3 ms·

I may be a bit of a purist but once you start downranking sites as a search engine it's a bit of a slippery slope. What I have learned is you have to listen to

• skrtskrt 5y ago
  If you don't do some downranking based on something, then your search engine is always going to be garbage, because people are always going to be trying to game your ranking metrics - whether its blogspam or political "misinformation" - however you choose to define either of those
• jacquesm 5y ago
  What people believe or not is irrelevant, what was actually done is what matters. Russian disinfo is spread far and wide on the net (including on HN), anything that helps to curb it is a plus.
• austhrow743 5y ago
  Ranking is the whole point of a search engine.
  • ozim 5y ago
    In ideal world search engine should not need manual interventions in the algorithm. But then stuff happens in world, SEO optimizations start and some years later you get to know why google is shitty. Because it is a lost fight and only way to win is to take money. Other move is to not take money from advertisers and slowly die as you grow and more and more SEO optimizers mess up with you and find way to feed you garbage. Another losing move is to stay small and then you are not in a position to dictate anything or change anything but get scraps for survival≥
  • aparticulate 5y ago
    then what’s the point of the tweets? The only way this make sense is the status quo has relevant, ranked results that are potentially propaganda. What changed? The war made the information less relevant?
• labrador 5y ago
  A couple of problems with your argument 1) assumption that search engines should be neutral 2) assumption that downranking info that almost all fact checkers agree is false is a slippery slope will lead to downranking info that consensus reality says is true 3) assuming you know anything about Duck Duck Go's customer base or Weinberg's intent
  • aparticulate 5y ago
    maybe elitist but I think popular search engines should not be neutral for most people who are not me or your typical HN user. I personally want warts and all results. ie a search engine to treat me like an adult
  • zozbot234 5y ago
    "Fact checking" is just some rando's opinion, Facebook even admitted this in court. There's zero evidence that those who keep pushing for blind faith in those "fact checkers" even care in the least about really being accurate.
    • klyrs 5y ago
      That's what facebook did. Not all fact checkers are facebook.
  • soundnote 5y ago
    > 2) assumption that downranking info that almost all fact checkers agree is false is a slippery slope will lead to downranking info that consensus reality says is true You mean I should put my trust in random doofuses who police narrative more than fact. Say, is a person a terrorist or not? Well, they belonged to an organization that bombed buildings and committed armed robberies. The person was also convicted of possessing hundreds of pounds of explosives. But! They have the right politics, so it earns a "Mixed" rating and squirming about the lack of "a universal definition of terrorism" so you can't really say that yeah, the person was a terrorist. Maybe they had the bombs to admire them peacefully with no intent of ever handing anything over to other members of a criminal organization she was explicitly a part of. That's the problem. Fact-checking is checking whether Californians like something, not a check of whether the facts actually line up.