few weeks and I think it's better than Google for my needs.
    • andrew_ 5y ago
      Thanks, Will definitely give it a shot.
    • nojonestownpls 5y ago
      Unfortunately also seems US based, and at this point I'm not ready to put any long term trust in US based companies remaining unbiased.
    • searchableguy 5y ago
      They use google search API for their results so it's really rebranded google with tweaks on top.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• giaour 5y ago
  Lot of hot takes and hostility in these comments, which is honestly kinda surprising. If your reaction to this news is negative, ask yourself, should DuckDuckGo downrank SEO spam? Then ask yourself how disinformation written to "go viral" on social media and in search results is different from SEO spam.
  • pphysch 5y ago
    SEO spam is... spam. No one wants spam, and usually has obvious indicators of SEO manipulation. Q: Who determines what is "Russian disinformation?" A: Teams of "specialists" funded by the US/UK governments (Bellingcat, Atlantic Council, etc).
    • gibrown 5y ago
      The people writing the search algorithms decide, just like they decide what a "good" algorithm is.
      • pphysch 5y ago
        I would bet you $50 that DDG was handled/requested a blocklist of domains from a spooky US/UK govt associate and did not unilaterally create it themselves.
        • giaour 5y ago
          Your assertion is not falsifiable, but I would otherwise take the other side of that bet.
          • pphysch 5y ago
            Sure it is. We can ask @yegg about their methodology
          • mardifoufs 5y ago
            Its exactly what happened to Qwant so it's not far fetched.
• topynate 5y ago
  Yegg followed up with an argument about relevancy of results: "Search engines by definition try to put more relevant content higher and less relevant content lower -- that's not censorship, it's search ranking relevancy." – https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1501734648417865731 https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1501734648417865731 The other premise is that Russian disinformation is irrelevant by virtue of being disinformation – that a user of DDG wouldn't want to be manipulated if he somehow knew in advance that this would be the effect on him. Accepting that arguendo, what about the user explicitly looking for what Russia has to say? I asked Yegg if appending "russian perspective" would give Russian perspectives. I don't expect a reply but it seems clear to me that down-ranking sites is too blunt a tool to allow for this.
  • bhandziuk 5y ago
    does this imply that you just need to scroll down to see the "Russian Perspective"?
• drno123 5y ago
  4 years ago I switched from Google to DDG, only occasionally using !g switch. This is a bad move by DDG.
• TehShrike 5y ago
  I want to use a search engine that puts all its effort into down-ranking sites that I'm not searching for
  • tpoacher 5y ago
    I want one which doesn't decide this for me, no-matter how "good for me" it may be, and relies exclusively on my search query to decide what is most relevant. If you really want to flag disinformation, I'd be fine with some sort percentage reliability value or something along those lines, right next to the result. Preferably something that I can also order results by. Totally happy with a 'caveat emptor' clause regarding who comes up with those reliability values. But down-ranking sites by default is not how this is supposed to work. "It's for a 'good cause'" is not the point. It's always going to be for a "good cause (TM)". Besides, what's so bad about access to "disinformation"? I prefer being presented with bad arguments whose value I get to judge for myself, than being told I'm not getting all the arguments, only those whose value someone else decided on my behalf.
    • TehShrike 5y ago
      Exactly. If I'm searching for Russian propaganda, I should see Russian propaganda in my search results. If I'm searching for good bicycle reviews, I should see good bicycle reviews.
      • axiosgunnar 5y ago
        What should be shown if you search for „why did russia invade ukraine“?
        • mattwilsonn888 5y ago
          Whatever your Native State wants you to believe, of course.
        • bsedlm 5y ago
          a mix of both with a slider to parametrize the sentiment of the results "it's pure evil VS itls good" or I dunno... it's a near-waste of time to imagine what this could/should be as I'm in no poisition to build it.
• CyanBird 5y ago
  So, how does this make any sense for ddg? I don't get it, I really don't Why would they self sabotage like this? Ever?
  • pessimizer 5y ago
    Maybe honest nationalism/"patriotism", maybe a phone call or a meeting with a VIP, maybe both. Sometimes you can get as rich purposefully trashing a product as you can taking it to a moderate success. Look at Firefox.
• Splatter 5y ago
  Seems like there would be an opening here for DDG to create a separate section (if they're insistent on this disinformation down-rank path) to publish a clear and falsifiable algo their systems use to determine disinformation and also an option to view those results that are down-ranked as a result of the algo.
• noyeastguy 5y ago
  I support this as an avid DDG user. Russian disinformation is a new kind of warfare that we've not inoculated ourselves against yet. This is a step in that direction. “in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance.”
