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For me, this move by DDG will have the opposite effect of what is intended. I will now trust my own media and sources even less, if they rely on silencing the

For me, this move by DDG will have the opposite effect of what is intended. I will now trust my own media and sources even less, if they rely on silencing the competition and insist on controlling what I access "for my own good". Such dirty tactics are insulting, even more so when delivered under a sneering benevolent guise. As if they have perfect knowledge of my motives and wishes. What if I'm genuinely curious as to how the Russian media is presenting this war? They must have access to this perfect knowledge if they are fit to decide which news sources are "correct"!

ScarletEmerald 5y ago
Would you trust a source of medical information less if it declined to present or link to information that breathing CO is healthy, drinking mineral spirits is fine, and handling mercury with bare skin is safe and fun?
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  I don’t know. Since this sort of thing isn’t happening and the general atmosphere of everything is unlike your hypothetical. I’m not sure it much matters.
  - hobs 5y ago
    The united states has several states passing laws so doctors can proscribe ivermectin for covid, we genuinely live in a world where homeopathy is a the option Steve Jobs took instead of cancer therapy. I have no understanding of why you would say this is not happening when product brands like GOOP make tons of money from outright hocus pocus health bs.
    - skinnymuch 5y ago
      I think Ivermectin was part of the CDC’s COVID prevention or when you have light levels of Covid lists back in 2020 and early 2021. I remember seeing it from progressive people sharing stuff before it became the term and meme it became today. That makes it a really interesting point too, but it makes all sides look bad. OTOH, you’re right Steve Jobs and what he did...yikes. That sort of thinking is harmful for society. Yes GOOP is disgusting. So disgusting. I thi
    - skinnymuch 5y ago
      I think Ivermectin was part of the CDC’s COVID prevention or when you have light levels of Covid lists back in 2020 and early 2021. I remember seeing it from progressive people sharing stuff before it became the term and meme it became today. That makes it a really interesting point too, but it makes all sides look bad. OTOH, you’re right Steve Jobs and what he did...yikes. That sort of thinking is harmful for society. Yes GOOP is disgusting. So disgusting. None of this is close to laws being passed for serious misinformation sort of stuff like your original post said. GOOP is bullshit and like so much others. It just happens to be peddled by some famous people. Since the ivermectin thing is more complicated, it doesn’t work. America having its massive problem with opoids and how much it got prescribed shows how difficult the situation is. Or how anti steroids America and the world is. It seems too nuanced and difficult to decipher. Or to say one way is correct. Overall in spirit and likely general vibes. I believe we are overall closer to the same thinking than not.
- gruez 5y ago
  >Would you trust a source of medical information less if it declined to present or link to information Unfortunately, there's a wide ecosystem of conspiracy minded sites that link to each other. They even have papers supporting them, eg. studies in favor of homeopathy https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9310601/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9310601/
  - belter 5y ago
    My favorite Randi joke about homeopathy... "An homeopath died from overdose. He forgot to take his medicaments..."
- tengbretson 5y ago
  Well let's flip this around. How many articles of misinformation advocating breathing CO would you have to read before you personally tried it? If the answer is that you never would, then you are not advocating for something that protects you, just those that you see as inferior to you
- renewiltord 5y ago
  Yeah, actually. Let me tell you about something that will illustrate. Once upon a time, Amazon had a flood of fake reviews. They would rate to 5 and be in terrible Engrish and the different styles were pretty easy to detect. I could use that as a signal that the product was bad and that the field of these products is likely risky. Eventually, Amazon started getting rid of all these reviews. There are still fake reviews but they're more subtle than that. So now I have lost my signal that said "tread carefully for products in this class" and I have lost some signal that said "this product has fakers involved or in its competitors". So now, yes, I trust Amazon less. I am not making up a hypothetical universe. I am sure others have shared this experience.
- LudwigNagasena 5y ago
  Well, I started trusting the sources of medical information less since they quickly moved from “masks don’t help common people” to “everyone should wear a mask” in a heartbeat even though we had a dozen of epidemics and a couple pandemics before so surely that sounds like something that should a settled issue (saying we don’t know and it heavily depends on the infection would also count as a good answer).
atlantas 5y ago
