10 ms·

DuckDuckGo faces controversy over tracking agreement with Microsoft

112 points by Schiphol 4y ago

akaBruce 4y ago
I believe this discussion is about the same issue with their browsers not blocking Microsoft-owned trackers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31490515 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31490515
Wright123 4y ago
[dead]
jhoechtl 4y ago
Any search engine which is on the drip of <insert big one> will ultimately fail. Search engines are not philanthropic. Bing used to behave in good manner as they couldn't attract enough paying customers so their strategy was to impair Google by attracting traffic to Bing wherever and by whatever means, even if it meant a loss for Microsoft. Now as Google search is the entry page to Amazon, Bing sees some increase in serious traffic and MS is getting more serious about their business strategy. We don't need a Web3, we need a decentralized spider.
valvar 4y ago
I switched to Kagi[0] when DDG announced their implementation of selective censorship[1]. The results are much better, and I use the !g bang way less often (for DDG I was basically always using it, making the bangs the only actually useful feature of DDG for me). [0] https://kagi.com/ https://kagi.com/ [1] https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1501716484761997318 https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1501716484761997318 — I think it's sad that I have to clarify that I am personally also sickened by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but that I don't want DDG to be an arbiter of truth despite that
- 10729287 4y ago
  I'm also very happy with Kagi, and i'm a french user. Very, very impressive.
  - GekkePrutser 4y ago
    Did you have to wait long for the invite?
    - mardifoufs 4y ago
      Was around a week for me.
- endemic 4y ago
  What makes you trust Kagi more than DDG? Is their crawling/ranking algo open source?
  - valvar 4y ago
    No, I only have their word to go on, but at least they explicitly say that they are avoiding censorship[0], while DDG are quite open with it. I also did some smell tests by searching controversial topics, and Kagi does seem to present a more mixed bag of sources than DDG and Google on the first page of results. [0] https://kagi.com/faq#censoring https://kagi.com/faq#censoring
    - anglerfife 4y ago
      How is a mixed bag of sources a good thing? A collection of reputable sources would be better. There's no such thing as neutral however breitbart and fox news (both of whom I've seen come up in searching) actively spread disinformation however because they're news sites aligned with the american right downranking them is a political statement despite the list of lies they've spread. Theres no winning as half the people want to be lied to and it has so obviously been weaponized.
      - ekianjo 4y ago
        > actively spread disinformation however because they're news sites aligned with the american right If you think disinformation comes from one side you have been brainwashed good
        numeri 4y ago
        If you think the distribution of disinformation is uniform across both sides, you've also been brainwashed good. There is plenty of peer-reviewed research on this, but here are two that I found after brief searching: https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/right-and-left-partisanship-predicts-asymmetric-vulnerability-to-misinformation/ https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/right-and-left... https://cyber.harvard.edu/publications/2017/08/mediacloud https://cyber.harvard.edu/publications/2017/08/mediacloud
- paldepind2 4y ago
  Calling what DDG did "selective censorship" is a very unfair description. Essentially a search engine is about sorting search results and any search engine must do that based on some idea about what information is good and what is bad. DDG has been doing that since day one. In fact, the primary reason DDG was created was because its creator thought they could improve search results by getting rid of things that showed up in Google that they thought where bad (the privacy selling point came later)[1]. You may disagree with some of these choices (which is fair) but calling them "censorship" is just using bad sounding words that don't really apply. 1: Source, Gabriel Weinberg's book Traction.
  - bachmeier 4y ago
    Folks throw that word around so much that it's become neutral. The people that use DDG overwhelmingly are not using it as a search engine to find Russian disinformation. This is literally a case of a business announcing that it's working to do its stated business activity, which is to provide relevant search results.
  - ColinHayhurst 4y ago
    What he actually said: "At DuckDuckGo, we've been rolling out search updates that down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation." You may note what Microsoft had stated earlier [0] "We are removing RT news apps from our Windows app store and further de-ranking these sites’ search results on Bing so that it will only return RT and Sputnik links when a user clearly intends to navigate to those pages." [0] https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2022/02/28/ukraine-russia-digital-war-cyberattacks/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2022/02/28/ukraine...
    - laszlojamf 4y ago
      I'm just waiting for the day my flashlight starts deciding what to shine a light on based on my perceived intentions
      - rapind 4y ago
        I guess that will be the day that you buy a flashlight intended to rank and only light up the top 10 / 20 most relevant things? It's like complaining about water making you wet.
- sofixa 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
    >And who do you want to be an arbiter of truth? Each individual for themselves? That's fair and noble, but IMHO naive I know who wants to be the arbiters of truth, and I know who I don't want to be the arbiters of truth
  - freeflight 4y ago