  • OtomotO 5y ago
    If you're intolerant you are not tolerant. If you only tolerate what you approve of, you're not tolerate at all. The definition of tolerating includes viewpoints that are not your own. Otherwise everyone in existence would be tolerant
    • DFHippie 5y ago
      You present tolerance as binary: you are tolerant or you are intolerant. There are degrees of tolerance. If you wish to foster a more tolerant society, you can refuse to tolerate the least tolerant people and thereby make the net level of tolerance in the society higher. Basically, you ban the bigots. Is this bigotry against bigots? No, actually, because bigotry is holding an unjustified negative opinion against someone and this would be a justified opinion, but setting that aside, it would result in less bigotry. And tolerating people when they behave and not tolerating them otherwise is different from not tolerating people because of innocuous characteristics which are outside their control, like their skin color, their gender, or their place of birth. You can choose not to abuse the disabled and thereby make yourself less bigoted. You can't choose not to be disabled.
      • OtomotO 5y ago
        But in the eyes of the bigot their bigotry is totally justified. So it all boils down to "but I am right, trust me, my bigotry is totally justified" But yes, you're right with your assessment, that I view being tolerant as an absolute state. From my point of view being "a little" tolerant or "being 98% tolerant" is the same as not being tolerant at all. Being tolerant doesn't mean that I won't defend my values or stand in between a bully (or worse) and their victim. It just means, that I can totally bear it to live next door to Nazis (which sadly in my country isn't too uncommon) without actively attacking them.
• gambler 5y ago
  You know, I am beginning to see that all that talk about mass psychosis caused by social isolation due to Covid and lockdowns was onto something. It explains a lot of what is happening right now. People are hyper-focused on only one thing and pay zero attention to long-term and larger-context consequences of their actions. And proud of it.
  • 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
    I have no idea what all of the talk about mass psychosis is even trying to say and the video about it that went viral feels a bit...manufactured?
    • awb 5y ago
      I’m sure there’s a term for it, but it’s saying something that could be true without providing data or any accountability kind of like a horoscope. “People seem much more X than they did Y years ago.” The power of suggestion makes you start noticing all the examples of X in the last Y years.
      • 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
        That's the exact feeling I got from it. It says nothing and can be broadly applied to anything with philosopher quotes sprinkled in. The comments also seemed less than genuine and the source of the material is anonymous.
  • wrycoder 5y ago
    Not only that, but I’m observing lately that Western culture is becoming increasingly juvenile and generally lacking in wisdom, apparently by deliberately forgetting the past.
    • lamontcg 5y ago
      In the past you'd get your information via your city newspaper, maybe the NYT/WSJ or another national newspaper if you strived to be "well informed" and then your choice of the NBC/ABC/CBS nightly news because cable didn't exist yet. The filters in front of the bulk of the population were much stronger then.
• wnevets 5y ago
  Anyone upset about down ranking propaganda need to get their priorities straight. Why would you want to use a search engine that serves intentionally bad information?
  • mywittyname 5y ago
    Right. The problem with every "free" system is that is it will be eventually exploited by bad actors for fun and profit. At first, people were exploiting SEO to make money, now they are using it to gain power and influence.
  • someotherperson 5y ago
    Considering rags like WSJ, NY Times, Economist, CNN and Al Jazeera doesn’t have the same consequences it seems like the only propaganda you’re opposed to is the propaganda you disagree with.
    • wnevets 5y ago
      What makes you think I wouldn't want any of those sites also down ranked?
      • someotherperson 5y ago
        ...but they're not. It's not even an optional "exclude [x] media" filter, it's a forced political viewpoint on the search results. That's what people -- including myself -- are unhappy with.
  • _-david-_ 5y ago
    First let me just say, nobody wants to see bad information, intentional or not (unless they want to get an understanding of what the propaganda is). My reasons to be upset are 1. What they call misinformation / disinformation may turn out to be accurate in the future 2. I have no way of knowing what they are actually removing. They may call stuff that they just don't like disinformation 3. I want to hear not just one side of an argument. You can't form a fully fledged understanding of a complicated subject like this without seeing the other side.
• qiskit 5y ago
  Is anyone really that surprised? Beware companies that sell virtue. They tend to be the least virtuous. Don't be evil? Easily one of the most evil companies to have ever existed. When DDG's prime selling point was not their service but their "virtue", you knew it was a shady company. Though I do hope DDG, Bing, etc are able to gain some market share to break google's stranglehold on search, DDG is at heart no better than google morally. They are out to make a buck, nothing more, nothing less, like google. If you think DDG cares one lick about your privacy or free speech, then you are fooling yourself.
  • myth_drannon 5y ago
    Any alternatives? Open source search...?