> I will now trust my own media and sources even less, if they rely on silencing the competition and insist on controlling As you should! It's actually exactly what authoritarian governments like Russia do. They silence and control information, blocking out other sources aside from their own propaganda. Everything else is said to be dangerous disinformation.
- colpabar 5y ago
  It's insane to me that people don't think this way. The mainstream US media, in perfect lockstep with the gov, told us all that iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and then we found out it was a complete fabrication. And most of those people still have jobs!
  - pydry 5y ago
    Meanwhile Russia concocts evidence of chemical weapons labs and those same people who believed in WMDs cant fathom how Russians could fall for this shit....
    - shapefrog 5y ago
      While simultaneously people who rant constantly about "mainstream meadia" claim that because RT broadcast it, that it must be true and can in no way be propaganda.
      - kuraudo 5y ago
        I don't think anyone has ever said that. Even people who enjoy rt understands who funds it.
        shapefrog 5y ago
        I hear it (in the US and Europe) it is something you would hear regularly in Russia - I also hear that "mainstream meadia" constantly lie but Fox News is a beacon of truth, and they too are on "our" side in the fight against the corrupt mainstream media and fake news crisis. Personally I dont see how anout with more than a single IQ point can hold such a belief honestly in good faith, but clearly plenty do.
8note 5y ago
What I really want is to have a setting where I can turn these kinds of filters on and off, or to different/customized priorities. Search is a tool for me to use: give me better control of the results that I can get. Choosing between different ranking algorithms would be wonderful too, to skip around different SEO strategies
- TechBro8615 5y ago
  It sounds like you're advocating for pushing censorship responsibility to the user. I agree this would be nice — in fact you could consider uBlock Origin a form of client-side censorship that already exists. In practice, I'm not sure how much adoption such a system would get, if used for censorship purposes. The main problem is the underlying truth that most censorship proponents are not actually pro-censorship of the information _they_ consume — they're pro-censorship of the information _other_ people consume. Even if you _could_ find a user who wants their client to hide information from them, that user probably doesn't want to filter their own spam, too. By default, the client already expects the server to fulfill a gatekeeping role in filtering (censoring!) spam. In fact, this is how we got here in the first place – we delegated filtering mechanisms to service providers, and now they're simply expanding the filter. Personally, I'm in favor of a simple but likely effective regulation: Any service that renders a feed of third-party content to the user must default to sorting the feed in reverse chronological order, and must reset all current users to this default on the day the legislation goes into effect. Of course, this only mitigates the feed-based, mostly social-media problem — it doesn't solve the issues with search results (or auto-complete suggestions, for that matter). For search results, a client-based model wouldn't scale, as client preferences need to be evaluated at time of indexing, not when returning results.
  - tomc1985 5y ago
    > It sounds like you're advocating for pushing censorship responsibility to the user. It is really irresponsible to be phrasing censorship as a "responsibility". Censorship is a tool of the weak and simple-minded so that they can maintain the illusions of a shared reality promulgated by whoever is in charge. The only responsibility should be towards the free and unadulterated flow of information, and yes, it is the individual's responsibility to make sense of that in a civilized fashion. My only exception to this rule is for things that are irrelevant to seeker's intent to acquire more information, advertising falls into this bucket.
kikokikokiko 5y ago
This whole Ukraine war teached me a thing I haven't noticed before: I simply can't trust ANY media, search engine, or social network anymore. It's a sad state of affairs, but since the invasion started my only source of "news" related to the war is a few, and I a said a FEW, Youtube channels. I'm brazilian and one channel I recommend is Fernando Ulrich's channel. He interviewed (in english) a lot people (ukrainians, russians), commented on the geopolitical causes for the war a month before it started for real etc. Through his channel I found the lectures by John J Mearsheimer, and that's the only reason I can say that I "understand" what the hell is happening over there. It's a real shame that a financial advice channel, from a 3rd world country, is the last bastion of thrust I can find in order to get informed about the most important geopolitical event of the last decade. The mainstream media/tech oligopoly are a disgrace to mankind.
- atlantas 5y ago
  I replaced mainstream media with Breaking Points (https://www.youtube.com/c/breakingpoints https://www.youtube.com/c/breakingpoints). I've found them to be far more reliable.
  - PromKwing 5y ago
    Yikes. Imagine replacing media outlets with a right-wing youtuber and thinking that's far more reliable.
    - atlantas 5y ago
