5 ms·

You're not wrong that they absolutely have the right to choose what results to display. Just like Twitter has the right to choose what content appears on their

You're not wrong that they absolutely have the right to choose what results to display. Just like Twitter has the right to choose what content appears on their platform, and same with YouTube, etc. But my opposition is not from a legal standpoint, it is from a moral standpoint. I just think censorship and cancellation is wrong and immoral, even if it is legally allowed. I think it is immoral for some business executive to make sweeping decisions about what the commoners are / aren't allowed to see - it opens the door to far more dystopian control of our society.

raxxorrax 5y ago
Those that need legal force to adhere to the principle of freedom of expression simply do not support it. They often believe that they do, but in all relevant metric they certainly do not.
12ian34 5y ago
If you think censorship is wrong then it follows that you would think that the Russian state is wrong given that they are going as far as denying this is even a war, and actively censoring those that call it one. Are you saying that you're still keen for them to be allowed to do so?
- uejfiweun 5y ago
  Yes, I say let their lies be defeated in the marketplace of free ideas. Basically everyone knows what's going on with Russia at this point. I don't think suddenly censoring their lies now is really gonna change anything.
  - mrguyorama 5y ago
    People keep saying these kinds of things, but Russians had pretty open access to western ideas, news, propaganda, and history, but that didn't stop a huge chunk of them from either tacitly or explicitly approving of this invasion of a sovereign nation. People believe what they want to believe, not what is correct. People keep saying "sunlight is the best disinfectant" (despite that not even being a reasonable statement in terms of disinfectants) but Russians have had access to "sunlight" for literally decades and this still happened. It's the same with how people believed we could save china by exporting capitalism, as if that would change things. The fact of the matter is that information, misinformation, and propaganda are game theoretic; a purposely bad actor that isn't ACTIVELY pushed back against will have huge success. Hell, it even happens here in the states. Both Fox News and MSNBC are perfectly legal to produce and view here, and yet no matter what you say on either station, roughly half of the country will believe it. That's a pretty terrible disinfectant if you ask me.
- avgcorrection 5y ago
  That’s a complete derailment. This is about the experience that search users should have. If they want to search for “russia official statements ukraine” then they should get results about that. The fact that Russia has decided to outlaw the truth is completely besides the point.
  - awb 5y ago
    Results on Google and DDG for that query are pretty similar and mostly Western sources written in English, responding to Russian official statements. I’d be curious if there were other search terms that had a clearer difference in rankings between Google and DDG based on this new policy.
  - notahacker 5y ago
    > The fact that Russia has decided to outlaw the truth is completely besides the point. It's not when we're talking about whether search results produced by the state which banned telling the truth should be given equal weight to search results by media which is allowed to tell the truth (even though it doesn't always do so) in search rankings It's not difficult to find official statements from Russia on the Ukraine war including via DDG, without going down the rabbit hole of insisting that if someone searches for "shelling Kyiv" there's no reason why websites pushing the narrative that Kyiv isn't being shelled shouldn't outrank news items of Kyiv being shelled if their SEO is good enough.
tenebrisalietum 5y ago
> I think it is immoral for some business executive to make sweeping decisions about what the commoners are / aren't allowed to see I used to have this point of view, but it's clear lately that certain types of information do not result in good outcomes if processed by the uneducated. The U.S. is already going in the direction of a dystopia if you haven't noticed. More free speech isn't going to help gas, housing, or educational prices, but it does enable various actors at little to no cost to themselves to freely shit out emotional, illogical, and invective dreck on various platforms and prevent honest analysis and discussion from happening on numerous issues. If all of this is a guaranteed benefit to society it's getting harder and harder to see to lately. I think the young people growing up today, who cannot afford a place to live, who have to go into years of debt just to get started, who are being looked down by previous generations for not starting a family when they literally don't have the resources to do it, are going to look at things vastly differently and really care less about this sort of thing from a hard absolute perspective.
- sdoering 5y ago
  > I used to have this point of view, but it's clear lately that certain types of information do not result in good outcomes if processed by the uneducated. I am watching a lot of historic documentaries. I studied history (and literature) originally. I read a lot of historic sources and accounts. This argument, that the powerful and educated need to protect the dumb masses by censoring what they are allowed to know/read isn't new. It is used by the powerful way before the medieval age but was (just to name an example) used by the catholic church against the translation of the Bible. It was used by western governments during the cold War. It is still used by the British government with their ability to silence editorial boards on specific topics. It was used by the US against Wikileaks. It was used by the GDR against their own people who also were officially banned from watching western TV/listen to western radio. It was used by western Germsn media when they decided to not publish the RAF terrorists' letters where they declared their reasoning for bombs or killings. I don't buy it in historic context and I don't buy it today.
  - tenebrisalietum 5y ago
awb 5y ago
> I just think censorship and cancellation is wrong and immoral, even if it is legally allowed. I think it is immoral for some business executive to make sweeping decisions about what the commoners are / aren't allowed to see HN mods actively hide and remove content, including political content from sites like RT & Sputnik: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html I don't think anyone is accusing HN of censorship or making oppressive decisions about what the commoners can / can't see. It's accepted that some level of curation and guidelines are needed to foster a healthy environment. DDG (and HN) are not a public square, they're private companies conducting business according to their individual desires and motivations. It would be equally folly to force HN to host political content as it would to tell DDG how they can and can't alter their proprietary ranking algorithms. Censorship is really a problem when the government (or a monopoly) starts censoring content, with the ability to enforce that censorship nearly or practically universally. Until then, the free market will do it's work.
- empressplay 5y ago
  Hacker News is not a search engine.
  - awb 5y ago
    It has search and I’ve used it as one.
    - RealStickman_ 5y ago
      Hacker News is a site with a specific niche audience. If this is your only source of news I'm afraid you're getting a very one-side picture on many topics. A search engine on the other hand is supposed to present the information you seek from various sources, so you can read different opinions.
      - awb 5y ago
        Maybe that’s your definition of a search engine. Mine is that it returns high quality results that achieve my goals. If I’m asking a question, I want the answer to the question. If I’m researching a topic, I want a mix of simple and robust reliable information. I use HN as a search engine for things tech/startup related. It’s curated and that works well. I have no problem using a search engine that down-votes unreliable sources, yet still provides access to them if I search directly. That more correlates with helping me solve my problems than making me filter out spam, scams and propaganda.

