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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
      > Why would they? They should down-rank their trusted sources when their trusted sources publish disinformation. The problem is they don’t.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - danShumway 5y ago
        > They should down-rank their trusted sources when their trusted sources publish disinformation. If search engines thought that their trusted sources were publishing disinformation, they wouldn't be trusted sources. You just disagree with their decisions about what is trustworthy, that's all. There's nothing deeper going on, it's not surprising that a search engine trusts a source that it trusts.
        username3 5y ago
        > If search engines thought that their trusted sources were publishing disinformation, they wouldn't be trusted sources. You’re confusing propaganda sources with fallible trusted sources.
        danShumway 5y ago
        No, I'm commenting on the fact that search engines do block propaganda sources in the US when they think they're a significant source of harmful propaganda, but very obviously they don't block propaganda sources that they don't think are propaganda. Your problem is that these engines disagree with you about what is and isn't a harmful propaganda source. That's a reasonable disagreement to have. But you're trying to phrase this like it's some kind of deliberate action or general policy on their part, and it just doesn't make any sense. They do block American sites when they think those sites are significant sources of misinformation. And for extremely obvious reasons that should not be confusing or surprising to anyone, they don't block sites for violating policies that they don't think the sites have violated, because that would be an absurd system for moderating content. It's like asking, "why won't the police officers arrest all of the guilty people that they think are innocent?" Because they think they're innocent.

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
    > Why would they? They should down-rank their trusted sources when their trusted sources publish disinformation. The problem is they don’t.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - danShumway 5y ago
      > They should down-rank their trusted sources when their trusted sources publish disinformation. If search engines thought that their trusted sources were publishing disinformation, they wouldn't be trusted sources. You just disagree with their decisions about what is trustworthy, that's all. There's nothing deeper going on, it's not surprising that a search engine trusts a source that it trusts.
      - username3 5y ago
        > If search engines thought that their trusted sources were publishing disinformation, they wouldn't be trusted sources. You’re confusing propaganda sources with fallible trusted sources.
        danShumway 5y ago
        No, I'm commenting on the fact that search engines do block propaganda sources in the US when they think they're a significant source of harmful propaganda, but very obviously they don't block propaganda sources that they don't think are propaganda. Your problem is that these engines disagree with you about what is and isn't a harmful propaganda source. That's a reasonable disagreement to have. But you're trying to phrase this like it's some kind of deliberate action or general policy on their part, and it just doesn't make any sense. They do block American sites when they think those sites are significant sources of misinformation. And for extremely obvious reasons that should not be confusing or surprising to anyone, they don't block sites for violating policies that they don't think the sites have violated, because that would be an absurd system for moderating content. It's like asking, "why won't the police officers arrest all of the guilty people that they think are innocent?" Because they think they're innocent.