    > RT wouldn't have had an English version website and YouTube channel The same applies to the American equivalents of these outlets [0], which are not just far more numerous, but have always made a point of broadcasting in non-English languages, as not doing so used to be literally illegal [1]. > If an enemy ( yes, Russia is an enemy to world peace and humanity, no, the regular Russian isn't) Russia can be an enemy to the US, but declaring something or somebody an "enemy of world peace and humanity" is not only quite sensationalist, but conveniently fits the narrative the American equivalents of RT have been globally blasting out for many decades. > The paradox of tolerance is at work - allowing Russian state sponsored propaganda, and even worse, Russian state sponsored parties ( RN in France, AfD in Germany, Vuzrajdane in Bulgaria) in democratic countries, they will exploit that to sow division and destroy democracies from within, same as the Nazis did. What foreign sponsors did the Nazis have? In the case of the German AfD most of the actual know-how, enabling their populist rise, is actually based on American platforms and talent [2]. A lot of their finances are similarly questionable as NPD finances have been, as in; Having an oddly common proximity with the German BND [3]. Yet any kind of nationalist political extremism in Europe must somehow be the fault of Russia, just like US presidents getting elected was the fault of Russia, all very convenient narrative wise, just not very realistic. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America [1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-ban-spreads-government-made-news-to-americans/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-29/the-german-far-right-finds-friends-through-facebook https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-29/the-germa... [3] https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/afd-parteienfinanzierung-grossspende-von-mutmasslichem-ex-waffenhaendler-aus-bangkok-a-1248416.html https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/afd-parteienfinan...
- grapeskin 4y ago
  People complain about search engines being full of garbage and clearly false info, then complain that DDG took action against sources that publish false info. Can’t win.
- leadingthenet 4y ago
  Another vote for Kagi! Every time I tried to switch to DDG I ended up reverting to using the !g bang on every other query. While Kagi supports the same functionality, I haven’t felt the need to use it once in the past two months that I’ve been trialing the private beta. It’s genuinely better than Google for me, which I never thought would happen.
- acatton 4y ago
  Even though Kagi looks and sound nice, I can't cope with signed-in-required search. I understand that their business model is "you pay, you are our user, we won't sell your data"[1] But there is a simple privacy-friendly business model to be made with free anonymous search engine as well, when you look for "horses" we show you ads of horses. This is what Duckduckgo Search and Google Search both do. (Well google then runs ads on many website which are then linked to your search query, that's the real issue) Now with Kagi, I have a company which knows all my darkest secrets whether I use a different computer behind a VPN or not. [1] https://kagi.com/faq#privacy https://kagi.com/faq#privacy
  - GekkePrutser 4y ago
    True, there should be an anony way to prove that you've paid. That would solve the issue.
    - dmacvicar 4y ago
      Mullvad VPN does this when you pay with cash.
- Shadonototra 4y ago
  kagi is just like duckduckgo under the hood they track the shit out of you, even more than DDG with their machine learning tools for user based scoring system for links remember everyone, duckduckgo refused every independent audits, proprietary stuff like kagi is no exception, history repeats itself also i find it weird that product placement comments like this one are always ranked super high on this website they are done with DDG, they shifted focus to kagi instead? suspicious, it's not even out yet, only work on macOS, and is a team of "benevolent living in San Fransisco", living on donations in the most expensive state of the US, sure :thinking_face:
  - asddubs 4y ago
    yeah, I've kind of felt since DDG first showed up, it's weird that people just take it at face value. IMO, privacy first === open source, everything else is smoke and mirrors.
  - freediver 4y ago
    You got literally everything wrong about Kagi. Kagi founder here. Responding as I will not stay silent to public defamation. I'd politely ask you not to do what you did here (drop a ton of accusations without a shred of evidence) again. > kagi is just like duckduckgo There is almost nothing similar between Kagi and DuckDuckGo, starting with the fact that DuckDuckGo is a global brand that has ~100M users and sells ads to make money, where we have few thousand and are 100% user supported with a subscription business model. > under the hood they track the shit out of you, even more than DDG with their machine learning tools for user based scoring system for links We literally don't. Kagi is not only zero telemetry but we do not log or associate searches with an account. The reason is we both don't want and don't need to. Our business is selling subscriptions not user data. > also i find it weird that product placement comments like this one are always ranked super high on this website Perhaps people simply genuinly love the product? > only work on macOS I think you refer to our Orion browser, which does work on Apple devices only for now. One needs to start somewhere. Kagi search works in any browser on any OS. > and is a team of "benevolent living in San Fransisco", living on donations in the most expensive state of the US I literally have no idea what you tried to imply here. You can find my email in bio and reach out if you need any additional clarification, I am happy to provide it.
- Copenjin 4y ago
  That's exactly the kind of "censorship" you want. I understand the sentiment, but you couldn't have chosen a worst example, I hope it's not this specific instance of censorship that really troubles you. Removing what is objectively, yes, spam is ok.
- yegg 4y ago
  Hi, CEO & Founder of DuckDuckGo here. I see a lot of confusion here too, 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 let 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.
  - 9Ljdg6p8ZSzejt 4y ago
    Seriously, try kagi. Its better.
    - Zhyl 4y ago
      Are you suggesting to the CEO and founder of DDG to try Kagi?
  - icc97 4y ago
    I love what you're been fighting for and it's great that you're on here. I'd even accept you accepting MS tracking cookies if you're transparent about it - you have to make money and I'd rather you stay in business. But I can't see anything from this post or the answers you gave to the metro specifically refuting this [1]: "The new @DuckDuckGo browsers for iOS/Android don't block Microsoft data flows, for LinkedIn or Bing" [1]: https://twitter.com/thezedwards/status/1528808759027331072
- dkobia 4y ago
  Another vote for Kagi here. What a breath of fresh air. I didn’t think they could pull it off but it seems they have.
- stefanve 4y ago
