8 ms·

I'd say a good search engine should try to deliver the results the user is looking for. Simple as that. It probably can never be perfect, as the search engine c

I'd say a good search engine should try to deliver the results the user is looking for. Simple as that. It probably can never be perfect, as the search engine can only guess what the user is looking for. But it can try to do its best. There is no rule that it should rank sites by page rank or number of keywords or whatever. If I don't want to see "Russian Disinformation", I probably won't search for it to begin with. On the other hand, maybe I want to see what all the fuss is about - then why should the search engine stand in my way?

soundnote 5y ago
The problem is that the definition of disinformation isn't really about accuracy - it's mostly "what is (woke) California prepared to accept". For example, most of the coronavirus "disinfo" bans have been handed out on a basis of roughly like "is this useful for the goal of making people adhere to covid policy?" If you say vaccines won't prevent transmission before Cali is okay with it, byebye, even though the statement has always been accurate. It just hasn't been part of blue California's story until lately. Talking about lab leak? It's okay now, but has gotten people banned for the last couple years. So what will "Russian disinfo" be like? It's hard to even know what the facts are since truth is the first casualty of war.
bena 5y ago
I think you're framing the discussion in the wrong way. Yes, if you're looking for "Russian Disinformation", you should be able to find it. But if I'm looking for "U.S. midterm elections", I shouldn't get Russian disinformation. What is the problem with modifying the algorithm to favor actual information over disinformation? Or sites that are known to propagate disinformation? The only thing I could say is that it's weirdly specific to Russian disinformation. Disinformation should be disfavored no matter the country of origin.
- username3 5y ago
  I shouldn’t get American disinformation, but your trusted sources are untouchable.
  - danShumway 5y ago
    All general critiques about DDG aside, it is absolutely untrue that search engines never target American news sources for downranking. Google/DDG and other sites have removed and downranked American news sites on multiple occasions. Scroll through this very comment section and you'll find someone complaining about DDG's handling of Drudgereport[0]. It was not that long ago that we were having really fierce debates about when and how aggregators and algorithms should filter/downrank vaccine misinformation, and a ton of that debate revolved around downranking American news sources and commentators. ---- [0]: I do want to note that it isn't immediately clear to me that DDG did downrank Drudgereport, and sometimes people just get kind of conspiratorial about things, but I'm taking commenter at their word since I assume they have some source for that they just didn't mention.
    - username3 5y ago
      They won’t down-rank American disinformation from sources they trust or sources they favor. This can all be solved by adding an option for results without down-ranking political disinformation.
      - danShumway 5y ago
        > They won’t down-rank American disinformation from sources they trust or sources they favor. Nobody suppresses a source that they trust. Of course search engines don't downrank sources that they think are trustworthy. Why would they? There's also nothing specific to America about that, DDG also doesn't suppress foreign news sources that it personally trusts as accurate, because... they're sources they trust. That sentence is a frankly kind of impressive effort to rephrase a critique that is essentially, "I disagree with their decisions, and I think the sources they trust aren't actually trustworthy" as some kind of much broader general criticism, like search engines are bad for not making editorial/ranking decisions that are the opposite of what they think are the correct editorial/ranking decisions to make.
        username3 5y ago
- nerdponx 5y ago