    • timeon 5y ago
      Alternatives? like you are really longing for lies?
      • myth_drannon 5y ago
        I don't want others decide for me what is truth and what is lie. Others become corrupt, compromised (did it go well for Russians?).
      • ummonk 5y ago
        I want to see what RT and Sputnik News are saying. And the misinformation published by them is no more common than the misinformation published by mainstream media sources.
• hammock 5y ago
  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.
  • jnsaff2 5y ago
    Aljazeera?
  • boplicity 5y ago
    South China Morning Post, Al Jazeera. I'm sure there are others.
  • LeoPanthera 5y ago
    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? Or different opinions?
    • yurish 5y ago
      News may be filtered to create skewed view. Note that the "alternatives" you list are all from US or its allies.
• shmoe 5y ago
  I tried DDG for a few weeks... Google is still better, even though its as bad as it's ever been. Really need some disruption here.
  • pessimizer 5y ago
    DDGs search has gotten worse as it has gotten more active. I don't know this to be true, but it seems like their old search results felt too Wild West for prime time to them, so before they began the radio/tv/billboard ad blitz they changed things on the backend for the worse.
• IYasha 5y ago
  So, once again, no one is neutral. Companies decide who's bad and what's true. I'm not pro-trumpist, but a few years ago it hurt pretty bad, and it continues.
• avgcorrection 5y ago
  The war is two weeks old and some people seem to want to inject the news from Ukraine straight into their veins. That also makes it easier for disinformation and propaganda to spread. Both sides have an incentive to spread propaganda (although moreso for Russia since this is not a righteous war on their part by any stretch of the imagination). The Wikipedia page for the Ghost of Kyiv currently says that some sources claim that it is “an urban legend or war propaganda”. “Urban legend” is the most frequent name that I’ve seen. It would have been called “disinformation” if it had been fighting on the Russian side. I doubt that most Western sources will be as critical of falsehoods coming from the Ukrainian and Western side compared to the Russian side. If the Ukrainian/Western side gets labeled as simply “false” (intent unclear) while the falsehoods coming from the Russian side gets labeled as “disinfo” then I would imagine that DDG could downplay Russian falsehoods while leaving up Ukrainian/Western falsehoods.
  • Tainnor 5y ago
    Most Western media that I follow are very quick to point out that information from Ukraine is not necessarily trustworthy. They're quite likely to portray the situation in a way that makes it look like they're winning. The number of reported Russian casualties is very likely to be exaggerated and this is pointed out rather consistently.
    • avgcorrection 5y ago
      My own state media frequently figure Zelinsky’s words on the front page/quoted on the news. Passed on uncritically.
  • mrguyorama 5y ago
    The label "disinformation", like "terrorism" often depends on your individual context. "War propaganda" is a pretty accurate descriptor for that silly story. War propaganda isn't always meant strictly to misinform. Consider the "Eating carrots is good for your eyesight" trope produced by UK propaganda during WWII. One of it's goals was to cover up the success of radar in night conditions, but it also had the goal of encouraging citizens to grow more carrots in their victory gardens. Hilariously, retrospectively it can't even be called disinformation anymore because carrots DO contain a compound that is necessary for your eyes to operate in a healthy manner
• OtomotO 5y ago
  Truth is the first victim of war
  • bhandziuk 5y ago
    Are you advocating for more news articles about how great Russia is for liberating the Nazi-subjugated people of Ukraine?
    • OtomotO 5y ago
      No (did that answer the kind of hidden but not ad hominem?)
• vincentmarle 5y ago
  Can we also start down-ranking Fox News, Breitbart and other disinformation sites just in time for the 2022/2024 elections? Asking for a friend.
• EastSmith 5y ago
  Good default. Now give us a separate switch: "Russian Propaganda: on|off", similar to "Save Search".
• blain 5y ago
  I personally don't like this move but seeing a lot other companies standing against Russia and applying similar "sanctions" makes me think they are doing this just for PR. I'm absolutely not saying they shouldn't do anything to show support for Ukraine but a simple short sentence or small banner somewhere would be much better instead.
• wooque 5y ago
  To be honest age of DuckDuckGo as alternative search engine is over. I switched to Brave Search and not going back. It's giving me better results, along with quick Google link to jump to Google if needed (instead of manually typing !g before result). And they maintain own independent search index compared to DuckDuckGo, which gets most of it's results from Bing.
  • doitLP 5y ago
    Their results are scraped from users using Google so I wouldn’t call it independent and I wonder how long it will last.
• high_pathetic 5y ago
  Right now I consider any news from the conflict area with a huge heap of salt. But this move is a bad PR move by DDG. I don't need handhelding by a fucking search engine.
