4 ms·

I switched to Brave search when DDG started censoring Ukraine war related news, and you should too. They jumped the shark. Search engines shouldn't be in the

by skrowl 4y ago

I switched to Brave search when DDG started censoring Ukraine war related news, and you should too. They jumped the shark. Search engines shouldn't be in the business of picking what content I see based on the owners of the search engines politics. Most other search engines are just reverse proxies for Google or Bing, so they inherit those biases.

Goronmon 4y ago
Search engines shouldn't be in the business of picking what content I see based on the owners of the search engines politics. Aren't all search engines in the business of picking what content you can see based on the politics of the owner?
- Zak 4y ago
  In theory, search engines are in the business of picking what content you can see based on the business interests of the owner.
yegg 4y ago
That's actually not what is happening. We are not ranking based on my politics (or anyone's politics for that matter). We actually do not intentionally censor any news results, meaning media outlets are not being removed or their stories displayed so far down in the results they are effectively removed. That is, unless legally prohibited, you should find all media outlets in our results, and they should generally show on top if you search for them by name or domain name. If you are seeing otherwise, please me know and we will investigate. A search engine's primary job is to rank results, trying to put results that most quickly and accurately answer the query on top. We do this ranking in a strictly non-partisan manner. Ranking for news-related searches is particularly difficult because for most news stories there are often hundreds of media outlets covering the same story, many with similar relevancy in terms of keyword matching and popularity. As such, we look to another ranking factor to ensure just the top of the results aren't taken by obviously very low-quality news results so that users have more sources of relevant, high-quality news results to compare and choose between. The non-partisan factor we've found to help accomplish this is a rare, but well-documented history of a site's complete lack of news reporting standards, such as routinely using spam or clickbait to artificially inflate traffic, consistently publishing stories without citing sources, censoring stories due to operating with very limited press freedom, or misleading readers about who owns, funds, and authors stories for the site. And since we do not censor sites, even state-sponsored media in countries with very limited press freedom, these sites will still show up in results, and even on top like when you search for them directly.
- mistermann 4y ago
  > a site's complete lack of news reporting standards, such as routinely using spam or clickbait to artificially inflate traffic, consistently publishing stories without citing sources, censoring stories due to operating with very limited press freedom, or misleading readers about who owns, funds, and authors stories for the site I'm curious of the implementation. Are these sites in a list and that alters their ranking in the results? Or some other approach?
  - barbacoa 4y ago
    @yegg Would also be very curious to hear an answer to this. Its been long rumored that Google has weights or boost/throttle values that are manually assigned to websites by humans which impact ranking. Would be great to understand if DDG is following in Google's footsteps.
- cudder 4y ago
  rt.com does not show up in your search results when searching for either "rt" or "russia today".
  - herdcall 4y ago
    I just searched for "russia today" on DDG and rt.com did NOT show up on the first page, instead the page has: aljazeera, dailymail, cnn, bbc, reuters, themoscotimes, wikipedia, cnbc, npr, and yahoo. And this is from California (Orange County).
    - yegg 4y ago
      Not sure what is going on there (will investigate, not intentional), but try https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rt&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rt&ia=web & https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rt+ukraine&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rt+ukraine&ia=web
    - boomboomsubban 4y ago
      To be fair, they changed their name to RT over a decade ago. Neither their home page nor their about page feature the word "today."
sgc 4y ago
I agree. May he with the biggest propaganda machine win! /s There is obviously a massive problem with modern disinformation tactics, to the point that if you deny it, I presume you have an agenda to sell. There are most definitely terrible things that should not be legal to knowingly include in search results, ever (yes, actually, do think about the children, etc). So all reasonable people already accept that some things should be censored, as a moral and legal obligation. The correct solution is not as simple as unfettered libertarianism would have you believe. Thus, agree or disagree with that action, I cannot reach the conclusion that they have somehow broken an inviolable code, especially since all algorithms include publishing choices anyways.

by skrowl 4y ago

Goronmon 4y ago

Search engines shouldn't be in the business of picking what content I see based on the owners of the search engines politics. Aren't all search engines in the business of picking what content you can see based on the politics of the owner?

Zak 4y ago
In theory, search engines are in the business of picking what content you can see based on the business interests of the owner.

yegg 4y ago

That's actually not what is happening. We are not ranking based on my politics (or anyone's politics for that matter). We actually do not intentionally censor any news results, meaning media outlets are not being removed or their stories displayed so far down in the results they are effectively removed. That is, unless legally prohibited, you should find all media outlets in our results, and they should generally show on top if you search for them by name or domain name. If you are seeing otherwise, please me know and we will investigate. A search engine's primary job is to rank results, trying to put results that most quickly and accurately answer the query on top. We do this ranking in a strictly non-partisan manner. Ranking for news-related searches is particularly difficult because for most news stories there are often hundreds of media outlets covering the same story, many with similar relevancy in terms of keyword matching and popularity. As such, we look to another ranking factor to ensure just the top of the results aren't taken by obviously very low-quality news results so that users have more sources of relevant, high-quality news results to compare and choose between. The non-partisan factor we've found to help accomplish this is a rare, but well-documented history of a site's complete lack of news reporting standards, such as routinely using spam or clickbait to artificially inflate traffic, consistently publishing stories without citing sources, censoring stories due to operating with very limited press freedom, or misleading readers about who owns, funds, and authors stories for the site. And since we do not censor sites, even state-sponsored media in countries with very limited press freedom, these sites will still show up in results, and even on top like when you search for them directly.

mistermann 4y ago
> a site's complete lack of news reporting standards, such as routinely using spam or clickbait to artificially inflate traffic, consistently publishing stories without citing sources, censoring stories due to operating with very limited press freedom, or misleading readers about who owns, funds, and authors stories for the site I'm curious of the implementation. Are these sites in a list and that alters their ranking in the results? Or some other approach?
- barbacoa 4y ago
  @yegg Would also be very curious to hear an answer to this. Its been long rumored that Google has weights or boost/throttle values that are manually assigned to websites by humans which impact ranking. Would be great to understand if DDG is following in Google's footsteps.
cudder 4y ago
rt.com does not show up in your search results when searching for either "rt" or "russia today".
- herdcall 4y ago
  I just searched for "russia today" on DDG and rt.com did NOT show up on the first page, instead the page has: aljazeera, dailymail, cnn, bbc, reuters, themoscotimes, wikipedia, cnbc, npr, and yahoo. And this is from California (Orange County).
  - yegg 4y ago
    Not sure what is going on there (will investigate, not intentional), but try https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rt&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rt&ia=web & https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rt+ukraine&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rt+ukraine&ia=web
  - boomboomsubban 4y ago
    To be fair, they changed their name to RT over a decade ago. Neither their home page nor their about page feature the word "today."

sgc 4y ago

I agree. May he with the biggest propaganda machine win! /s There is obviously a massive problem with modern disinformation tactics, to the point that if you deny it, I presume you have an agenda to sell. There are most definitely terrible things that should not be legal to knowingly include in search results, ever (yes, actually, do think about the children, etc). So all reasonable people already accept that some things should be censored, as a moral and legal obligation. The correct solution is not as simple as unfettered libertarianism would have you believe. Thus, agree or disagree with that action, I cannot reach the conclusion that they have somehow broken an inviolable code, especially since all algorithms include publishing choices anyways.