  it's not perse about truth but it is about facts, I personally don't have a problem with downgrading lies or denies of facts. In the end of the day a algo is ranking pages, algo's can be manipulated or gamed and they are not only by lot's of marketeers but also by government agents. While I don't believe a company should decide if an opinion about gun controle should be rankt or not. but if someone is claiming that these are just crisis actors and nothing happend I don't see a problem to block it. After all we are used to blocking spam these things are spam. I don't see a reason to treat this as any different just because they are selling political lies instate of product lies (and a lot of times these people are selling products in the end) these kind of lies are eroding democracy and should be treaded the same way as some one yelling fire in a cinema
Schiphol 4y ago
It should be said that, if I understand it correctly, these worries are about the DDG browser, not their search, which is what most people (myself included) associate with them and care about.
- bilekas 4y ago
  This. And it also should be said that the Metro.co.uk is quite garbage sensationalism . I don't know many who use their browser, personally I moved over to Brave recently and so far so good.
  - k__ 4y ago
    I use Brave's browser and search too. Sad to hear that DDG lost it's integrity with this move.
    - nicce 4y ago
      To be honest, I would trust more DDG than Brave still. Brave’s business model is based on ads which is very controversial, and that model always ends up compensating with the cost of user privacy.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - MomoXenosaga 4y ago
        The business model of the internet is ads.
  - wtch98 4y ago
    Metro is from the same group that brings you the daily mail, of course it's garbage
  - criley2 4y ago
    This is actually a really classic use of the 'ad hominem' to try and reject the argument by attacking the source. I do agree that Metro is a bad source, however if you read the article, you'd find it's not actually that bad. I say this because NPR was running the same angle yesterday, and several "more reputable" sources are reporting the same thing as well. Frankly, for DDG to spend all this money blasting "we actually care about privacy" advertisements in radio and online, and then to play around like this, it's certainly dangerous. That advertising campaign is probably why news outlets are even discussing this. "You defined your brand standard, why shouldn't we hold you to it". I'm sure their marketing folks are upset! All that money on a message, undone in a flash.
godmode2019 4y ago
I had to stop using duckduckgo it use to have quality search results compared to google, now it doesn't. Even bing is better than duckduckgo's results
- Kiro 4y ago
  DDG is Bing.
  - hoppyhoppy2 4y ago
    That's largely, but not entirely, true. >traditional links in the search results, which we also source from multiple partners, though most commonly from Bing (and none from Google). https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...
  - godmode2019 4y ago
    Why don't you side by side two tabs and search the same thing. They are not the same, duckduckgo use to be decent. Now I can't find anything programming related. I even removes it as my default on my work computer its that bad.
    - matwood 4y ago
      > Now I can't find anything programming related. Sounds like you learned that the profile Google has on you has benefits. The more of the general population that uses DDG, the more the results will skew towards the general population who are not programmers.
muchtest 4y ago
DuckDuckGo showed face when they start down ranking "fake news".
- dathos 4y ago
  Are you saying fake news doesn't exist or how should I interpet the quotes?
  - ldiracdelta 4y ago
    They became the arbiter of truth. The edittor, working for the ministry of truth.
  - muchtest 4y ago
    I'm saying it's a broad term - forget Russian news. Go ask take a Fox watcher and a CNN watcher to point out what they interpret as "Fake News" and you'll get 100s of differences.
- maccard 4y ago
  If I search for something on a search engine, I am trusting the operator of that to filter and down rank based on their own criteria, whether that's baidu, yandex, Google or DDG. It's completely reasonable for a site who's job it is to filter and aggregate results to penalise the spread of misinformation. If they don't, why am I using it at all?
Schopenhauer01 4y ago
Tried brave search for a while, its not great. Should I really selfhost searx? Is there any other good alternative? I've lost trust in DDG.
- riidom 4y ago
  Been on brave search for a week roundabout. All of a sudden I got all these "fake-github" results I heard people speaking of, and which I never saw myself on DDG.
- rglullis 4y ago
  Brave with the "mix in results from google" seems to be enough for me.
- ulimn 4y ago
  Try Kagi. I'm using it for months now and it's surprisingly good. It also has the !g and such bang characters, but I rarely need it.
- infamia 4y ago
  DDG followed by a !s (Startpage) if needed always gives me more and higher quality results than Google or any other combination of search engines I've tried. YMMV. Not sure there is any other privacy related search engine worth using. Brave feels pretty sketchy to me skimming ad dollars.
JimWestergren 4y ago
Even if this is just affecting the browser and only on a few domains the brand damage here for DDG is huge. It took DuckDuckGo years to built up their positive privacy reputation and it can all fall apart in a few days.
yegg 4y ago
Hi, I'm the CEO & Founder of DuckDuckGo. To be clear (since I see a ton of confusion going around about this story), when you load our search results, you are anonymous, including ads. That is, this news cycle is not about our search engine, it's about our browsers -- and, contrary to the headlines, we actually do restrict Microsoft trackers there today a great deal, and more than the major browsers do. When most other browsers on the market talk about tracking protection they are referring to 3rd-party cookie protection e.g., blocking them) and fingerprinting protection (i.e., restricting APIS scripts can use), and our browsers impose these restrictions on all third-party tracking scripts, including those from Microsoft. We also have a lot of other web protections that also apply to Microsoft scripts (and everyone else) that most browsers don't do, including Global Privacy Control, 1st-party cookie expiration, referrer header trimming, new cookie consent handling (in our Mac beta), fire button (one-click) data clearing, and more. What this article is talking about specifically is one web protection that the major browsers don't even