6 ms·

I really don't understand this view point. Isn't a search engine's entire job to effectively 'censor' the parts of the internet that aren't relevant or helpful

I really don't understand this view point. Isn't a search engine's entire job to effectively 'censor' the parts of the internet that aren't relevant or helpful to your search query? Is it censorship for them to downrank flat-earth content when you are trying to learn about how to chart a flight? Flat-earthers certainly have a lot of ideas about how charting a course on a flat earth works but that doesn't mean it's helpful to a reasonable person. At least in their case they truly believe it, with disinformation the entire goal is to exploit DDGs users to pretty much everyone's detriment. Of course if I search for "RT ukrainian conflict" RT should show up, but do you really want your search engine to default to providing results from someone with a very clear agenda and a history of abusing their influence to carry out that agenda? Of course its possible that the net is too wide, but I find it weird that there is a slippery slope censorship argument going on when search engines have been trying to serve authentic results and beat out inauthentic ones for 20+ years.

CWuestefeld 5y ago
The announcement makes me suspect that it's down-ranking results not for what they are, but who it's from. That is, penalizing results based on their being from a disfavored source.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  That's been a valid approach ever since expertsexchange.com dropped off the radar. It's one of the many tools in the toolbox for dealing with SEO games.
avgcorrection 5y ago
If I am interested in Flat Earth Theory and search for that then I expect to get results that Flat Earth believers are interested in. It’s that simple.
- astine 5y ago
  If you're actually interested in flat earth theory you'll search for "Flat Earth." If you search for "Charting a Flight", You're probably not looking for flat earth content.
  - julesnp 5y ago
    To me that has to do with search results being tuned for relevancy, not due the the perceived quality of the information.
    - astine 5y ago
      Maybe, but you could also argue that bad information is irrelevant. If I search for "cancer treatment", it's not necessarily helpful for "black salve" to pop-up on my search results.
    - brimble 5y ago
      And a Flat Earth take on how to chart a flight path isn't relevant because...?
azangru 5y ago
> but do you really want your search engine to default to providing results from someone with a very clear agenda and a history of abusing their influence to carry out that agenda? This is a very strange strawman. The implicit assumptions in this question are: - That DuckDuckGo 'defaulted' to RT or to some other Russian media, which is hardly the case. It is the task of a search engine to infer, from its users' behaviour, which resources they find the most useful in providing answers to given queries. - That other sources do not have a clear agenda :-)
deltarholamda 5y ago
>but do you really want your search engine to default to providing results from someone with a very clear agenda and a history of abusing their influence to carry out that agenda Have you met the US media? If you don't look at this massive coordinated effort and smell something fishy, I just don't know what to say.
- burnished 5y ago
  So like, what, everyones keeping this big secret and its just schlubs like you and me kept in the dark?
  - HideousKojima 5y ago
    It's not a conspiracy (few things are because they just don't scale well). It's more what I call "assholes with similar motives/incentives." It has a lot of the appearance of coordination without needing secret meetings in smoke-filled rooms. That said, sometimes it actually is coordination. Just look at the JournoList scandal.
    - shadowgovt 5y ago
      Isn't the "JournoList scandal" just "There was a Google Group that lots of journalists on the left subscribed to?" Journalists have always talked to each other. The fact that we have an auditable mailing list of one instance of it just tells us something we already know.
      - deltarholamda 5y ago
        >Isn't the "JournoList scandal" just "There was a Google Group that lots of journalists on the left subscribed to?" No, they were coordinating messaging to get the results they wanted. That's the scandal, because they were simultaneously presenting themselves as Objective Journalists.
      - HideousKojima 5y ago
        "If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they've put upon us. Instead, take one of them – Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares – and call them racists" Yes, that sounds like journalists just "talking to each other."
freediver 5y ago
There are many problematic aspects of DDG's decision, but here are just a couple of angles. Both sides in the conflict spread disinformation. DDG desides to downrank only results related to disinformation from one side. This makes it a decision based on a political bias and not search quality bias (which would cause all disinformation to be downranked - which is OK and actually a desireable thing in a search engine). By not downranking disinformation from the other side, which is equally bad content, this steps out of the scope of what a search engine should be interested in doing. Secondly, how in the world would DDG have the resources or capabilities to determine what is disinformation in the first place? Much larger companies like Facebook failed at this. It is generally considered that the 'fog of war' is a real thing and there is no single source of news on this planet that did not spread some disinformation at some point. DDG would probably have to downrank half of the sites in its results, and probably every site that ever published any information about this conflict, if they were to be consistent. Something like this is basically unenforcable from an engineering/algorithmic standpoint. So basically from a business perspective, this has to be a bet that the publicity from this act would net them more users than they started with in the markets they care about.
- pvaldes 5y ago
  > Both sides in the conflict spread disinformation. One of them does not have free press and kill journalists. Both cases are not even remotely comparable.
  - freediver 5y ago
    But a general purpose web search engine should not be in a business of determining which side has a higher moral ground in a human conflict?
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    The west does imprison journalists because at least there is enough public pressure that it would never be accepted, even if the result is comparable. But it is specifically not a question about who the good guy is. This is about hiding certain information.
spoils19 5y ago
The free market will decide what's a valuable search result or not, and I trust the freedom and liberty of people over any kind of curated, mutated ranking system.
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  Is people choosing which search engine they use based off the results it returns not the free market in action?
  - spoils19 5y ago
    It is not transparent what kind of curations take place to return the results. You cannot have a free market without transparency, and while DDG are announcing this now, they have no obligation to in the future. Previously the status quo was "we don't curate", now it's "we curate but announce it". What's the chance that they will no longer announce it in the future?
    - colinmhayes 5y ago
      > It is not transparent what kind of curations take place to return the results. This is true for all search engines because it's literally impossible to return even half decent results if everyone knows your algorithm. It'll just be pages and pages of SEO nonsense. If you believed for even a second that search engines can exist without curating you haven't been thinking very hard. Not curating would only ensure that you see nothing but propaganda.
      - spoils19 5y ago
        > you haven't been thinking very hard Please ensure you're following the HN Guidelines[1] when leaving replies :^) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - ipaddr 5y ago
        Could it work? A search engine based on popularity is the basis of google 2004. What no one has done is a search engine where you can select who's version of what's popular to use. What do people in my area.. My age group.. My shared interest visit when they search 'eye blush'