      Yikes. Imagine thinking Breaking Points is right-wing.
  - bavell 5y ago
    A fellow breaker! :) My go-to news source for context and perspective.
- verisimi 5y ago
  > I simply can't trust ANY media, search engine, or social network anymore. No, you can't. It really comes down to a choice of which unhinged violent group of psychopaths do you want to believe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqKfSbhm6yo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqKfSbhm6yo This is a great explanation of the anarchist perspective. Great quote: "Ukraine has been this mess for many many many years of people arguing about which of authoritarian control freaks should get violently dominate everybody. That is a question that doesn't have a right answer."
bastardoperator 5y ago
Sounds like you could just navigate to those sites and skip the search all together?
crayboff 5y ago
I've been waffling between whether or not I think this is a good thing. I am curious on your thoughts: A lot of malicious actors have learned how to game the search ranking algorithms by making carefully crafted lies that are easily spread as truths online quickly. They are able to get their fake news to spread (and this rank higher) in ways that legitimate sources can't. Most people only ever look at the first page of results when searching for answers, and, let's be honest, take those answers for the truth. If you were a search engine provider and knew that viral, fake stories were able to do that, wouldn't not taking action also be making a decision about what you can and can't see? Inaction, in this case, would be tacit approval. Also you can still search for stories about how Russia is presenting the war, but you have to specifically look for it
- eric_cc 5y ago
  While you’re waffling > If you were a search engine provider and knew that viral, fake stories How does the search engine company know whether something is true or not?
  - soundnote 5y ago
    The same way our esteemed fact checkers are unsure if being part of a bombing organization and getting convicted for possession of hundreds of pounds of explosives merits calling the person a terrorist.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    It's at the core of Google algorithm: page rank. It uses 'trust'. That actually maps to how we work as a society. We cannot be experts in everything, we do not have the time, ability, wherewithal. So we 'trust' certain sources: Teachers, Doctors, Lawyers, Judges, Police, more than we do others i.e. criminals, sources of gossip, arbitrary people. This is why when people form those institutions fail us, it's a much bigger problem than otherwise. We should fire a teacher for teaching things that are wrong, but we don't worry about the guy walking down the street spouting nonsense. Over time, we learn who to trust, and also the ways in which we can trust them. 'Nature' has a lot of credibility in some ways, but it also doesn't mean they are always right, and, when it comes to softer issue, they can be politicised. Judges have more integrity than the average person, but they can also be biased. The NYT is a good source of information, but it depends if it's 'straight news or opinion'. Putin has a 'propaganda Army' of people trying to convince people of certain things, much of which are not true. People around the world will believe it if they are exposed to enough of it. The Russian and Cheese population apparently are willing to believe that UKR government is a bunch of 'Nazis and Drug Dealers'. Which is perverse. 'Information Reputation' is a really big deal and the only way it will work as a society is if we give the 'Conch' to those with greater credibility, otherwise, people will believe in 'whatever'. You can tell people almost anything and 30% of them will believe it if they want to, which is enough people to tilt the needle on so many issues.
specialist 5y ago
Does your email provider filter spam?
Nursie 5y ago
> "silencing the competition" Hyperbole much? Putting known-bad information sources further down the result list is hardly silencing the competition, in fact it's likely making the results a lot better for the majority of users. > What if I'm genuinely curious as to how the Russian media is presenting this war? Then I imagine you can search for that and find it just fine. > They must have access to this perfect knowledge if they are fit to decide which news sources are "correct"! Then search rankings are all wrong, from the very concept of such things upwards, because they all seek to rank information quality in various ways, and you should never use them. Any of them. Honestly these reactions are ridiculous.
mc32 5y ago
If you want a dose of flip flop, now services which banned calls for violence, in a very odd about face, will allow calls for violence against Russians. Sure, yes, the guys and gals calling the shots are baddies, but your everyday Ivan and Katia are not. So you know the whole thing is not principled but rather political.
- trhway 5y ago
  >will allow calls for violence against Russians. Sure, yes, the guys and gals calling the shots are baddies, but your everyday Ivan and Katia are not FB seems to be pretty clear that the calls for violence are allowed only in the context of the Ukrainian war and only against invading forces plus Putin himself. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exclusive-facebook-instagram-temporarily-allow-calls-violence-against-russians-2022-03-10/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exclusive-facebook-inst...