• cato_the_elder 5y ago
  Based on this, if you have a distaste for censorship, you probably should use Brave Search instead of DuckDuckGo. [1] Also, if you are using DuckDuckGo to avoid gargantuan corporations, you should know that they are essentially Bing with some extra perks. Brave Search has its own index, it only falls back to Bing when it doesn't have enough results (which they claim happens only for a minority of queries). [1]: https://nitter.net/BrendanEich/status/1501978488043020292#m https://nitter.net/BrendanEich/status/1501978488043020292#m
  • ColinHayhurst 5y ago
    Falls back to Google actually and semi-independent as explained here: https://seirdy.one/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes.html https://seirdy.one/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexe...
    • soundnote 5y ago
      Google fallback is opt-in, Bing fallback is automatic.
    • cato_the_elder 5y ago
      Thanks for the interesting link. It might be slightly outdated about Brave Search though. In the tweet I linked to above they say: > For <10% of queries where we don't have good results, we rely on Bing presently, so that fallback could be censored.
  • balozi 5y ago
    As soon as Brave has more than a handful of users, they will quickly metamorphize into their Do Evil phase. We are currently watching that transformation at DDG. The point is that there is no place left to turn to.
• luhego 5y ago
  That's why I will keep using google. If I will use an orwellian search engine, at least I will use the original one.
• kats 5y ago
  DuckDuckGo is Bing, we know this because when Bing accidentally censored all image searches for "tank man", all image results disappeared from DuckDuckGo as well. Bing already announced that they were doing this, so maybe DuckDuckGo doesn't have any choice about it. https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/microsoft-remove-rt-apps-ban-russian-state-owned-media-ads-2022-02-28/ https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/microsoft-rem... > The company said it would not display any state-sponsored RT and Sputnik content, de-rank their search results on Bing and not place any ads from its ad network on those sites.
  • jaywalk 5y ago
    > maybe DuckDuckGo doesn't have any choice about it. Did you read the linked tweet? "At DuckDuckGo, we've been rolling out search updates that down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation." Sounds like they very much had a choice, and chose censorship. If they didn't and are actually just subject to Bing's whims, then they're lying. Neither of those are good.
    • empthought 5y ago
      >chose censorship This is not what the word "censorship" means.
    • kats 5y ago
      Yeah but just thinking about how this would work. For sites like DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, or Yahoo search, they don't have hundreds of engineers maintaining their own search engines, they must just call some Bing API. The Bing API must return the search results already ranked. (Otherwise what would be the alternative?) So the down-ranking of russian sites would happen upstream of DuckDuckGo.
    • mardifoufs 5y ago
      Implementing a context based downranking policy on the results when they use a search engine (Bing) over which they probably have almost 0 ability to tweak or fine tune before the query sounds like an incredibly hard thing to do. You'd have to do a lot of contextual analysis and understand not only the query but also all the results the API gives you, after the search is already done. That seems even more complicated than just having your own search algorithms at that point. It's possible but it's hard to believe they'd go through that effort and coincidentally come up with something very similar to what Bing started doing too. I don't want to assume they are lying but this can very well be just an attempt at free PR when the truth could be just that it wasn't their decision at all. ddg does not seem to be very upfront over their almost total reliance on Bing in the first place. I mean IIRC when the tank man picture disappeared from bing and thus from DDG too, duckduckgo acknowledged the problem but it didn't seem like they could do anything about it but wait until Bing fixes the issue.
• paxys 5y ago
  Judging by the replies to this thread, I don't think anyone here knows what an algorithm is. How do you think any search engine on the planet "objectively" decides how to show you the top 10 results for a search term out of billions of possibilities? There are a thousand knobs constantly being turned behind the scenes depending on the preferences of the operator. "Non-biased search results" are impossible by definition.
  • bobobob420 5y ago
    And making some stance about what results you should see based on a war that is going on is wrong. If someone searches for a keyword they should get back results that are relevant to the keyword. They should not have results filtered on this impression that those results come from paticular sources that are deemed by DDG as russian propaganda. Search engines are not supposed to filter out propaganda. That propaganda article could be the most relevant article even if every word in the article is a lie. Also what if you are specifically looking for disinformation? Now you can’t use the search engine properly. If they are such transparent kings give us the option ourselves to press the button to filter russia out but they wont because they know we will do a diff and expose the political bias
    • bobobob420 5y ago
      They are censoring russia and it is wrong in the global scheme of what the internet is supposed to give us access too. We are going backwards with this bullshit. Educate people dont hide stuff from them, its annoying
    • awb 5y ago
      We expect them to filter spam and scams. If RT / Sputnik use SEO to target the keyword “Ukraine conflict”, it creates a worse experience for users. Right now RT is not on the top page for that search term. I’m guessing that’s what they’re targeting. If you search “rt Ukraine conflict”, the #1 result is RT. You can still easily find content you’re looking for. It just won’t be part of those wide net searches I’m guessing.
