9 ms·

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 rea

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.
  - Spivak 5y ago
    I just used spam sites as an example of "site that's highly ranked by the algorithm but are uncontroversially recognized as an error." Define a "genuine result" for a search engine that isn't the result of a process that arbitrarily ranks sites by certain metrics? Like it's humans all the way down, you can't escape that search engines are a large scale system representing "what a group of humans thinks the best results are." There's no unbiased algorithms in search, it's all curation.
    - mattwilsonn888 5y ago
      As I said - nobody here is confused what spam entails. I'll remind you again the Tweet did not say it it targeting spam - and your conflation of spam with misinformation is a useful bit of ignorance for those who want control narratives. Slippery slope, friend.
  - diputsmonro 5y ago
    Is propaganda a "genuine result"? Yeah yeah, one person's truth is another person's propaganda and sometimes the lines are blurry. But cases like RT are pretty clear cut. Sometimes people actually do lie, and those lies are verifiable. Verifiable lies, and the sources who create them predictably and consistently, should not be considered a "genuine result" for a query regarding things that are happening right now. Pretending that both sides are equal is not always helpful. Bad actors do exist, and pretending that everything is equally indeterminate is a fatally nihilistic and dangerous view. Sometimes we actually can tell when something is a lie, and we should treat it appropriately. For a tool that retrieves genuine results matching a query, that means down-ranking them. For the purposes of current event queries, disinformation is certainly spam. The purpose of spam is to fool you into doing something you probably wouldn't otherwise do, usually based on false pretenses. Disinformation is the same. The action it promotes is more indirect - it seeks to influence beliefs, and therefore voting patterns and soft power - but it is still spread with a purpose that is disingenuous. It disguises it's true intent and is dangerous to the user. It is effectively spam applied to the domain of politics and current events, and should be treated as spam is. It should not be a valid result in an information retrieval service. I agree that this ranking could be the start of a slippery slope. But DDG is being transparent, and you can still get to RT if you disagree. This is a good measure for people unfamiliar with Russia news sources and propaganda networks, who are the people most likely to be susceptible to Russian propaganda.
- bmarquez 5y ago
  > This is a weird stance to take about a search engine which is "tell me what to read as a service." If users don't like the change in the search engine algorithm (for whatever reason), they'll stop using the search engine. It's not a weird stance to take. At the very least this HN submission is surfacing search engine competitors like Startpage, Brave, and Kagi.
  - mountainb 5y ago
    People can want a search engine that does stuff without running it through a Politburo filter. For a very long time that was the social norm in search engines. DDG marketed itself as "we follow the old norm, pick us and not the other bad guys." Now they are adopting the political censorship norm, contrary to their earlier marketing.
- colordrops 5y ago
  There's a difference between a low level filtering algorithm and manually curated results based on politics.
  - Spivak 5y ago
    Of course, the right way to do it is to survey the common elements of sites whose politics you don't like and then add an "unbiased" content-agnostic rule punishing those elements.
jayd16 5y ago
What if I just want my tools to work and not come with land mines that at best are a distraction?
enragedcacti 5y ago
> 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 DDG advertises on billboards, on the radio, on TV, etc. They are absolutely trying to attract an audience who doesn't all know what RT or Sputnik are.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
wara23arish 5y ago
You echoed my thoughts and thanks for the alternative. Ive been a user of DDG for years and have recommended it to people constantly. Unfortunately since DDG caved today, they’ll certainly cave in the future. Its just a matter of time.
kdazzle 5y ago
> 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. You sure about that? I keep hearing about the Jan 6ers being big DDG users. They seem like the types that aren't too savvy when it comes to misinformation.
- MildlySerious 5y ago
  Exactly. The qanon conspiracy nuts have been pushing DDG as an alternative to Google for a while now, and they most definitely don't have that awareness. In fact, they tend to get ridiculously defensive when offering the thought that RT is no less "big bad MSM" than their usual targets.
wrycoder 5y ago
Why use startpage? Google’s results are biased in both political and non-political ways.
- colordrops 5y ago
  All else being equal (and now they are with DDG admitting bias), google is better
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
> The arrogance of these people is astounding. The arrogance to think that DDG should change their business to revolve around you personally is astounding.
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  I'm curious what you think the value of this comment is. You aren't trying to convince the person you responded to. The rest of us in the "I really liked DDG but am upset by this decision" bucket aren't the targets of this either. Even other users who are less opinionated on this move inherently want DDG to care about them as users! Do you think there is some squad of super pro-corporation folks your point is selling to? "Ah yes, well, if it helps DDG make a buck, it doesn't matter how I the user feel..."
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
    The poster threw a temper tantrum so I wanted to point out their ironic arrogance. It's also a bit tone deaf considering current events in Europe right now. This goes a little further than merely down ranking different opinions- these are weapons in a war that's currently being waged.
AmVess 5y ago
They just murdered any goodwill they had built up. I just switched to Yandex (Russian search). At least Yandex doesn't pretend to be something that it isn't.
- endymi0n 5y ago
  So you think it‘s better to use a search engine openly spewing propaganda than one that tries to curb it? It sounds like the Putin fans who seem to like him „because he‘s a strong willed man who does not change his mind“ as if that was some kind of qualification.
  - skinnymuch 5y ago
    Your second paragraph is unnecessary.
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    Different filters for different purposes. Results are often banned by topic or keyword, not publisher or context. At this point I don't trust US search engines not to censor official public statements and announcements from the US government.
- awb 5y ago
  What? Do you do this in other elements of your life? “I’m not going to drink this veggie smoothie because they started adding honey and I don’t think sugar is healthy. I’m going to drink soda where at least they don’t try to hide that you’re drinking sugar.”
  - thepasswordis 5y ago
    Yes, I do this with other parts of my life. One of the most frustrating experiences I ever had grocery shopping was when I tried to buy "fancy" mayonnaise at whole foods. I was trying to cook something "nice" and wanted to get the good stuff, so that's where I went. The package said in bold letters, "Mayonnaise!" or some such, and what I didn't realize until I got home was that it wasn't actually mayonnaise, but some sort of vegan/literally not mayonnaise alternative. I wanted mayonnaise, I asked for mayonnaise, and I got something whole foods thought was healthier. Now when I'm shopping at WF (rarely), I am extra vigilant about making sure that what I am seeing on the label is actually what I am getting in the container. In fact, I try to avoid "fancy" alternatives to normal foods, because I find that they often replace normal ingredients with things they think are better for me. But I don't want that! I just want mayo, just give me mayo! I've also had this where I buy sour cream, or cottage cheese, and get home to find out that it has, in tiny letters, "reduced fat sour cream!" - NO! I want the fat in that sour cream or cottage cheese, that's literally why I'm buying it! edit: interestingly the mayo was actually called "just mayo", but that's newspeak. It literally is not mayo at all, it is a substitute for mayo that they think tastes similar. So "JUST MAYO" actually contains nothing that is mayo.
therein 5y ago
You are absolutely right. Such hubris on Gabriel Weinberg's end. Today marks the last day I will ever be using DDG. We knew they weren't really actually in it for privacy anyway. This just settles it.
tonguez 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.” he doesn’t care, he’s just another rich baby that needs to project his own stupidity onto the workers whose labor creates his upper class lifestyle
- mrjangles 5y ago
  I'm glad you brought that up. I feel the class warfare aspect of these things is under appreciated.