  - mc32 5y ago
    So now we can petition calls for violence against people who do some people some sort of harm... Next time we, the US, for good or bad reasons invade some place, can now those affected use FB to call for violence against us? What about allowing us to make calls for violence against them, if we think them so bad we must invade them, let's say North Korea? Or, why not? Can Uighurs call for violence against Chinese? We can come up with lots of examples, People in the Tigray against Ethiopians? It's not just allowing calls for violence against Putin or his generals and conscripts... It's BS.
Retric 5y ago
Should DDG show flat earth websites on basic searches about the earth? That’s not about silencing the competition that’s about doing the basic functions you’re looking for in a search engine. Delisting would be another story as people may legitimately want to find flat earth content, but this isn’t delisting the content is still there you just need to specifically look for it.
- perryizgr8 5y ago
  > Should DDG show flat earth websites on basic searches about the earth? It should if that's what their unbiased parameters bubble up. What's bs is hardcoded censorship/downranking of searches based on (geo)political ideology of the ddg owners.
  - Retric 5y ago
    If their unbiased parameters give useless spam, users would expect the parameters to change.
    - perryizgr8 5y ago
      Agreed, but I feel that is unlikely to be connected to a particular political ideology.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Since flat earth theories never posed any relevant problem, this is just a straw man to justify propaganda mechanisms.
  - Retric 5y ago
    Flat earth, anti vax groups, and national national governments running disinformation campaigns are all doing the exact same thing.
anothernewdude 5y ago
At some point you have to filter out the spam. Otherwise you just get garbage.
blacklight 5y ago
Let's also be honest: most of us who follow and comment on HN aren't the average Joe. Most of us have a STEM background, a critical spirit forged by scientific method, we usually don't forge an opinion after reading a single source, and most of us know how to (at least roughly) estimate the trustworthiness of online content, based on simple factors - how clickbait is the title? what sources are cited? how many ads and invites to join Telegram channels are on the page? how is the weight balanced between facts and opinions? So some of us may rightfully feel insulted when tech players like DDG decide to take down disinformation or rank it down. We don't like being babysitted, we feel that we're smart enough to read content from multiple sources and apply our discernment to come up with a reasonable synthesis. We don't like it when somebody puts the garbage out of our sight, because we may be curious to investigate that garbage. The average Joe out there, however, doesn't have such skills. The average Joe isn't yet used to the bombardment of information of the 21st century. The average Joe still reads a headline without reading the content, because they went within a couple of years from following 1-2 news channels to being bombarded by algorithmic-curated infinite timelines and search results, and they don't know how to process it all. And, if the headline resonates enough with his/her biases, they reshare it blindly. The average Joe won't collect data from Statista to figure out how economic and political metrics shape events. The average Joe wants somebody who does the synthesis work for them and distills information into a headline that they can easily grab. I know this well because it's what most of my family contacts do. And disinformation players know this quite well. They have figured out how ranking algorithms work, they know how to craft content in a way that it gets viral, and they know the SEO rudiments well enough to push it up in the search results. So keep in mind that such measures aren't taken for people like us, but for the majority of people out there that are much more vulnerable than us to disinformation and to its psychological tricks. When I look at things from this perspective, I am grateful for tech players who take actions like these. After all, if I want to dig enough I can still find the "Russian perspective", and I can still analyze it and/or debunk it. But I'm happy that the average Joe doesn't have to be exposed to this sh*t anymore. The only downside of such measures is the usual one when you implement any form of arbitrary information filtering/ranking: disinformation won't go away, it'll just go deeper underground, where it's harder to monitor. This is already the case: lots of false beliefs held by my family and acquaintances don't come from content published on websites, but content shared on Telegram groups (often involving deep fake videos, snippets from movies and music videos repackaged as memes about real war events, videos of Putin speeches with completely wrong subtitles, and so on). It's easier for a fact checker to monitor disinformation openly published on the web rather than on a myriad of chat groups. And I don't think that anybody has a solution for this problem yet.