attempt to do — stopping third-party tracking scripts from even loading on third-party websites. See for yourself the bottom 'tracker content blocking' section of this audit site: https://privacytests.org/ios.html https://privacytests.org/ios.html (scroll to the very bottom). This web protection is a particular challenge to get right because websites can easily break when scripts that they depend on don't load, but because it makes for better privacy and faster page loads, we've taken it on while still trying to not break sites. As a result, it is far from perfect, as we can't block all scripts do to persistent breakage issues (which we try to workaround), and domains change all the time (and we continuously crawl sites looking for new tracking domains). Though because we're doing this protection where we can, and also offer many other unique protections (e.g., Google AMP protection, smarter HTTPS upgrading, tracking protection for other apps in Android, email protection to block trackers for emails sent to your regular inbox, etc.), users get way more privacy protection with our app than they would using other browsers. Our goal has always been and remains to provide the most privacy we can in one download. And we have a lot more planned. The issue at hand is all of our web protections apply to Microsoft scripts on 3rd-party sites (again, this is off of DuckDuckGo.com, i.e., not related to search) except this one around full content blocking, as we are currently contractually restricted by Microsoft there. However, this limited contractual restriction (about this one web protection) is the only one we have, and we have been and are working with them as we speak to reduce or remove it. I understand this is all rather confusing because it is a search syndication contract that is preventing us from doing a non-search thing. That's because our product is a bundle of multiple privacy protections, and this is a distribution requirement imposed on us as part of the search syndication agreement that helps us privately use Bing results to provide you with better private search results overall. While a lot of what you see on our results page privately incorporates content from other sources (including our own indexes), e.g., Wikipedia, local listings, sports, stocks, lyrics, weather, quick answers, etc., etc., we source most of our traditional links and images privately from Bing (though because of other search technology our link and image results still may look different). Really only two companies (Google and Microsoft) have a high-quality global web link index (because I believe it costs upwards of a billion dollars a year to do), and so literally every other global search engine that wants to offer a search product competitive with Google for mainstream users, needs to bootstrap with one or both of them. The same is true for maps btw -- only the biggest companies can similarly afford to accurately map every neighborhood. And we are still a very small company relative to these companies -- literally on the order of 1,000 times smaller. Anyway, I hope this provides some helpful context. I understand why people are upset with us on this, and we will do better. We're working on updates to our app store descriptions and other materials. (Also FYI -- this was discussed extensively at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31490515 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31490515). This is also a somewhat misleading title since it's not about our search engine, which people would assume, and also as noted above Microsoft scripts are actually restricted in our browser a lot, so I would suggest changing it.)
gnuj3 4y ago
I have signed up a trial of Kagi few months ago and once I got the invite I was sceptical but I thought I’ll give it a go and I never switched back since. It’s bloody awesome, results are way better than Google, never-mind DDG. Customisation is awesome too. I’m very happy with it and as soon as it comes out of beta, I’ll happily support it.
someotherperson 4y ago
It's really strange how people seem to be going out of their way to defend DDG. They actively censor content based on political views and they now selectively enable Microsoft tracking. All in the span of like a month. And in return for all of this you still get a half-baked browsing experience. Someone remind me what value DDG actually provides at this point? It feels like we're witnessing a self-implosion.
- car_analogy 4y ago
  > They actively censor content based on political views This is news to me - could you elaborate? Does it go beyond just passively duplicating Bing's censorship due to using their search results?
  - MarcellusDrum 4y ago
    They deliberately lower the ranking of Russian news sites.[0] [0]:https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1501716484761997318 https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1501716484761997318
    - stinos 4y ago
      At least post the full quote, containing the "sites associated with Russian disinformation." bit.
  - schmuelio 4y ago
    It's basically people thinking that Russian disinformation is a political belief. People are angry that a search engine (something dedicated to giving you relevant and true information based on what you searched for) is less likely to give you Russian state propaganda because the right wing have associated their political beliefs with that of pure free speech without realizing that such a thing just doesn't make sense in most modern settings.
    - someotherperson 4y ago
      The political beliefs here refer to the CEO's political beliefs, given that this reaction is a consequence of the CEO's views on the conflict in Ukraine. There is a reason why DDG isn't actively censoring Chinese, American or Israeli disinformation as well, and that's because it's not in the CEO's political beliefs to do so. But since you're trying to muddy the waters, I'm not "right wing" nor do I support the Russian invasion into Ukraine. I would have a similar reaction if CNN, Fox News or BBC were censored as well. I also wholly reject that a search engine's purpose is for "giving you [...] true information" -- I don't need that nor have I asked for it.
atc 4y ago
urlwolf 4y ago
I moved from DDG to metager and coudn't be happier.
SMAAART 4y ago
DDG needs to understand that they are in the business of "trust", which fuels their brand, and trust is gained each and every day over a long period of time, and it can be lost in an instance. And when we deal with "trust" perception is just as relevant as reality. This is a fork in the road for DDG, they can come out of this stronger than ever, or be tarnished and doomed.