CWuestefeld 5y ago

The announcement makes me suspect that it's down-ranking results not for what they are, but who it's from. That is, penalizing results based on their being from a disfavored source.

shadowgovt 5y ago
That's been a valid approach ever since expertsexchange.com dropped off the radar. It's one of the many tools in the toolbox for dealing with SEO games.

avgcorrection 5y ago

If I am interested in Flat Earth Theory and search for that then I expect to get results that Flat Earth believers are interested in. It’s that simple.

astine 5y ago
If you're actually interested in flat earth theory you'll search for "Flat Earth." If you search for "Charting a Flight", You're probably not looking for flat earth content.
- julesnp 5y ago
  To me that has to do with search results being tuned for relevancy, not due the the perceived quality of the information.
  - astine 5y ago
    Maybe, but you could also argue that bad information is irrelevant. If I search for "cancer treatment", it's not necessarily helpful for "black salve" to pop-up on my search results.
  - brimble 5y ago
    And a Flat Earth take on how to chart a flight path isn't relevant because...?

azangru 5y ago

> but do you really want your search engine to default to providing results from someone with a very clear agenda and a history of abusing their influence to carry out that agenda? This is a very strange strawman. The implicit assumptions in this question are: - That DuckDuckGo 'defaulted' to RT or to some other Russian media, which is hardly the case. It is the task of a search engine to infer, from its users' behaviour, which resources they find the most useful in providing answers to given queries. - That other sources do not have a clear agenda :-)

deltarholamda 5y ago

>but do you really want your search engine to default to providing results from someone with a very clear agenda and a history of abusing their influence to carry out that agenda Have you met the US media? If you don't look at this massive coordinated effort and smell something fishy, I just don't know what to say.