ScarletEmerald 5y ago

Would you trust a source of medical information less if it declined to present or link to information that breathing CO is healthy, drinking mineral spirits is fine, and handling mercury with bare skin is safe and fun?

skinnymuch 5y ago
I don’t know. Since this sort of thing isn’t happening and the general atmosphere of everything is unlike your hypothetical. I’m not sure it much matters.
- hobs 5y ago
  The united states has several states passing laws so doctors can proscribe ivermectin for covid, we genuinely live in a world where homeopathy is a the option Steve Jobs took instead of cancer therapy. I have no understanding of why you would say this is not happening when product brands like GOOP make tons of money from outright hocus pocus health bs.
  - skinnymuch 5y ago
    I think Ivermectin was part of the CDC’s COVID prevention or when you have light levels of Covid lists back in 2020 and early 2021. I remember seeing it from progressive people sharing stuff before it became the term and meme it became today. That makes it a really interesting point too, but it makes all sides look bad. OTOH, you’re right Steve Jobs and what he did...yikes. That sort of thinking is harmful for society. Yes GOOP is disgusting. So disgusting. I thi
  - skinnymuch 5y ago
    I think Ivermectin was part of the CDC’s COVID prevention or when you have light levels of Covid lists back in 2020 and early 2021. I remember seeing it from progressive people sharing stuff before it became the term and meme it became today. That makes it a really interesting point too, but it makes all sides look bad. OTOH, you’re right Steve Jobs and what he did...yikes. That sort of thinking is harmful for society. Yes GOOP is disgusting. So disgusting. None of this is close to laws being passed for serious misinformation sort of stuff like your original post said. GOOP is bullshit and like so much others. It just happens to be peddled by some famous people. Since the ivermectin thing is more complicated, it doesn’t work. America having its massive problem with opoids and how much it got prescribed shows how difficult the situation is. Or how anti steroids America and the world is. It seems too nuanced and difficult to decipher. Or to say one way is correct. Overall in spirit and likely general vibes. I believe we are overall closer to the same thinking than not.
gruez 5y ago
>Would you trust a source of medical information less if it declined to present or link to information Unfortunately, there's a wide ecosystem of conspiracy minded sites that link to each other. They even have papers supporting them, eg. studies in favor of homeopathy https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9310601/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9310601/
- belter 5y ago
  My favorite Randi joke about homeopathy... "An homeopath died from overdose. He forgot to take his medicaments..."
tengbretson 5y ago
Well let's flip this around. How many articles of misinformation advocating breathing CO would you have to read before you personally tried it? If the answer is that you never would, then you are not advocating for something that protects you, just those that you see as inferior to you
renewiltord 5y ago
Yeah, actually. Let me tell you about something that will illustrate. Once upon a time, Amazon had a flood of fake reviews. They would rate to 5 and be in terrible Engrish and the different styles were pretty easy to detect. I could use that as a signal that the product was bad and that the field of these products is likely risky. Eventually, Amazon started getting rid of all these reviews. There are still fake reviews but they're more subtle than that. So now I have lost my signal that said "tread carefully for products in this class" and I have lost some signal that said "this product has fakers involved or in its competitors". So now, yes, I trust Amazon less. I am not making up a hypothetical universe. I am sure others have shared this experience.
LudwigNagasena 5y ago
Well, I started trusting the sources of medical information less since they quickly moved from “masks don’t help common people” to “everyone should wear a mask” in a heartbeat even though we had a dozen of epidemics and a couple pandemics before so surely that sounds like something that should a settled issue (saying we don’t know and it heavily depends on the infection would also count as a good answer).

atlantas 5y ago

> I will now trust my own media and sources even less, if they rely on silencing the competition and insist on controlling As you should! It's actually exactly what authoritarian governments like Russia do. They silence and control information, blocking out other sources aside from their own propaganda. Everything else is said to be dangerous disinformation.