      • 5y ago
• blub 5y ago
  Frankly I’d find it much more acceptable to label so-called sources of misinformation and link to the evidence of their past transgressions. This is the only measure which is respectful of the kind of free exchange of ideas typical of a democratic society. That so so many jump directly to banning, silencing, downranking tells me that we’re already in big trouble, as evidenced also by the heavy-handed coronavirus-related censorship, cancelling people, etc.
• paulpauper 5y ago
  terrible move, duck duck go.
• _vufv 5y ago
  How arogant do you have to be to consider yourself to be the arbiter of Truth? Do you really think that western media are propaganda free? Do you think that the western propaganda is good and Russian one is bad? If you're downranking disinformation from Russian side, shouldn't you also downrank western disinformation? Does your assesment of truthfulness really boil-down to "in-group good / out-group bad"? If yes, why bother reading anything, you already know what your conclusion is going to be.
  • 13415 5y ago
    The very idea of a search engine is to filter a few useful pages out hundreds of thousands of pages. It's impossible to do that without bias and it's bizarre to think Russian disinformation sites could provide useful information. Not even Russians think that. The search engine should give the respective results when the user enters "Russian disinformation sites" or something like that, of course. On a side note, during the past two weeks Russian disinformation campaigns have become so awfully retarded that it's not even funny to browse them for entertainment anymore. It's just obvious bullshit, changing the tune daily because FSB agents no longer know what to say.
• Lio 5y ago
  I’m OK with this. Given that it was a KGB policy to mess with the truth[1] I think it’s fine to try to inoculate yourself from it. 1. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IQPsKvG6WMI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IQPsKvG6WMI
• cosmiccatnap 5y ago
• boplicity 5y ago
  Maybe this won't be a popular opinion here -- but it seems to me that there should be a search engine that actively acts with intentional bias to weed out publishers and websites that, according to that search engine's standards, simply aren't worth listing in their search engine. Kind of a hybrid search engine, and curated list of websites. Google set the standard by trying to make everything algorithmic. I can't help but think that most people would be served better if there was a search engine in the market that actively curated the listings. I'm not saying that such a search engine should be the only option, but I do think that it could be a valuable addition to the search landscape.
  • ricardo81 5y ago
    True, but very specific human intervention is very different to web scale algorithms. The algorithms are to an extent beyond accountability at a human level, but human intervention isn't. Google is known to have 10's of thousands of "quality raters" for web pages. But they follow an algorithm. They will still have their own biases though. Not every one of them will rate pages the same. The lines are very muddy for sure, but to say "I don't like this country and what it's saying and we're actively going to demote content ... somehow... " is the kind of manipulation that DDG users seem to be strongly disagreeing with. Particularly so with DDG because their entire index is Bing, and who knows whether they're doing the same? I would wager DDG does not know.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• igravious 5y ago
  Fantastic, you've written in AI that is able to distinguish information from disinformation. Turing Award incoming, I expect. Now, off to uninstall DDG.
• xg15 5y ago
  While there is absolutely an enormous amount of misrepresentations or plain lies pushed by russian outlets, I'm worried that there might be too much temptation to use the current climate to control the narrative and label anything inconvenient as "disinformation". I remember reading a few days ago a warning that cyber attacks of german government agencies are to be expected in the near future and that attackers could use the obtained knowledge in disinformation campaigns. Of course enemy psyops could always use leaked information as a "grain of truth" to make a fabricated message seem more credible - however, I think if any kind of leaked classified information is automatically termed "disinformation", we went too far. At least, in such a climate, I don't know how something like the Snowden leaks would have been possible.
• 2-718-281-828 5y ago
  DDG is already censoring. You won't f.x. find sanctioned-suicide.org when searching for "sanctioned suicide". But you can search that forum via the site keyword. Google completely removed that forum from its results. It's hard to say - I suppose - what that tweet means practically. F.x. searching for "ukraine bio weapon laboratories". Will there be any sites discussing this without just dismissing it? And if yes, how deep are they buried? (https://twitter.com/i/status/1501306485183295488 https://twitter.com/i/status/1501306485183295488)
  • zokula 5y ago
• madsbuch 5y ago
  What if my intend was to find the Russian misinformation?