raxxorrax 5y ago

Those that need legal force to adhere to the principle of freedom of expression simply do not support it. They often believe that they do, but in all relevant metric they certainly do not.

12ian34 5y ago

If you think censorship is wrong then it follows that you would think that the Russian state is wrong given that they are going as far as denying this is even a war, and actively censoring those that call it one. Are you saying that you're still keen for them to be allowed to do so?

uejfiweun 5y ago
Yes, I say let their lies be defeated in the marketplace of free ideas. Basically everyone knows what's going on with Russia at this point. I don't think suddenly censoring their lies now is really gonna change anything.
- mrguyorama 5y ago
  People keep saying these kinds of things, but Russians had pretty open access to western ideas, news, propaganda, and history, but that didn't stop a huge chunk of them from either tacitly or explicitly approving of this invasion of a sovereign nation. People believe what they want to believe, not what is correct. People keep saying "sunlight is the best disinfectant" (despite that not even being a reasonable statement in terms of disinfectants) but Russians have had access to "sunlight" for literally decades and this still happened. It's the same with how people believed we could save china by exporting capitalism, as if that would change things. The fact of the matter is that information, misinformation, and propaganda are game theoretic; a purposely bad actor that isn't ACTIVELY pushed back against will have huge success. Hell, it even happens here in the states. Both Fox News and MSNBC are perfectly legal to produce and view here, and yet no matter what you say on either station, roughly half of the country will believe it. That's a pretty terrible disinfectant if you ask me.
avgcorrection 5y ago
That’s a complete derailment. This is about the experience that search users should have. If they want to search for “russia official statements ukraine” then they should get results about that. The fact that Russia has decided to outlaw the truth is completely besides the point.
- awb 5y ago
  Results on Google and DDG for that query are pretty similar and mostly Western sources written in English, responding to Russian official statements. I’d be curious if there were other search terms that had a clearer difference in rankings between Google and DDG based on this new policy.
- notahacker 5y ago
  > The fact that Russia has decided to outlaw the truth is completely besides the point. It's not when we're talking about whether search results produced by the state which banned telling the truth should be given equal weight to search results by media which is allowed to tell the truth (even though it doesn't always do so) in search rankings It's not difficult to find official statements from Russia on the Ukraine war including via DDG, without going down the rabbit hole of insisting that if someone searches for "shelling Kyiv" there's no reason why websites pushing the narrative that Kyiv isn't being shelled shouldn't outrank news items of Kyiv being shelled if their SEO is good enough.