colpabar 5y ago
It's insane to me that people don't think this way. The mainstream US media, in perfect lockstep with the gov, told us all that iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and then we found out it was a complete fabrication. And most of those people still have jobs!
- pydry 5y ago
  Meanwhile Russia concocts evidence of chemical weapons labs and those same people who believed in WMDs cant fathom how Russians could fall for this shit....
  - shapefrog 5y ago
    While simultaneously people who rant constantly about "mainstream meadia" claim that because RT broadcast it, that it must be true and can in no way be propaganda.
    - kuraudo 5y ago
      I don't think anyone has ever said that. Even people who enjoy rt understands who funds it.
      - shapefrog 5y ago
        I hear it (in the US and Europe) it is something you would hear regularly in Russia - I also hear that "mainstream meadia" constantly lie but Fox News is a beacon of truth, and they too are on "our" side in the fight against the corrupt mainstream media and fake news crisis. Personally I dont see how anout with more than a single IQ point can hold such a belief honestly in good faith, but clearly plenty do.

8note 5y ago

What I really want is to have a setting where I can turn these kinds of filters on and off, or to different/customized priorities. Search is a tool for me to use: give me better control of the results that I can get. Choosing between different ranking algorithms would be wonderful too, to skip around different SEO strategies

TechBro8615 5y ago
It sounds like you're advocating for pushing censorship responsibility to the user. I agree this would be nice — in fact you could consider uBlock Origin a form of client-side censorship that already exists. In practice, I'm not sure how much adoption such a system would get, if used for censorship purposes. The main problem is the underlying truth that most censorship proponents are not actually pro-censorship of the information _they_ consume — they're pro-censorship of the information _other_ people consume. Even if you _could_ find a user who wants their client to hide information from them, that user probably doesn't want to filter their own spam, too. By default, the client already expects the server to fulfill a gatekeeping role in filtering (censoring!) spam. In fact, this is how we got here in the first place – we delegated filtering mechanisms to service providers, and now they're simply expanding the filter. Personally, I'm in favor of a simple but likely effective regulation: Any service that renders a feed of third-party content to the user must default to sorting the feed in reverse chronological order, and must reset all current users to this default on the day the legislation goes into effect. Of course, this only mitigates the feed-based, mostly social-media problem — it doesn't solve the issues with search results (or auto-complete suggestions, for that matter). For search results, a client-based model wouldn't scale, as client preferences need to be evaluated at time of indexing, not when returning results.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  > It sounds like you're advocating for pushing censorship responsibility to the user. It is really irresponsible to be phrasing censorship as a "responsibility". Censorship is a tool of the weak and simple-minded so that they can maintain the illusions of a shared reality promulgated by whoever is in charge. The only responsibility should be towards the free and unadulterated flow of information, and yes, it is the individual's responsibility to make sense of that in a civilized fashion. My only exception to this rule is for things that are irrelevant to seeker's intent to acquire more information, advertising falls into this bucket.

kikokikokiko 5y ago

This whole Ukraine war teached me a thing I haven't noticed before: I simply can't trust ANY media, search engine, or social network anymore. It's a sad state of affairs, but since the invasion started my only source of "news" related to the war is a few, and I a said a FEW, Youtube channels. I'm brazilian and one channel I recommend is Fernando Ulrich's channel. He interviewed (in english) a lot people (ukrainians, russians), commented on the geopolitical causes for the war a month before it started for real etc. Through his channel I found the lectures by John J Mearsheimer, and that's the only reason I can say that I "understand" what the hell is happening over there. It's a real shame that a financial advice channel, from a 3rd world country, is the last bastion of thrust I can find in order to get informed about the most important geopolitical event of the last decade. The mainstream media/tech oligopoly are a disgrace to mankind.