  • B1FF_PSUVM 5y ago
    "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
• boplicity 5y ago
  Most of the comments here seem to have the same basic misconception. They think it is possible to act without bias. This is simply not possible -- even algorithms have bias. For example, machine learning based on a human dataset will learn the human biases. This is well documented. Instead of aiming for no bias -- it is better to explicitly outline one's biases, as well as how one is responding to those biases (or not). The unfortunate situation, is that companies like DuckDuckGo, Google, etc, would like you to believe that they present "unbiased" results, despite the literal impossibility of this. Much better to make any and all biases explicit, so that nobody is deceived.
  • wolverine876 5y ago
    > Instead of aiming for no bias ... It's not all or nothing. You can both minimize bias and explicitly outline biases.
• YaBomm 5y ago
• LAC-Tech 5y ago
  I've said it once and I've said it again - I don't need tech companies to tell me what is and isn't disinformation.
• skilled 5y ago
  I don't give a shit either way. But, damn, this backfired pretty bad for DDG.
• Imnimo 5y ago
  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, but they are now factually incorrect. Should I simply accept that this site is the correct top result for my users' queries, since it has been ranked by my unbiased algorithm? Or should I decide to put my finger on the scale, and redesign my algorithm (possibly by simply reweighting results from this particular site) to change the rankings? Does the answer change if the site is not a prank site, but is propoganda? Or an earnest-but-incorrect flat earther?
  • ricardo81 5y ago
    > contains authoritative-sounding but incorrect answers to common questions. The results returned are still relevant to my users, but they are now factually incorrect. IMO the difference is between web-wide decisions vs something else. DDG have stated they're specifically targetting something beyond web pages. If DDG has some way of measuring "misinformation" then fair play, we can assume it isn't specific to Russia because it'd be a universal solution. Some sort of decree from the CEO about what is true and what is not just sounds dangerous. We might not fully understand automation, as in all search engines, but it's a safe wager that he doesn't understand it any better otherwise he would've coded it in already and it'd be a non-story for the searchers of the world.
    • Imnimo 5y ago
      So if I could only detect this one prank site, but did not have a way to detect and downrank all prank sites at once, you would say it's invalid for me to just take action against the one I know about, since that's not a universal solution?
      • ricardo81 5y ago
        define prank. dictionary definition (according to Google) >a practical joke or mischievous act. Maybe if that's the definition then all Twitter parody accounts need to be removed. Would you agree?
• lizardactivist 5y ago
• throwawaymanbot 5y ago
• thepasswordis 5y ago
  If I search for "yandex" on DDG, the russian search engine is the first thing that comes up, so...
• hidden-spyder 5y ago
  Why not provide a toggle that allows unfiltered results for those who want that? This way, they can both filter out propaganda away from those who might be vulnerable and still let those who want it have it.
  • awb 5y ago
    Maybe call it “controversial” similar to Reddit.
• awb 5y ago
  Ask HN: What queries are you using on DDG about Russia/Ukraine that are not returning the results you’re wanting? And is Google providing better results?
• TrevorJ 5y ago
  There's a huge assumption here, that it's not useful to know or understand what Russia is saying. I'm not comfortable with insulating the western world from knowing what propaganda Russia is peddling.
• supergirl 5y ago
  when shit hits the fan, the West is no better than a dictatorship. it's only a fluffy democracy when there is no danger and the war is far away. we got the "free" media blasting every line from the government without any scrutiny and social media silently censoring and re-ranking posts to fit the central party's narrative.
  • CamperBob2 5y ago
    You know how you can tell who the good countries and bad countries are? People risk their lives trying to sneak into the good ones, and out of the bad ones. It's literally as simple as that. Historically, which category has Russia fallen into?
• throwaway111023 5y ago
  Thanks DDG, time to try a different search engine. I was always doing !g anyway.
• nimbius 5y ago
  Its really shocking to me just how many western companies have capitulated to the wholesale censorship and shunning of Russia for this war. DDG and others snored through the bush era disinformation campaign that led to the war in Iraq that killed countless civilians, yet somehow have a sterling enough moral terpitude to suddenly care about truth now?
  • doitLP 5y ago
    To be fair DDG was founded the year Obama took office.
• raygelogic 5y ago
  how much of the uproar over this is about implementation vs intent? disinformation isn't worth being returned when the user is seeking information. like if you are looking for the health impacts of soda, you probably don't want coke writing your answers. I'm all for neutral platforms, but it feels like you either opt out of editorializing and end up with trash driven by SEO, or editorialize and marginalize some content producer or consumer. any play feels like a losing move from the business's perspective.
• vernie 5y ago
  Seems like a bad move, DDG is only used by terminally tech-brained libertarians.
• mulmen 5y ago
  Just give me a “this is irrelevant to my search” button on each result. And a “never show me results from this domain” button while you’re at it.