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.
- Spivak 5y ago
  I just used spam sites as an example of "site that's highly ranked by the algorithm but are uncontroversially recognized as an error." Define a "genuine result" for a search engine that isn't the result of a process that arbitrarily ranks sites by certain metrics? Like it's humans all the way down, you can't escape that search engines are a large scale system representing "what a group of humans thinks the best results are." There's no unbiased algorithms in search, it's all curation.
  - mattwilsonn888 5y ago
    As I said - nobody here is confused what spam entails. I'll remind you again the Tweet did not say it it targeting spam - and your conflation of spam with misinformation is a useful bit of ignorance for those who want control narratives. Slippery slope, friend.
- diputsmonro 5y ago
  Is propaganda a "genuine result"? Yeah yeah, one person's truth is another person's propaganda and sometimes the lines are blurry. But cases like RT are pretty clear cut. Sometimes people actually do lie, and those lies are verifiable. Verifiable lies, and the sources who create them predictably and consistently, should not be considered a "genuine result" for a query regarding things that are happening right now. Pretending that both sides are equal is not always helpful. Bad actors do exist, and pretending that everything is equally indeterminate is a fatally nihilistic and dangerous view. Sometimes we actually can tell when something is a lie, and we should treat it appropriately. For a tool that retrieves genuine results matching a query, that means down-ranking them. For the purposes of current event queries, disinformation is certainly spam. The purpose of spam is to fool you into doing something you probably wouldn't otherwise do, usually based on false pretenses. Disinformation is the same. The action it promotes is more indirect - it seeks to influence beliefs, and therefore voting patterns and soft power - but it is still spread with a purpose that is disingenuous. It disguises it's true intent and is dangerous to the user. It is effectively spam applied to the domain of politics and current events, and should be treated as spam is. It should not be a valid result in an information retrieval service. I agree that this ranking could be the start of a slippery slope. But DDG is being transparent, and you can still get to RT if you disagree. This is a good measure for people unfamiliar with Russia news sources and propaganda networks, who are the people most likely to be susceptible to Russian propaganda.
bmarquez 5y ago
> This is a weird stance to take about a search engine which is "tell me what to read as a service." If users don't like the change in the search engine algorithm (for whatever reason), they'll stop using the search engine. It's not a weird stance to take. At the very least this HN submission is surfacing search engine competitors like Startpage, Brave, and Kagi.
- mountainb 5y ago
  People can want a search engine that does stuff without running it through a Politburo filter. For a very long time that was the social norm in search engines. DDG marketed itself as "we follow the old norm, pick us and not the other bad guys." Now they are adopting the political censorship norm, contrary to their earlier marketing.
colordrops 5y ago
There's a difference between a low level filtering algorithm and manually curated results based on politics.
- Spivak 5y ago
  Of course, the right way to do it is to survey the common elements of sites whose politics you don't like and then add an "unbiased" content-agnostic rule punishing those elements.