  The problem is not "U.S. midterm elections" but "Ukraine invasion 2022". Part of the problem is that defining "relevance" is hard, and quickly descends into gray areas and morality. Russian disinformation about Ukraine is relevant in that it actually is content about the Ukraine invasion in 2022. But it's not relevant in that it's not facts about the Ukraine invasion in 2022. Maybe there should be a button that lets users opt-out of "factual only" results to see the full uncensored internet, much like how there is a button that lets users opt-out of porn filters. For that matter, we should have more filters, but users should be able to see what they are and opt out of them manually. Porn, violence, suspected "disinformation" and conspiracy theories, etc. I would love to have all of these turned off by default, but be able to re-enable them selectively. Of course, that means you still have the problem where one organization (or a handful of organizations) gets to dictate what is considered "disinformation", but that's arguably a separate problem from not letting users control their experience.
  - jonhohle 5y ago
    Ultimately isn’t “disinformation” control exactly the problem? There are abundant examples of disinformation just being information that was 24-96 hours ahead of the news cycle (sometimes 6-9 months). DDG has now decided that they are editors because their perspective is “correct”, but on what authority?
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  Why would they show Russian information about the war when you search for Midterm elections? The issue is that they are introducing a manual intervention in the algorithm out of political motives. They are not automatically a great authority on correctness of information regarding the war. I don't think DDG has investigators on the ground in Ukraine. Of course ultimately all search engines will apply some criteria for correctness or relevance of information. Maybe we should applaud DDG for at least being transparent about it. So in the end presumably you have to pick the search engine just like you pick your other news sources. It is just a pity that DDG previously advertised itself as "unbiased", and now they throw that goal out of the window. Still it feels like the search engine feeding me results that they want me to find, not the ones that I most likely would want to find.
jollybean 5y ago
"If I don't want to see "Russian Disinformation", I probably won't search for it to begin with." ? Nobody is really searching for 'disinformation'. That's the whole point. Is 'disinformation' really 'what they were looking for'? Or were they looking for good information, and the 'misinformation' - which doesn't appear as 'misinformation' comes up first. They click it and become unwittingly 'misinformed'. It's obviously very nuanced, but there is definitely such a thing as misinformation and especially propaganda. For example, I see a ton of feeds sharing RUS losses with video snippets etc. but not a lot of UKR losses. Unless it's civilians in which case they want the information out there i.e. 'war crimes'. Or more nuanced: the words of Putin himself. He 'misinforms' arguably by misrepresenting literally every thing he talks about, and obfuscating other realities. There are 100% pro-Nazi sympathisers in UKR forces. But it's also pretty clear that the government is not a 'Nazi Regime' by any stretch. Issues such as 'NATO Threat' which is in some ways real, but used as an excuse really, because there is no material threat of the invasion of Russia. So it's complicated. There's also the fact that little bits of misinformation can contribute a lot to public opinion. I can just be 'populist' stuff. Like a funny picture oof Biden next to a 'strong and commanding Putin'. Charicatures influence people. That's a bit of a different domain, but also relevant. When wars break out, we have to be a bit more pragmatic and also vigilant.
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  In the war situation, I assume everything is potentially misinformation, and want to see statements from all sides. I mean if you read Western media, they will literally write "Russia is putting out a lot of disinformation", so that would be at least one claim I could try to verify myself, by looking at actual Russian media. But the more important point is, how does DDG decide what is misinformation and what is not? Sure a search engine always has to try to rank information by some criteria. The issue I have here is with a manual interference in the algorithm that seems politically motivated. Realistically, I guess we should be thankful that at least DDG points out that they are doing that, whereas others are simply doing it without telling anybody (on all sorts of issues, not just this war). Also, I think some "internet savvyness" has to be expected from search engine users. The assumption that just because some statements by Putin show up in search results, people would just flat out believe them, is rather insulting and belittling.