112 points by Schiphol 4y ago

I believe this discussion is about the same issue with their browsers not blocking Microsoft-owned trackers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31490515 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31490515

Wright123 4y ago

[dead]

jhoechtl 4y ago

Any search engine which is on the drip of <insert big one> will ultimately fail. Search engines are not philanthropic. Bing used to behave in good manner as they couldn't attract enough paying customers so their strategy was to impair Google by attracting traffic to Bing wherever and by whatever means, even if it meant a loss for Microsoft. Now as Google search is the entry page to Amazon, Bing sees some increase in serious traffic and MS is getting more serious about their business strategy. We don't need a Web3, we need a decentralized spider.

valvar 4y ago

I switched to Kagi[0] when DDG announced their implementation of selective censorship[1]. The results are much better, and I use the !g bang way less often (for DDG I was basically always using it, making the bangs the only actually useful feature of DDG for me). [0] https://kagi.com/ https://kagi.com/ [1] https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1501716484761997318 https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1501716484761997318 — I think it's sad that I have to clarify that I am personally also sickened by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but that I don't want DDG to be an arbiter of truth despite that

10729287 4y ago
I'm also very happy with Kagi, and i'm a french user. Very, very impressive.
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  Did you have to wait long for the invite?
  - mardifoufs 4y ago
    Was around a week for me.
endemic 4y ago
What makes you trust Kagi more than DDG? Is their crawling/ranking algo open source?
- valvar 4y ago
  No, I only have their word to go on, but at least they explicitly say that they are avoiding censorship[0], while DDG are quite open with it. I also did some smell tests by searching controversial topics, and Kagi does seem to present a more mixed bag of sources than DDG and Google on the first page of results. [0] https://kagi.com/faq#censoring https://kagi.com/faq#censoring
  - anglerfife 4y ago
    How is a mixed bag of sources a good thing? A collection of reputable sources would be better. There's no such thing as neutral however breitbart and fox news (both of whom I've seen come up in searching) actively spread disinformation however because they're news sites aligned with the american right downranking them is a political statement despite the list of lies they've spread. Theres no winning as half the people want to be lied to and it has so obviously been weaponized.
    - ekianjo 4y ago
      > actively spread disinformation however because they're news sites aligned with the american right If you think disinformation comes from one side you have been brainwashed good
      - numeri 4y ago
        If you think the distribution of disinformation is uniform across both sides, you've also been brainwashed good. There is plenty of peer-reviewed research on this, but here are two that I found after brief searching: https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/right-and-left-partisanship-predicts-asymmetric-vulnerability-to-misinformation/ https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/right-and-left... https://cyber.harvard.edu/publications/2017/08/mediacloud https://cyber.harvard.edu/publications/2017/08/mediacloud
paldepind2 4y ago
Calling what DDG did "selective censorship" is a very unfair description. Essentially a search engine is about sorting search results and any search engine must do that based on some idea about what information is good and what is bad. DDG has been doing that since day one. In fact, the primary reason DDG was created was because its creator thought they could improve search results by getting rid of things that showed up in Google that they thought where bad (the privacy selling point came later)[1]. You may disagree with some of these choices (which is fair) but calling them "censorship" is just using bad sounding words that don't really apply. 1: Source, Gabriel Weinberg's book Traction.
- bachmeier 4y ago
  Folks throw that word around so much that it's become neutral. The people that use DDG overwhelmingly are not using it as a search engine to find Russian disinformation. This is literally a case of a business announcing that it's working to do its stated business activity, which is to provide relevant search results.
- ColinHayhurst 4y ago
  What he actually said: "At DuckDuckGo, we've been rolling out search updates that down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation." You may note what Microsoft had stated earlier [0] "We are removing RT news apps from our Windows app store and further de-ranking these sites’ search results on Bing so that it will only return RT and Sputnik links when a user clearly intends to navigate to those pages." [0] https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2022/02/28/ukraine-russia-digital-war-cyberattacks/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2022/02/28/ukraine...
  - laszlojamf 4y ago
    I'm just waiting for the day my flashlight starts deciding what to shine a light on based on my perceived intentions
    - rapind 4y ago
      I guess that will be the day that you buy a flashlight intended to rank and only light up the top 10 / 20 most relevant things? It's like complaining about water making you wet.
sofixa 4y ago
[flagged]
- throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
  >And who do you want to be an arbiter of truth? Each individual for themselves? That's fair and noble, but IMHO naive I know who wants to be the arbiters of truth, and I know who I don't want to be the arbiters of truth
- freeflight 4y ago
  > RT wouldn't have had an English version website and YouTube channel The same applies to the American equivalents of these outlets [0], which are not just far more numerous, but have always made a point of broadcasting in non-English languages, as not doing so used to be literally illegal [1]. > If an enemy ( yes, Russia is an enemy to world peace and humanity, no, the regular Russian isn't) Russia can be an enemy to the US, but declaring something or somebody an "enemy of world peace and humanity" is not only quite sensationalist, but conveniently fits the narrative the American equivalents of RT have been globally blasting out for many decades. > The paradox of tolerance is at work - allowing Russian state sponsored propaganda, and even worse, Russian state sponsored parties ( RN in France, AfD in Germany, Vuzrajdane in Bulgaria) in democratic countries, they will exploit that to sow division and destroy democracies from within, same as the Nazis did. What foreign sponsors did the Nazis have? In the case of the German AfD most of the actual know-how, enabling their populist rise, is actually based on American platforms and talent [2]. A lot of their finances are similarly questionable as NPD finances have been, as in; Having an oddly common proximity with the German BND [3]. Yet any kind of nationalist political extremism in Europe must somehow be the fault of Russia, just like US presidents getting elected was the fault of Russia, all very convenient narrative wise, just not very realistic. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America [1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-ban-spreads-government-made-news-to-americans/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-29/the-german-far-right-finds-friends-through-facebook https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-29/the-germa... [3] https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/afd-parteienfinanzierung-grossspende-von-mutmasslichem-ex-waffenhaendler-aus-bangkok-a-1248416.html https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/afd-parteienfinan...