• c7DJTLrn 5y ago
  And so we come back to the eternal question: who decides between information/disinformation and what are their biases?
• rank0 5y ago
  Wow. Fuck this so much. I’m never using ddg again. I think I’m going to move towards searching specific sites rather than using a generic internet-wide search provider.
• jawerty 5y ago
  One problem with platforms having a clear bias in their search results is their classification of concepts like "disinformation" aren't what they say. They can't be. A business that needs to increase profits every quarter is never going to be charitably filtering data to get rid of "bad actors" (unless it's enforced by the law), they're going to do what they can to make more money. I don't think the owners of DDG are making this mistake maliciously. However, controlling information based on subjective opinions on narratives like the Russia/Ukraine conflict (which 99% of people talking about haven't even been to the region) is short sighted unless they're openly stating "We have a clear bias and are making our own claims on what good information is."
• ploppyploppy 5y ago
  I will now stop using DDG because of this.
• ploppyploppy 5y ago
  Bad move. They could have used this to inform the user instead they broke their core philosophy. Very unhappy.
• jdrc 5y ago
  Was there a particular issue with people searching and ending up on russian propaganda? I guess the ones who did will still do. In any case it may not seem so but we are at war with USSR v2, at least that s what russia is doing so it helps to keep some perspective here. As long as media is ran by people they will have censorship/bias and there will be no absolute free speech, as it s pretty clear that the most dictatorial regimes make heavy use of internet propaganda. Still, i think those things are more like PR moves, and maybe not overall positive: Russian propaganda is transparent, vicious and unashamed
• Madmallard 5y ago
  How about no? Pathetic from DDG. If you work there you should be ashamed of yourself. I will find a new search provider that doesn’t decide which political content I can see.
• xnx 5y ago
  DDG is a thin wrapper around Bing that makes it worse.
• hereforphone 5y ago
  And DuckDuckGo has just lost it's only distinguishing feature (attempted neutrality).
• xdennis 5y ago
  This is a very good move on DDG's part. You can't have free information during a war. It would be wrong during peace, but we can't afford this during the Russian rampage that's happening right now.
  • kweingar 5y ago
    To shamelessly steal a comment from the user president: Would you be okay with media censoring content that opposed the Japanese internment because it was wartime during WW2?
• trhway 5y ago
  Right now Russia is an enemy to any normal person/company who opposes the genocidal war Russia is waging in Ukraine. It is perfectly fine to strike at your enemy's propaganda.
• Markoff 5y ago
  Yandex was already my go to alternative to Google, this just reassured me in my choice
• Thorentis 5y ago
  DDG doesn't trust its users enough to allow us to have an unbiased algorithm? I will now stop using DDG.
• conartist 5y ago
  So twitter and facebook getting down-ranked?
• lucb1e 5y ago
  If DDG could just start with downranking the stackoverflow scrapers to below actual stackoverflow (and related sites), thanks
• ckw 5y ago
  Russian propaganda includes most of the strongest valid criticisms of US propaganda. US propaganda does not.
• Alir3z4 5y ago
  DDG is done for me.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• malwarebytess 5y ago
  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?
  • justnotworthit 5y ago
    Wasn't DDG a privacy layer on bing? Does bing do this?
• pcurve 5y ago
  Why not give user options? Like Reddit used to by giving user ability to block / filter certain topics.
• zoomablemind 5y ago
  > "...Like so many others I am sickened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the gigantic humanitarian crisis it continues to create. #StandWithUkraine" Thanks Gabriel, Thanks DDG for the action beyond just words! Every bit of support to Ukraine now is adding up and should show the unity against the subversion, hell, the perversion! of human values, freedoms, and history. Plurality of opinions, freedom of speech, access to multitude of sources, and free flow of information are what the current Russian state has long considered as the West's weak points, prone to the "active measures". At present it's clear that the Russian state's disdain for these values has gone beyond mere manipulation and distortion. Now this is an outright extension of Russia's war arsenal. Sowing distrust and confusion is their way to try to distract and indeed disable the critical minds of anyone who's touched by the barbaric consequences of the Russian state's ongoing invasion of Ukraine. In this case I consider the down-ranking not as a censure, but rather as an active call for using oneself's critical thinking, beyond the Russian state's manufactured justifications and "truths of the day". Discussion and personal reflections about this war and the global crisis it has precipitated is the very least anyone can presently do. Taking a practical standing beyond just words and showing solidarity and support to Ukraine in this unfair and mindless war started against it requires integrity and courage. Thank you!