atlantas 5y ago
I replaced mainstream media with Breaking Points (https://www.youtube.com/c/breakingpoints https://www.youtube.com/c/breakingpoints). I've found them to be far more reliable.
- PromKwing 5y ago
  Yikes. Imagine replacing media outlets with a right-wing youtuber and thinking that's far more reliable.
  - atlantas 5y ago
    Yikes. Imagine thinking Breaking Points is right-wing.
- bavell 5y ago
  A fellow breaker! :) My go-to news source for context and perspective.
verisimi 5y ago
> I simply can't trust ANY media, search engine, or social network anymore. No, you can't. It really comes down to a choice of which unhinged violent group of psychopaths do you want to believe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqKfSbhm6yo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqKfSbhm6yo This is a great explanation of the anarchist perspective. Great quote: "Ukraine has been this mess for many many many years of people arguing about which of authoritarian control freaks should get violently dominate everybody. That is a question that doesn't have a right answer."

bastardoperator 5y ago

Sounds like you could just navigate to those sites and skip the search all together?

crayboff 5y ago

I've been waffling between whether or not I think this is a good thing. I am curious on your thoughts: A lot of malicious actors have learned how to game the search ranking algorithms by making carefully crafted lies that are easily spread as truths online quickly. They are able to get their fake news to spread (and this rank higher) in ways that legitimate sources can't. Most people only ever look at the first page of results when searching for answers, and, let's be honest, take those answers for the truth. If you were a search engine provider and knew that viral, fake stories were able to do that, wouldn't not taking action also be making a decision about what you can and can't see? Inaction, in this case, would be tacit approval. Also you can still search for stories about how Russia is presenting the war, but you have to specifically look for it

eric_cc 5y ago
While you’re waffling > If you were a search engine provider and knew that viral, fake stories How does the search engine company know whether something is true or not?
- soundnote 5y ago
  The same way our esteemed fact checkers are unsure if being part of a bombing organization and getting convicted for possession of hundreds of pounds of explosives merits calling the person a terrorist.
- jollybean 5y ago
  It's at the core of Google algorithm: page rank. It uses 'trust'. That actually maps to how we work as a society. We cannot be experts in everything, we do not have the time, ability, wherewithal. So we 'trust' certain sources: Teachers, Doctors, Lawyers, Judges, Police, more than we do others i.e. criminals, sources of gossip, arbitrary people. This is why when people form those institutions fail us, it's a much bigger problem than otherwise. We should fire a teacher for teaching things that are wrong, but we don't worry about the guy walking down the street spouting nonsense. Over time, we learn who to trust, and also the ways in which we can trust them. 'Nature' has a lot of credibility in some ways, but it also doesn't mean they are always right, and, when it comes to softer issue, they can be politicised. Judges have more integrity than the average person, but they can also be biased. The NYT is a good source of information, but it depends if it's 'straight news or opinion'. Putin has a 'propaganda Army' of people trying to convince people of certain things, much of which are not true. People around the world will believe it if they are exposed to enough of it. The Russian and Cheese population apparently are willing to believe that UKR government is a bunch of 'Nazis and Drug Dealers'. Which is perverse. 'Information Reputation' is a really big deal and the only way it will work as a society is if we give the 'Conch' to those with greater credibility, otherwise, people will believe in 'whatever'. You can tell people almost anything and 30% of them will believe it if they want to, which is enough people to tilt the needle on so many issues.

specialist 5y ago

Does your email provider filter spam?

Nursie 5y ago

> "silencing the competition" Hyperbole much? Putting known-bad information sources further down the result list is hardly silencing the competition, in fact it's likely making the results a lot better for the majority of users. > What if I'm genuinely curious as to how the Russian media is presenting this war? Then I imagine you can search for that and find it just fine. > They must have access to this perfect knowledge if they are fit to decide which news sources are "correct"! Then search rankings are all wrong, from the very concept of such things upwards, because they all seek to rank information quality in various ways, and you should never use them. Any of them. Honestly these reactions are ridiculous.

mc32 5y ago

If you want a dose of flip flop, now services which banned calls for violence, in a very odd about face, will allow calls for violence against Russians. Sure, yes, the guys and gals calling the shots are baddies, but your everyday Ivan and Katia are not. So you know the whole thing is not principled but rather political.

