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After DDG decided they would censor material they considered misinformation from Russia I went out search engine shopping and I'm using brave search. I value tr

After DDG decided they would censor material they considered misinformation from Russia I went out search engine shopping and I'm using brave search. I value transparency and fairness and can make my own mind about things (I remember when being against the Iraq or Lybia wars made you a terrorist sympsthizer). Do you have any stance there? (I'm not saying you should have one or agree with mine, just curious. Every search engine might have its time and place).

marginalia_nu 4y ago
In general I'm not a big fan of censorship. I think it's ultimately counterproductive. It sends the message that the "truth" needs to be protected from independent scrutiny, effectively undermining the credibility of the institutions, while enabling crackpots to develop a persecution narrative. That said I do block some sites, mostly nazi stuff if it's designed in such a way that it crops up in regular searches. It's a fairly small number of sites though.
- _-david-_ 4y ago
  Do you have a list of the blocked domains?
  - marginalia_nu 4y ago
    Yeah, I didn't start annotating them until recently though, and like 39700 out of 40000 the domains are blacklisted because of spam. Probably a few false positives in there though but it's 40k domains :-/ You can check if a site is blacklisted using a site:-search like https://search.marginalia.nu/site/news.ycombinator.com https://search.marginalia.nu/site/news.ycombinator.com
    - _-david-_ 4y ago
      Thanks. That is a great feature.
- Jcowell 4y ago
  > while enabling crackpots to develop a persecution narrative. I see this sentiment a lot lately and it seems weird to me that since narratives don’t need to have an inch a truth to be constructed. Narratives can be fabricated from made up atoms if need be . If crackpots wants to believe they’re being prosecuted , they’ll do it anyway. The ammunition you fear you’ll give them is one they already possess if they’re already too far gone.
Tijdreiziger 4y ago
By its very definition, a search engine promotes results it deems relevant, and downranks (or 'censors') results it deems irrelevant.

marginalia_nu 4y ago

In general I'm not a big fan of censorship. I think it's ultimately counterproductive. It sends the message that the "truth" needs to be protected from independent scrutiny, effectively undermining the credibility of the institutions, while enabling crackpots to develop a persecution narrative. That said I do block some sites, mostly nazi stuff if it's designed in such a way that it crops up in regular searches. It's a fairly small number of sites though.

_-david-_ 4y ago
Do you have a list of the blocked domains?
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  Yeah, I didn't start annotating them until recently though, and like 39700 out of 40000 the domains are blacklisted because of spam. Probably a few false positives in there though but it's 40k domains :-/ You can check if a site is blacklisted using a site:-search like https://search.marginalia.nu/site/news.ycombinator.com https://search.marginalia.nu/site/news.ycombinator.com
  - _-david-_ 4y ago
    Thanks. That is a great feature.
Jcowell 4y ago
> while enabling crackpots to develop a persecution narrative. I see this sentiment a lot lately and it seems weird to me that since narratives don’t need to have an inch a truth to be constructed. Narratives can be fabricated from made up atoms if need be . If crackpots wants to believe they’re being prosecuted , they’ll do it anyway. The ammunition you fear you’ll give them is one they already possess if they’re already too far gone.

Tijdreiziger 4y ago

By its very definition, a search engine promotes results it deems relevant, and downranks (or 'censors') results it deems irrelevant.