5 ms·
Enthusiastic DDG user, here. I don't understand the mental gymnastics that sees filtering out propaganda as "biased". I see it actually as the opposite, as re
by diego_moita 5y ago
Enthusiastic DDG user, here.
I don't understand the mental gymnastics that sees filtering out propaganda as "biased".
I see it actually as the opposite, as removing an intentional bias, as removing an intentional manipulation by the propaganda agent himself.
Compare to spam-filtering in your email: when you remove the noise, you get a better signal/noise ratio. When you hide information under a pile of noise you are actually "biasing".
There is no such thing as political-neutral information.
And if you believe that you alone, as an individual, have all the resources to efficiently filter out political manipulation in the information you receive then you're probably very close to the QAnon bunch.
- core-utility 5y agoThe issue comes in with propaganda itself not being black and white. There's inherently a estimation of whether something is propaganda or not, and it's often changing and based on limited information or a "sniff test".
- nojito 5y agoPropaganda with regards to DGG's reasoning is actually black and white.
- missedthecue 5y agoOnce you open the door, where does it stop? I think that's the question, not whether Russian propaganda is propaganda or not.
- awb 5y ago
- jsnodlin 5y ago
- Eddy_Viscosity2 5y agoThe same can be said of spam filtering in email. Who decides what is spam? I actually want a search engine to not show me garbage results, and propaganda is garbage results.
- missedthecue 5y agoSpam I feel has a very clear definition. Unsolicited emails from accounts and websites you don't know. What about propaganda? Is VOA propaganda? Are white house press releases propaganda? Every news service has a bias, some stronger than others. There is no clear line as to where propaganda ends allowable information begins.
- DyslexicAtheist 5y agowhat is being de-ranked isn't so called propaganda but outright disinformation. note the difference between disinfo and misinfo where the former is being spread intentionally the latter because the audience didn't know it was wrong. What DDG does the right thing by saying we will not put lies on the front-page of our results. It would be impossible to filter out most propaganda - at least not the effective kind. Using the word propaganda makes these measures sound unjustified. It's better to call it what it is: deranking lies from the top search results.
- philwelch 5y agoThat’s an argument for filtering out all propaganda, but it’s not a very convincing argument for selectively filtering “enemy” propaganda.
- the_optimist 5y agoInvoking Qanon in reasoning about why you should do something is the new self-lobotomy.
- twoneurons 5y agoLet's say I want to see the last speech of Putin. To see his perspective and predict his next moves. If I search on youtube, I will see the usual selection. BBC, Guardian, France24, DW, CNN None will show his speech. Just images of him, while a journalist is rambling about how Western politicians reacted.
- awb 5y ago“RT putin speech” works as expected: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rt+putin+speech&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rt+putin+speech&ia=web
- twoneurons 5y ago"As expected" -> none of the youtube videos are available in my country (UK)
- diego_moita 5y agoFor the record: we're not even talking about DDG anymore. The subject now is YouTube and UK.
- awb 5y agoThis post is about DDG
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- networkid 5y agoPropaganda is a general definition for the dessemination of politically biased messages. All the news is covered by this definition. Especially during the war time. I don't understand why DuckDuckGo decides for their users whose propaganda is better.
- awb 5y agoEveryone has a bias, yes. But there’s a huge difference between the Western perspective of a free press or independent journalist and state run propaganda. Judges make decisions about ambiguous cases all the time. Rarely are things absolute in life.
- networkid 5y agoLooks like you are enjoying consuming the content which corresponds to your political bias.
- bArray 5y ago> Compare to spam-filtering in your email: when you remove the noise, you get a better signal/noise ratio. And lose important emails. I don't mind my emails being tagged as "probable spam", but I should be the one to actually delete them (unless it's unbelievably low quality spam). > There is no such thing as political-neutral information. No, hence wanting multiple sources. > And if you believe that you alone, as an individual, have all the resources to efficiently filter out political manipulation in the information you receive then you're probably very close to the QAnon bunch. I don't want somebody to make that decision for me. How do we know DuckDuckGo have the resources? How do we know they don't 'rank' suggestions based on other political events? Obviously we have different opinions about exactly what we want from DuckDuckGo, that's okay. I'm not against DuckDuckGo adding a tag or rating to indicate what they believe the trustworthiness of the source to be - I would even appreciate if they distinguish between cnn.com and cmm.com (fake example to make the point).
- miked85 5y agoI don't see the "mental gymnastics" here, they either filter the information or not, right? I don't want tech companies deciding what is true or not, propaganda comes from all angles.