soundnote 5y ago

The problem is that the definition of disinformation isn't really about accuracy - it's mostly "what is (woke) California prepared to accept". For example, most of the coronavirus "disinfo" bans have been handed out on a basis of roughly like "is this useful for the goal of making people adhere to covid policy?" If you say vaccines won't prevent transmission before Cali is okay with it, byebye, even though the statement has always been accurate. It just hasn't been part of blue California's story until lately. Talking about lab leak? It's okay now, but has gotten people banned for the last couple years. So what will "Russian disinfo" be like? It's hard to even know what the facts are since truth is the first casualty of war.

bena 5y ago

I think you're framing the discussion in the wrong way. Yes, if you're looking for "Russian Disinformation", you should be able to find it. But if I'm looking for "U.S. midterm elections", I shouldn't get Russian disinformation. What is the problem with modifying the algorithm to favor actual information over disinformation? Or sites that are known to propagate disinformation? The only thing I could say is that it's weirdly specific to Russian disinformation. Disinformation should be disfavored no matter the country of origin.

username3 5y ago
I shouldn’t get American disinformation, but your trusted sources are untouchable.
- danShumway 5y ago
  All general critiques about DDG aside, it is absolutely untrue that search engines never target American news sources for downranking. Google/DDG and other sites have removed and downranked American news sites on multiple occasions. Scroll through this very comment section and you'll find someone complaining about DDG's handling of Drudgereport[0]. It was not that long ago that we were having really fierce debates about when and how aggregators and algorithms should filter/downrank vaccine misinformation, and a ton of that debate revolved around downranking American news sources and commentators. ---- [0]: I do want to note that it isn't immediately clear to me that DDG did downrank Drudgereport, and sometimes people just get kind of conspiratorial about things, but I'm taking commenter at their word since I assume they have some source for that they just didn't mention.
  - username3 5y ago
    They won’t down-rank American disinformation from sources they trust or sources they favor. This can all be solved by adding an option for results without down-ranking political disinformation.
    - danShumway 5y ago
      > They won’t down-rank American disinformation from sources they trust or sources they favor. Nobody suppresses a source that they trust. Of course search engines don't downrank sources that they think are trustworthy. Why would they? There's also nothing specific to America about that, DDG also doesn't suppress foreign news sources that it personally trusts as accurate, because... they're sources they trust. That sentence is a frankly kind of impressive effort to rephrase a critique that is essentially, "I disagree with their decisions, and I think the sources they trust aren't actually trustworthy" as some kind of much broader general criticism, like search engines are bad for not making editorial/ranking decisions that are the opposite of what they think are the correct editorial/ranking decisions to make.
      - username3 5y ago
nerdponx 5y ago
The problem is not "U.S. midterm elections" but "Ukraine invasion 2022". Part of the problem is that defining "relevance" is hard, and quickly descends into gray areas and morality. Russian disinformation about Ukraine is relevant in that it actually is content about the Ukraine invasion in 2022. But it's not relevant in that it's not facts about the Ukraine invasion in 2022. Maybe there should be a button that lets users opt-out of "factual only" results to see the full uncensored internet, much like how there is a button that lets users opt-out of porn filters. For that matter, we should have more filters, but users should be able to see what they are and opt out of them manually. Porn, violence, suspected "disinformation" and conspiracy theories, etc. I would love to have all of these turned off by default, but be able to re-enable them selectively. Of course, that means you still have the problem where one organization (or a handful of organizations) gets to dictate what is considered "disinformation", but that's arguably a separate problem from not letting users control their experience.
- jonhohle 5y ago
  Ultimately isn’t “disinformation” control exactly the problem? There are abundant examples of disinformation just being information that was 24-96 hours ahead of the news cycle (sometimes 6-9 months). DDG has now decided that they are editors because their perspective is “correct”, but on what authority?
kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
Why would they show Russian information about the war when you search for Midterm elections? The issue is that they are introducing a manual intervention in the algorithm out of political motives. They are not automatically a great authority on correctness of information regarding the war. I don't think DDG has investigators on the ground in Ukraine. Of course ultimately all search engines will apply some criteria for correctness or relevance of information. Maybe we should applaud DDG for at least being transparent about it. So in the end presumably you have to pick the search engine just like you pick your other news sources. It is just a pity that DDG previously advertised itself as "unbiased", and now they throw that goal out of the window. Still it feels like the search engine feeding me results that they want me to find, not the ones that I most likely would want to find.

jollybean 5y ago

"If I don't want to see "Russian Disinformation", I probably won't search for it to begin with." ? Nobody is really searching for 'disinformation'. That's the whole point. Is 'disinformation' really 'what they were looking for'? Or were they looking for good information, and the 'misinformation' - which doesn't appear as 'misinformation' comes up first. They click it and become unwittingly 'misinformed'. It's obviously very nuanced, but there is definitely such a thing as misinformation and especially propaganda. For example, I see a ton of feeds sharing RUS losses with video snippets etc. but not a lot of UKR losses. Unless it's civilians in which case they want the information out there i.e. 'war crimes'. Or more nuanced: the words of Putin himself. He 'misinforms' arguably by misrepresenting literally every thing he talks about, and obfuscating other realities. There are 100% pro-Nazi sympathisers in UKR forces. But it's also pretty clear that the government is not a 'Nazi Regime' by any stretch. Issues such as 'NATO Threat' which is in some ways real, but used as an excuse really, because there is no material threat of the invasion of Russia. So it's complicated. There's also the fact that little bits of misinformation can contribute a lot to public opinion. I can just be 'populist' stuff. Like a funny picture oof Biden next to a 'strong and commanding Putin'. Charicatures influence people. That's a bit of a different domain, but also relevant. When wars break out, we have to be a bit more pragmatic and also vigilant.

kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
In the war situation, I assume everything is potentially misinformation, and want to see statements from all sides. I mean if you read Western media, they will literally write "Russia is putting out a lot of disinformation", so that would be at least one claim I could try to verify myself, by looking at actual Russian media. But the more important point is, how does DDG decide what is misinformation and what is not? Sure a search engine always has to try to rank information by some criteria. The issue I have here is with a manual interference in the algorithm that seems politically motivated. Realistically, I guess we should be thankful that at least DDG points out that they are doing that, whereas others are simply doing it without telling anybody (on all sorts of issues, not just this war). Also, I think some "internet savvyness" has to be expected from search engine users. The assumption that just because some statements by Putin show up in search results, people would just flat out believe them, is rather insulting and belittling.