burnished 5y ago
So like, what, everyones keeping this big secret and its just schlubs like you and me kept in the dark?
- HideousKojima 5y ago
  It's not a conspiracy (few things are because they just don't scale well). It's more what I call "assholes with similar motives/incentives." It has a lot of the appearance of coordination without needing secret meetings in smoke-filled rooms. That said, sometimes it actually is coordination. Just look at the JournoList scandal.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    Isn't the "JournoList scandal" just "There was a Google Group that lots of journalists on the left subscribed to?" Journalists have always talked to each other. The fact that we have an auditable mailing list of one instance of it just tells us something we already know.
    - deltarholamda 5y ago
      >Isn't the "JournoList scandal" just "There was a Google Group that lots of journalists on the left subscribed to?" No, they were coordinating messaging to get the results they wanted. That's the scandal, because they were simultaneously presenting themselves as Objective Journalists.
    - HideousKojima 5y ago
      "If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they've put upon us. Instead, take one of them – Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares – and call them racists" Yes, that sounds like journalists just "talking to each other."

freediver 5y ago

There are many problematic aspects of DDG's decision, but here are just a couple of angles. Both sides in the conflict spread disinformation. DDG desides to downrank only results related to disinformation from one side. This makes it a decision based on a political bias and not search quality bias (which would cause all disinformation to be downranked - which is OK and actually a desireable thing in a search engine). By not downranking disinformation from the other side, which is equally bad content, this steps out of the scope of what a search engine should be interested in doing. Secondly, how in the world would DDG have the resources or capabilities to determine what is disinformation in the first place? Much larger companies like Facebook failed at this. It is generally considered that the 'fog of war' is a real thing and there is no single source of news on this planet that did not spread some disinformation at some point. DDG would probably have to downrank half of the sites in its results, and probably every site that ever published any information about this conflict, if they were to be consistent. Something like this is basically unenforcable from an engineering/algorithmic standpoint. So basically from a business perspective, this has to be a bet that the publicity from this act would net them more users than they started with in the markets they care about.

pvaldes 5y ago
> Both sides in the conflict spread disinformation. One of them does not have free press and kill journalists. Both cases are not even remotely comparable.
- freediver 5y ago
  But a general purpose web search engine should not be in a business of determining which side has a higher moral ground in a human conflict?
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  The west does imprison journalists because at least there is enough public pressure that it would never be accepted, even if the result is comparable. But it is specifically not a question about who the good guy is. This is about hiding certain information.

spoils19 5y ago

The free market will decide what's a valuable search result or not, and I trust the freedom and liberty of people over any kind of curated, mutated ranking system.

colinmhayes 5y ago
Is people choosing which search engine they use based off the results it returns not the free market in action?
- spoils19 5y ago
  It is not transparent what kind of curations take place to return the results. You cannot have a free market without transparency, and while DDG are announcing this now, they have no obligation to in the future. Previously the status quo was "we don't curate", now it's "we curate but announce it". What's the chance that they will no longer announce it in the future?
  - colinmhayes 5y ago
    > It is not transparent what kind of curations take place to return the results. This is true for all search engines because it's literally impossible to return even half decent results if everyone knows your algorithm. It'll just be pages and pages of SEO nonsense. If you believed for even a second that search engines can exist without curating you haven't been thinking very hard. Not curating would only ensure that you see nothing but propaganda.
    - spoils19 5y ago
      > you haven't been thinking very hard Please ensure you're following the HN Guidelines[1] when leaving replies :^) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - ipaddr 5y ago
      Could it work? A search engine based on popularity is the basis of google 2004. What no one has done is a search engine where you can select who's version of what's popular to use. What do people in my area.. My age group.. My shared interest visit when they search 'eye blush'