• myko 5y ago
  This is an unequivocal good and should be applauded
• mattrighetti 5y ago
  I want to play the devil's advocate: this is bad for DDG, but AT LEAST we know that they are doing this. It would have been a lot worse if they just did it without saying a word about it, right? Now, if I want to get unbiased info on the ongoing conflict I’ll just switch to Brave or something better.
• nikonyrh 5y ago
  If I want to search for content about Ukraine, be it propaganda or not, where do I go? I'd like a view on the "raw" information without any filtering based on the domain.
• someotherperson 5y ago
  Quite sad this is happening so soon after they introduced translations. Looks like I’ll have to move on to something else again.
• nyxtom 5y ago
  More and more incentive is emerging for niche search engines.
• nyxtom 5y ago
  I wish search could be hierarchically visualized so I didn't have to page through several hundred articles of the exact same thing being reported for the exact same quotations for the exact same events. Deduplication, hierarchical organization would allow me to see true variance among a topic rather than use a very limited way of ranking relevance. I want perspective, not top 10 exact same things being said.
• pulketo 5y ago
  Russian disinformation... please define disinformation. Disinformation: Anything against USA regime?
• pasquinelli 5y ago
  they should go further: any search results pertaining to the russia ukraine war should be removed completely. it's all been flooded with noise, there is no utility in any of it.
• voldacar 5y ago
  I want my window into the internet to be completely unmediated. A search engine should just search the web for information that you type in, and then show you the results. It should be a pure function. The opinions or desires of any corporation, advertiser, or government should not come into play. Would such a search engine even be allowed to exist now?
• rootusrootus 5y ago
  There aren't enough bits on the Internet nor hours in a day to cover every bit of news, so it is a given that every single source of news is biased. They have to choose what to cover, what not. This is fundamental reality. Given that unbreakable constraint, all I ask is that the editorial choices are described. And in a perfect world, a toggle to turn them off if I really do want to see the flow of sewage.
• tomohawk 5y ago
  Very disappointing. Search is about finding things, not about narrating things.
• tailrecursion 5y ago
  Perhaps DDG could tell us what their sources of information are, that they are able to discern what is disinformation.
• darinf 5y ago
  There's another approach. How about greater transparency around the trustworthiness of sources? Maybe that would be a better way than censorship to slow the rampant spread of misinformation across the internet? Full disclosure, I work for Neeva. Our search engine is different. With Neeva, we give you more information about the source and you get to decide which news sources you trust. You are in charge of deciding what is right for you -- not global tech companies making decisions in private rooms.
• nyxtom 5y ago
  Search is still not a solved problem. Maybe one day brain-computer-interactions will bring us closer
• protomyth 5y ago
  I no longer respect "principled stands" in anything infrastructure related (e.g. payments, dns, hosting, search). I want the algorithms that dictate our lives to be as free of politics as possible. If we are going to survive, politics has to be the sole domain of the people, and not companies or algorithms. I am starting to think that internet utility companies is going to be a thing.
• krazii 5y ago
  Would much prefer if they just displayed a big warning on results that they have flagged as shit.
• a0-prw 5y ago
  Oh well, duckduckgo falls to the propaganda machine.
• a0-prw 5y ago
  Ah, so all that sweet talk about unbiased results was a lie? Surprise XD
• yellowapple 5y ago
  Good. When I search for things on DDG, I expect relevant results. Disinformation (from Russia or elsewhere) is the precise opposite of relevant results, for the same reason as SEO spam pages and malware sites and clickbait articles are the precise opposite of relevant results. So now the question is whether this will indeed apply to all disinformation or just Russia's.
• mobiclick 5y ago
  Gice users a toggle. Give users the ability to choose whether they want sensored results or not. That would fix so many problems with slight tech and media. Give us a fucking choice!
• id02009 5y ago
  That's not great. Fortunately there are plenty search engines to switch to.
• grey_earthling 5y ago
  Is it actually common to seek information about news from a search engine? I find that kinda surprising. I get news from outlets I'm already reasonably familiar with, so that I know how much to trust them, and what to trust them about. It hadn't occurred to me that people might take apparently-factual information at face value when they find it via a search engine (without recognising the source site). The whole point of a search engine is that it finds anything that any old person put on the internet, so why would anyone think a search engine is a reliable source of trustworthy assertions that accurately describe the real world? Like, even in a physical library, just because a book is in the “factual” section doesn't mean that every assertion in the book is genuinely true — maybe it's out of date, or just plain wrong. All the library is asserting is that this book exists. Twenty years ago people seemed to need to be told that, despite stuff on the internet being in written/printed form, that didn't automatically mean it was actually an authoritative newspaper. Have people forgotten that? Like, do people actually believe any old shite they read on the internet?