tenebrisalietum 5y ago

> I think it is immoral for some business executive to make sweeping decisions about what the commoners are / aren't allowed to see I used to have this point of view, but it's clear lately that certain types of information do not result in good outcomes if processed by the uneducated. The U.S. is already going in the direction of a dystopia if you haven't noticed. More free speech isn't going to help gas, housing, or educational prices, but it does enable various actors at little to no cost to themselves to freely shit out emotional, illogical, and invective dreck on various platforms and prevent honest analysis and discussion from happening on numerous issues. If all of this is a guaranteed benefit to society it's getting harder and harder to see to lately. I think the young people growing up today, who cannot afford a place to live, who have to go into years of debt just to get started, who are being looked down by previous generations for not starting a family when they literally don't have the resources to do it, are going to look at things vastly differently and really care less about this sort of thing from a hard absolute perspective.

sdoering 5y ago
> I used to have this point of view, but it's clear lately that certain types of information do not result in good outcomes if processed by the uneducated. I am watching a lot of historic documentaries. I studied history (and literature) originally. I read a lot of historic sources and accounts. This argument, that the powerful and educated need to protect the dumb masses by censoring what they are allowed to know/read isn't new. It is used by the powerful way before the medieval age but was (just to name an example) used by the catholic church against the translation of the Bible. It was used by western governments during the cold War. It is still used by the British government with their ability to silence editorial boards on specific topics. It was used by the US against Wikileaks. It was used by the GDR against their own people who also were officially banned from watching western TV/listen to western radio. It was used by western Germsn media when they decided to not publish the RAF terrorists' letters where they declared their reasoning for bombs or killings. I don't buy it in historic context and I don't buy it today.
- tenebrisalietum 5y ago

awb 5y ago

> I just think censorship and cancellation is wrong and immoral, even if it is legally allowed. I think it is immoral for some business executive to make sweeping decisions about what the commoners are / aren't allowed to see HN mods actively hide and remove content, including political content from sites like RT & Sputnik: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html I don't think anyone is accusing HN of censorship or making oppressive decisions about what the commoners can / can't see. It's accepted that some level of curation and guidelines are needed to foster a healthy environment. DDG (and HN) are not a public square, they're private companies conducting business according to their individual desires and motivations. It would be equally folly to force HN to host political content as it would to tell DDG how they can and can't alter their proprietary ranking algorithms. Censorship is really a problem when the government (or a monopoly) starts censoring content, with the ability to enforce that censorship nearly or practically universally. Until then, the free market will do it's work.

empressplay 5y ago
Hacker News is not a search engine.
- awb 5y ago
  It has search and I’ve used it as one.
  - RealStickman_ 5y ago
    Hacker News is a site with a specific niche audience. If this is your only source of news I'm afraid you're getting a very one-side picture on many topics. A search engine on the other hand is supposed to present the information you seek from various sources, so you can read different opinions.
    - awb 5y ago
      Maybe that’s your definition of a search engine. Mine is that it returns high quality results that achieve my goals. If I’m asking a question, I want the answer to the question. If I’m researching a topic, I want a mix of simple and robust reliable information. I use HN as a search engine for things tech/startup related. It’s curated and that works well. I have no problem using a search engine that down-votes unreliable sources, yet still provides access to them if I search directly. That more correlates with helping me solve my problems than making me filter out spam, scams and propaganda.