jayd16 5y ago

What if I just want my tools to work and not come with land mines that at best are a distraction?

enragedcacti 5y ago

> 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 DDG advertises on billboards, on the radio, on TV, etc. They are absolutely trying to attract an audience who doesn't all know what RT or Sputnik are.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

wara23arish 5y ago

You echoed my thoughts and thanks for the alternative. Ive been a user of DDG for years and have recommended it to people constantly. Unfortunately since DDG caved today, they’ll certainly cave in the future. Its just a matter of time.

kdazzle 5y ago

> 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. You sure about that? I keep hearing about the Jan 6ers being big DDG users. They seem like the types that aren't too savvy when it comes to misinformation.

MildlySerious 5y ago
Exactly. The qanon conspiracy nuts have been pushing DDG as an alternative to Google for a while now, and they most definitely don't have that awareness. In fact, they tend to get ridiculously defensive when offering the thought that RT is no less "big bad MSM" than their usual targets.

wrycoder 5y ago

Why use startpage? Google’s results are biased in both political and non-political ways.

colordrops 5y ago
All else being equal (and now they are with DDG admitting bias), google is better

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

> The arrogance of these people is astounding. The arrogance to think that DDG should change their business to revolve around you personally is astounding.

vorpalhex 5y ago
I'm curious what you think the value of this comment is. You aren't trying to convince the person you responded to. The rest of us in the "I really liked DDG but am upset by this decision" bucket aren't the targets of this either. Even other users who are less opinionated on this move inherently want DDG to care about them as users! Do you think there is some squad of super pro-corporation folks your point is selling to? "Ah yes, well, if it helps DDG make a buck, it doesn't matter how I the user feel..."
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  The poster threw a temper tantrum so I wanted to point out their ironic arrogance. It's also a bit tone deaf considering current events in Europe right now. This goes a little further than merely down ranking different opinions- these are weapons in a war that's currently being waged.

AmVess 5y ago

They just murdered any goodwill they had built up. I just switched to Yandex (Russian search). At least Yandex doesn't pretend to be something that it isn't.

endymi0n 5y ago
So you think it‘s better to use a search engine openly spewing propaganda than one that tries to curb it? It sounds like the Putin fans who seem to like him „because he‘s a strong willed man who does not change his mind“ as if that was some kind of qualification.
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  Your second paragraph is unnecessary.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  Different filters for different purposes. Results are often banned by topic or keyword, not publisher or context. At this point I don't trust US search engines not to censor official public statements and announcements from the US government.
awb 5y ago
What? Do you do this in other elements of your life? “I’m not going to drink this veggie smoothie because they started adding honey and I don’t think sugar is healthy. I’m going to drink soda where at least they don’t try to hide that you’re drinking sugar.”
- thepasswordis 5y ago
  Yes, I do this with other parts of my life. One of the most frustrating experiences I ever had grocery shopping was when I tried to buy "fancy" mayonnaise at whole foods. I was trying to cook something "nice" and wanted to get the good stuff, so that's where I went. The package said in bold letters, "Mayonnaise!" or some such, and what I didn't realize until I got home was that it wasn't actually mayonnaise, but some sort of vegan/literally not mayonnaise alternative. I wanted mayonnaise, I asked for mayonnaise, and I got something whole foods thought was healthier. Now when I'm shopping at WF (rarely), I am extra vigilant about making sure that what I am seeing on the label is actually what I am getting in the container. In fact, I try to avoid "fancy" alternatives to normal foods, because I find that they often replace normal ingredients with things they think are better for me. But I don't want that! I just want mayo, just give me mayo! I've also had this where I buy sour cream, or cottage cheese, and get home to find out that it has, in tiny letters, "reduced fat sour cream!" - NO! I want the fat in that sour cream or cottage cheese, that's literally why I'm buying it! edit: interestingly the mayo was actually called "just mayo", but that's newspeak. It literally is not mayo at all, it is a substitute for mayo that they think tastes similar. So "JUST MAYO" actually contains nothing that is mayo.

therein 5y ago

You are absolutely right. Such hubris on Gabriel Weinberg's end. Today marks the last day I will ever be using DDG. We knew they weren't really actually in it for privacy anyway. This just settles it.

tonguez 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.” he doesn’t care, he’s just another rich baby that needs to project his own stupidity onto the workers whose labor creates his upper class lifestyle

mrjangles 5y ago
I'm glad you brought that up. I feel the class warfare aspect of these things is under appreciated.