grapeskin 4y ago
People complain about search engines being full of garbage and clearly false info, then complain that DDG took action against sources that publish false info. Can’t win.
leadingthenet 4y ago
Another vote for Kagi! Every time I tried to switch to DDG I ended up reverting to using the !g bang on every other query. While Kagi supports the same functionality, I haven’t felt the need to use it once in the past two months that I’ve been trialing the private beta. It’s genuinely better than Google for me, which I never thought would happen.
acatton 4y ago
Even though Kagi looks and sound nice, I can't cope with signed-in-required search. I understand that their business model is "you pay, you are our user, we won't sell your data"[1] But there is a simple privacy-friendly business model to be made with free anonymous search engine as well, when you look for "horses" we show you ads of horses. This is what Duckduckgo Search and Google Search both do. (Well google then runs ads on many website which are then linked to your search query, that's the real issue) Now with Kagi, I have a company which knows all my darkest secrets whether I use a different computer behind a VPN or not. [1] https://kagi.com/faq#privacy https://kagi.com/faq#privacy
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  True, there should be an anony way to prove that you've paid. That would solve the issue.
  - dmacvicar 4y ago
    Mullvad VPN does this when you pay with cash.
Shadonototra 4y ago
kagi is just like duckduckgo under the hood they track the shit out of you, even more than DDG with their machine learning tools for user based scoring system for links remember everyone, duckduckgo refused every independent audits, proprietary stuff like kagi is no exception, history repeats itself also i find it weird that product placement comments like this one are always ranked super high on this website they are done with DDG, they shifted focus to kagi instead? suspicious, it's not even out yet, only work on macOS, and is a team of "benevolent living in San Fransisco", living on donations in the most expensive state of the US, sure :thinking_face:
- asddubs 4y ago
  yeah, I've kind of felt since DDG first showed up, it's weird that people just take it at face value. IMO, privacy first === open source, everything else is smoke and mirrors.
- freediver 4y ago
  You got literally everything wrong about Kagi. Kagi founder here. Responding as I will not stay silent to public defamation. I'd politely ask you not to do what you did here (drop a ton of accusations without a shred of evidence) again. > kagi is just like duckduckgo There is almost nothing similar between Kagi and DuckDuckGo, starting with the fact that DuckDuckGo is a global brand that has ~100M users and sells ads to make money, where we have few thousand and are 100% user supported with a subscription business model. > under the hood they track the shit out of you, even more than DDG with their machine learning tools for user based scoring system for links We literally don't. Kagi is not only zero telemetry but we do not log or associate searches with an account. The reason is we both don't want and don't need to. Our business is selling subscriptions not user data. > also i find it weird that product placement comments like this one are always ranked super high on this website Perhaps people simply genuinly love the product? > only work on macOS I think you refer to our Orion browser, which does work on Apple devices only for now. One needs to start somewhere. Kagi search works in any browser on any OS. > and is a team of "benevolent living in San Fransisco", living on donations in the most expensive state of the US I literally have no idea what you tried to imply here. You can find my email in bio and reach out if you need any additional clarification, I am happy to provide it.
Copenjin 4y ago
That's exactly the kind of "censorship" you want. I understand the sentiment, but you couldn't have chosen a worst example, I hope it's not this specific instance of censorship that really troubles you. Removing what is objectively, yes, spam is ok.
yegg 4y ago
Hi, CEO & Founder of DuckDuckGo here. I see a lot of confusion here too, 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 let 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.
- 9Ljdg6p8ZSzejt 4y ago
  Seriously, try kagi. Its better.
  - Zhyl 4y ago
    Are you suggesting to the CEO and founder of DDG to try Kagi?
- icc97 4y ago
  I love what you're been fighting for and it's great that you're on here. I'd even accept you accepting MS tracking cookies if you're transparent about it - you have to make money and I'd rather you stay in business. But I can't see anything from this post or the answers you gave to the metro specifically refuting this [1]: "The new @DuckDuckGo browsers for iOS/Android don't block Microsoft data flows, for LinkedIn or Bing" [1]: https://twitter.com/thezedwards/status/1528808759027331072
dkobia 4y ago
Another vote for Kagi here. What a breath of fresh air. I didn’t think they could pull it off but it seems they have.
stefanve 4y ago
it's not perse about truth but it is about facts, I personally don't have a problem with downgrading lies or denies of facts. In the end of the day a algo is ranking pages, algo's can be manipulated or gamed and they are not only by lot's of marketeers but also by government agents. While I don't believe a company should decide if an opinion about gun controle should be rankt or not. but if someone is claiming that these are just crisis actors and nothing happend I don't see a problem to block it. After all we are used to blocking spam these things are spam. I don't see a reason to treat this as any different just because they are selling political lies instate of product lies (and a lot of times these people are selling products in the end) these kind of lies are eroding democracy and should be treaded the same way as some one yelling fire in a cinema