trhway 5y ago
>will allow calls for violence against Russians. Sure, yes, the guys and gals calling the shots are baddies, but your everyday Ivan and Katia are not FB seems to be pretty clear that the calls for violence are allowed only in the context of the Ukrainian war and only against invading forces plus Putin himself. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exclusive-facebook-instagram-temporarily-allow-calls-violence-against-russians-2022-03-10/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exclusive-facebook-inst...
- mc32 5y ago
  So now we can petition calls for violence against people who do some people some sort of harm... Next time we, the US, for good or bad reasons invade some place, can now those affected use FB to call for violence against us? What about allowing us to make calls for violence against them, if we think them so bad we must invade them, let's say North Korea? Or, why not? Can Uighurs call for violence against Chinese? We can come up with lots of examples, People in the Tigray against Ethiopians? It's not just allowing calls for violence against Putin or his generals and conscripts... It's BS.

Retric 5y ago

Should DDG show flat earth websites on basic searches about the earth? That’s not about silencing the competition that’s about doing the basic functions you’re looking for in a search engine. Delisting would be another story as people may legitimately want to find flat earth content, but this isn’t delisting the content is still there you just need to specifically look for it.

perryizgr8 5y ago
> Should DDG show flat earth websites on basic searches about the earth? It should if that's what their unbiased parameters bubble up. What's bs is hardcoded censorship/downranking of searches based on (geo)political ideology of the ddg owners.
- Retric 5y ago
  If their unbiased parameters give useless spam, users would expect the parameters to change.
  - perryizgr8 5y ago
    Agreed, but I feel that is unlikely to be connected to a particular political ideology.
raxxorrax 5y ago
Since flat earth theories never posed any relevant problem, this is just a straw man to justify propaganda mechanisms.
- Retric 5y ago
  Flat earth, anti vax groups, and national national governments running disinformation campaigns are all doing the exact same thing.

anothernewdude 5y ago

At some point you have to filter out the spam. Otherwise you just get garbage.

blacklight 5y ago

Let's also be honest: most of us who follow and comment on HN aren't the average Joe. Most of us have a STEM background, a critical spirit forged by scientific method, we usually don't forge an opinion after reading a single source, and most of us know how to (at least roughly) estimate the trustworthiness of online content, based on simple factors - how clickbait is the title? what sources are cited? how many ads and invites to join Telegram channels are on the page? how is the weight balanced between facts and opinions? So some of us may rightfully feel insulted when tech players like DDG decide to take down disinformation or rank it down. We don't like being babysitted, we feel that we're smart enough to read content from multiple sources and apply our discernment to come up with a reasonable synthesis. We don't like it when somebody puts the garbage out of our sight, because we may be curious to investigate that garbage. The average Joe out there, however, doesn't have such skills. The average Joe isn't yet used to the bombardment of information of the 21st century. The average Joe still reads a headline without reading the content, because they went within a couple of years from following 1-2 news channels to being bombarded by algorithmic-curated infinite timelines and search results, and they don't know how to process it all. And, if the headline resonates enough with his/her biases, they reshare it blindly. The average Joe won't collect data from Statista to figure out how economic and political metrics shape events. The average Joe wants somebody who does the synthesis work for them and distills information into a headline that they can easily grab. I know this well because it's what most of my family contacts do. And disinformation players know this quite well. They have figured out how ranking algorithms work, they know how to craft content in a way that it gets viral, and they know the SEO rudiments well enough to push it up in the search results. So keep in mind that such measures aren't taken for people like us, but for the majority of people out there that are much more vulnerable than us to disinformation and to its psychological tricks. When I look at things from this perspective, I am grateful for tech players who take actions like these. After all, if I want to dig enough I can still find the "Russian perspective", and I can still analyze it and/or debunk it. But I'm happy that the average Joe doesn't have to be exposed to this sh*t anymore. The only downside of such measures is the usual one when you implement any form of arbitrary information filtering/ranking: disinformation won't go away, it'll just go deeper underground, where it's harder to monitor. This is already the case: lots of false beliefs held by my family and acquaintances don't come from content published on websites, but content shared on Telegram groups (often involving deep fake videos, snippets from movies and music videos repackaged as memes about real war events, videos of Putin speeches with completely wrong subtitles, and so on). It's easier for a fact checker to monitor disinformation openly published on the web rather than on a myriad of chat groups. And I don't think that anybody has a solution for this problem yet.