Schiphol 4y ago

It should be said that, if I understand it correctly, these worries are about the DDG browser, not their search, which is what most people (myself included) associate with them and care about.

bilekas 4y ago
This. And it also should be said that the Metro.co.uk is quite garbage sensationalism . I don't know many who use their browser, personally I moved over to Brave recently and so far so good.
- k__ 4y ago
  I use Brave's browser and search too. Sad to hear that DDG lost it's integrity with this move.
  - nicce 4y ago
    To be honest, I would trust more DDG than Brave still. Brave’s business model is based on ads which is very controversial, and that model always ends up compensating with the cost of user privacy.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - MomoXenosaga 4y ago
      The business model of the internet is ads.
- wtch98 4y ago
  Metro is from the same group that brings you the daily mail, of course it's garbage
- criley2 4y ago
  This is actually a really classic use of the 'ad hominem' to try and reject the argument by attacking the source. I do agree that Metro is a bad source, however if you read the article, you'd find it's not actually that bad. I say this because NPR was running the same angle yesterday, and several "more reputable" sources are reporting the same thing as well. Frankly, for DDG to spend all this money blasting "we actually care about privacy" advertisements in radio and online, and then to play around like this, it's certainly dangerous. That advertising campaign is probably why news outlets are even discussing this. "You defined your brand standard, why shouldn't we hold you to it". I'm sure their marketing folks are upset! All that money on a message, undone in a flash.

godmode2019 4y ago

I had to stop using duckduckgo it use to have quality search results compared to google, now it doesn't. Even bing is better than duckduckgo's results

Kiro 4y ago
DDG is Bing.
- hoppyhoppy2 4y ago
  That's largely, but not entirely, true. >traditional links in the search results, which we also source from multiple partners, though most commonly from Bing (and none from Google). https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...
- godmode2019 4y ago
  Why don't you side by side two tabs and search the same thing. They are not the same, duckduckgo use to be decent. Now I can't find anything programming related. I even removes it as my default on my work computer its that bad.
  - matwood 4y ago
    > Now I can't find anything programming related. Sounds like you learned that the profile Google has on you has benefits. The more of the general population that uses DDG, the more the results will skew towards the general population who are not programmers.

muchtest 4y ago

DuckDuckGo showed face when they start down ranking "fake news".

dathos 4y ago
Are you saying fake news doesn't exist or how should I interpet the quotes?
- ldiracdelta 4y ago
  They became the arbiter of truth. The edittor, working for the ministry of truth.
- muchtest 4y ago
  I'm saying it's a broad term - forget Russian news. Go ask take a Fox watcher and a CNN watcher to point out what they interpret as "Fake News" and you'll get 100s of differences.
maccard 4y ago
If I search for something on a search engine, I am trusting the operator of that to filter and down rank based on their own criteria, whether that's baidu, yandex, Google or DDG. It's completely reasonable for a site who's job it is to filter and aggregate results to penalise the spread of misinformation. If they don't, why am I using it at all?

Schopenhauer01 4y ago

Tried brave search for a while, its not great. Should I really selfhost searx? Is there any other good alternative? I've lost trust in DDG.

riidom 4y ago
Been on brave search for a week roundabout. All of a sudden I got all these "fake-github" results I heard people speaking of, and which I never saw myself on DDG.
rglullis 4y ago
Brave with the "mix in results from google" seems to be enough for me.
ulimn 4y ago
Try Kagi. I'm using it for months now and it's surprisingly good. It also has the !g and such bang characters, but I rarely need it.
infamia 4y ago
DDG followed by a !s (Startpage) if needed always gives me more and higher quality results than Google or any other combination of search engines I've tried. YMMV. Not sure there is any other privacy related search engine worth using. Brave feels pretty sketchy to me skimming ad dollars.

JimWestergren 4y ago

Even if this is just affecting the browser and only on a few domains the brand damage here for DDG is huge. It took DuckDuckGo years to built up their positive privacy reputation and it can all fall apart in a few days.

yegg 4y ago

Hi, I'm the CEO & Founder of DuckDuckGo. To be clear (since I see a ton of confusion going around about this story), when you load our search results, you are anonymous, including ads. That is, this news cycle is not about our search engine, it's about our browsers -- and, contrary to the headlines, we actually do restrict Microsoft trackers there today a great deal, and more than the major browsers do. When most other browsers on the market talk about tracking protection they are referring to 3rd-party cookie protection e.g., blocking them) and fingerprinting protection (i.e., restricting APIS scripts can use), and our browsers impose these restrictions on all third-party tracking scripts, including those from Microsoft. We also have a lot of other web protections that also apply to Microsoft scripts (and everyone else) that most browsers don't do, including Global Privacy Control, 1st-party cookie expiration, referrer header trimming, new cookie consent handling (in our Mac beta), fire button (one-click) data clearing, and more. What this article is talking about specifically is one web protection that the major browsers don't even attempt to do — stopping third-party tracking scripts from even loading on third-party websites. See for yourself the bottom 'tracker content blocking' section of this audit site: https://privacytests.org/ios.html https://privacytests.org/ios.html (scroll to the very bottom). This web protection is a particular challenge to get right because websites can easily break when scripts that they depend on don't load, but because it makes for better privacy and faster page loads, we've taken it on while still trying to not break sites. As a result, it is far from perfect, as we can't block all scripts do to persistent breakage issues (which we try to workaround), and domains change all the time (and we continuously crawl sites looking for new tracking domains). Though because we're doing this protection where we can, and also offer many other unique protections (e.g., Google AMP protection, smarter HTTPS upgrading, tracking protection for other apps in Android, email protection to block trackers for emails sent to your regular inbox, etc.), users get way more privacy protection with our app than they would using other browsers. Our goal has always been and remains to provide the most privacy we can in one download. And we have a lot more planned. The issue at hand is all of our web protections apply to Microsoft scripts on 3rd-party sites (again, this is off of DuckDuckGo.com, i.e., not related to search) except this one around full content blocking, as we are currently contractually restricted by Microsoft there. However, this limited contractual restriction (about this one web protection) is the only one we have, and we have been and are working with them as we speak to reduce or remove it. I understand this is all rather confusing because it is a search syndication contract that is preventing us from doing a non-search thing. That's because our product is a bundle of multiple privacy protections, and this is a distribution requirement imposed on us as part of the search syndication agreement that helps us privately use Bing results to provide you with better private search results overall. While a lot of what you see on our results page privately incorporates content from other sources (including our own indexes), e.g., Wikipedia, local listings, sports, stocks, lyrics, weather, quick answers, etc., etc., we source most of our traditional links and images privately from Bing (though because of other search technology our link and image results still may look different). Really only two companies (Google and Microsoft) have a high-quality global web link index (because I believe it costs upwards of a billion dollars a year to do), and so literally every other global search engine that wants to offer a search product competitive with Google for mainstream users, needs to bootstrap with one or both of them. The same is true for maps btw -- only the biggest companies can similarly afford to accurately map every neighborhood. And we are still a very small company relative to these companies -- literally on the order of 1,000 times smaller. Anyway, I hope this provides some helpful context. I understand why people are upset with us on this, and we will do better. We're working on updates to our app store descriptions and other materials. (Also FYI -- this was discussed extensively at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31490515 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31490515). This is also a somewhat misleading title since it's not about our search engine, which people would assume, and also as noted above Microsoft scripts are actually restricted in our browser a lot, so I would suggest changing it.)

gnuj3 4y ago

I have signed up a trial of Kagi few months ago and once I got the invite I was sceptical but I thought I’ll give it a go and I never switched back since. It’s bloody awesome, results are way better than Google, never-mind DDG. Customisation is awesome too. I’m very happy with it and as soon as it comes out of beta, I’ll happily support it.

someotherperson 4y ago

It's really strange how people seem to be going out of their way to defend DDG. They actively censor content based on political views and they now selectively enable Microsoft tracking. All in the span of like a month. And in return for all of this you still get a half-baked browsing experience. Someone remind me what value DDG actually provides at this point? It feels like we're witnessing a self-implosion.

car_analogy 4y ago
> They actively censor content based on political views This is news to me - could you elaborate? Does it go beyond just passively duplicating Bing's censorship due to using their search results?
- MarcellusDrum 4y ago
  They deliberately lower the ranking of Russian news sites.[0] [0]:https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1501716484761997318 https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1501716484761997318
  - stinos 4y ago
    At least post the full quote, containing the "sites associated with Russian disinformation." bit.
- schmuelio 4y ago
  It's basically people thinking that Russian disinformation is a political belief. People are angry that a search engine (something dedicated to giving you relevant and true information based on what you searched for) is less likely to give you Russian state propaganda because the right wing have associated their political beliefs with that of pure free speech without realizing that such a thing just doesn't make sense in most modern settings.
  - someotherperson 4y ago
    The political beliefs here refer to the CEO's political beliefs, given that this reaction is a consequence of the CEO's views on the conflict in Ukraine. There is a reason why DDG isn't actively censoring Chinese, American or Israeli disinformation as well, and that's because it's not in the CEO's political beliefs to do so. But since you're trying to muddy the waters, I'm not "right wing" nor do I support the Russian invasion into Ukraine. I would have a similar reaction if CNN, Fox News or BBC were censored as well. I also wholly reject that a search engine's purpose is for "giving you [...] true information" -- I don't need that nor have I asked for it.

atc 4y ago

urlwolf 4y ago

I moved from DDG to metager and coudn't be happier.

SMAAART 4y ago

DDG needs to understand that they are in the business of "trust", which fuels their brand, and trust is gained each and every day over a long period of time, and it can be lost in an instance. And when we deal with "trust" perception is just as relevant as reality. This is a fork in the road for DDG, they can come out of this stronger than ever, or be tarnished and doomed.