7 ms·

I was able to convince my wife to switch for anything remotely "controversial", when, during the pandemic, we caught the relatively "real time" disappearance of

• VWWHFSfQ 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • cyberbanjo 3y ago
    Everyone wants a censor on their side, but they rarely are
    • mywittyname 3y ago
      In this particular case, it's about wanting information from the people actually researching a subject vs people making stuff for political or business purposes. Even if researchers are wrong initially, because of lack of data, they are still acting in good faith. Which you can't say for people who are spreading made up or poorly sourced information to make a buck. Society generally frowns upon allowing people to blatantly lie or act in bad faith order to sell products. While that might be a form of censorship, it's one that society largely benefits from having in place.
      • drexlspivey 3y ago
        In this particular case, what product was sold by antivaxxers or how did they make money?
      • tracker1 3y ago
        There were plenty of knowledgable scientists including those with specific familiarity that were censored because it didn't fit the media narrative at the time.
      • VancouverMan 3y ago
        > Even if researchers are wrong initially, because of lack of data, they are still acting in good faith. A researcher or other "expert" should have at least some sense of when the data being used are limited, flawed, or even unavailable. Under such circumstances, the only way to act in good faith would be for such a person to say something along the lines of, "I don't know" or "It's not possible to say at this time." Such a person making some other authoritative pronouncement (even with caveats attached), especially if it turns out to be incorrect, should not be seen as "acting in good faith".
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    How is your attitude not equivalent to "I can't trust myself to see things I disagree with, I am so weak-willed that there is the horrific danger that I will start believing them"? There are reasons someone might want to find those links, even if they disagree with them. When Google hides them from you without your consent or ability to opt out, they're treating you as if you were a child. Or perhaps more like livestock.
    • jbm 3y ago
      > I am so weak-willed that there is the horrific danger that I will start believing them That's what "Manufacturing Consent" isn't it? That entire concept seems sound and passes the smell test. People see things repeatedly from authoritive-sounding people and they believe it (in the case of the book, by governments and their catspaws). There is no reason a search and social bubble wouldn't wind up with a similar outcome.
      • NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
        Is my authority defiance resource just cranked up to 11? I don't even like those groups I tend to agree with, and when I do find myself agreeing with them I silently sit there wondering if that somehow means I am wrong. I only said it sarcastically about the original commenter because it's difficult to believe that anyone could truly be like that. Sure, we're all aware of the dregs who seem to form their political beliefs from Uncle Creepy's Facebook meme pictures, but I've always believed those people to be nothing more than a (sizable) minority.
        • systems_glitch 3y ago
          It's estimated that 50-70% of the world has no inner monologue.
    • hablog 3y ago
      > I can't trust myself to see things I disagree with, I am so weak-willed... The thing is, this likely is true for him. Most people are not equipped to deal with the onslaught of aggressive memes from the internet. Unfortunately, this is an unsolved social problem, and "export my memetic censorship reflex to MEGACORP" is a pretty bad way of doing things. I think a likely way of solving this problem (protecting not-especially-high-mental-horsepower people from getting BTFO by the internet, contracting transmissible psychological diseases and so on) is that religious organizations will start offering (voluntary, in first world countries) censorship services to their members. Your DNS queries or whatever will go through the Vatican/Synod/whatever central DNS server, which will prevent you from looking at porn sites. This would probably be a very socially positive outcome for the bottom 90-something percent of people on the "strength of memetic immune system" distribution.
  • mrangle 3y ago
    Of course you do not mind. But that means that you have no room for complaint when they delete something that you consider to be "not garbage".
    • anamexis 3y ago
      Yes you do. Agreeing with some moderation does not mean you must agree with all moderation.
      • bakugo 3y ago
        Calling censorship "moderation" doesn't make it not censorship.
        • anamexis 3y ago
          Ok. Agreeing with some censorship does not mean you must agree with all censorship.
          • bakugo 3y ago
            No, it doesn't, but you're a hypocrite if you don't. If you think there's nothing wrong with the idea that "censorship is good as long as I'm not the one being censored", I don't know what to tell you.
            • vkou 3y ago
              Not everyone is a speech absolutist, that doesn't make them hypocrites. In fact, as speech absolutists have taken over a few platforms, we've discovered that the primary hypocrisy surrounding speech is that there's a lot of people who claim to be speech absolutists, but aren't when push comes to shove.
            • lern_too_spel 3y ago
              If you eat bread, you must also eat shit. If you don't, you're a hypocrite. It's astounding how many people are incapable of making judgments except along artificial lines given to them by sophists.
  • Danjoe4 3y ago
    Much of the "antivax garbage" turned out to be true. In hindsight, do you still believe that censoring true but inconvenient information is morally acceptable?
    • berkle4455 3y ago
      [flagged]
      • edgyquant 3y ago
        They did not say all
        • berkle4455 3y ago
          How about none of it.
        • AlecSchueler 3y ago
          They also gave no reason to believe the "most" claim. What actually are the things that were proven to be true that were censored as misinformation?
      • WillPostForFood 3y ago
        Truth is messy. The vaccine is an amazing achievement and saved many lives. Understating the health risks to young men (myocarditis), and overstating the efficacy fed the anti-vaxxers, and was a disservice to science and healthcare.
        • f6v 3y ago
          And we haven’t even talked about the prevention paradox.
      • suoduandao2 3y ago
        you're avoiding the question.
  • nomel 3y ago
    I somewhat agree. I don't mind if true falsehoods/spam is removed. The problem was, the "anti vax" label was applied to far too much, including things that were later found to be true. The article I was looking for was about intravascular injection of the vaccine, and its possible relation to adverse effects, which now has merit in 2023 [1]. [1] https://pure.hud.ac.uk/en/publications/inadvertent-injection-of-covid-19-vaccine-into-deltoid-muscle-vas https://pure.hud.ac.uk/en/publications/inadvertent-injection...
    • Phil_Latio 3y ago
      "remains at the injection side" was one of the more blatant lies. The funniest lie was "a corona virus outbreak of a novel strain in close distance to a biolab which does experiments on corona viruses ... is without a doubt of natural origin!"
      • nomel 3y ago
        > "remains at the injection side" was one of the more blatant lies. Correct: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9313234/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9313234/
  • flangola7 3y ago
    100% agree.
  • TobyTheDog123 3y ago
    This word is quickly becoming a part of the "does not mean anything" crew from its constant overuse and involvement in strawman-ing.
  • kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • f6v 3y ago
      > despite no proof that it isn't a possibility Because you don’t get to come up with a “theory” and dump the burden of the proof on someone else. That’s incredibly stupid. Not how how science and common sense work.
      • STM32F030R8 3y ago
        Since when? It may not be a good argument but should we be deplatforming people over it? Go to Reddit front page right now and try to find something that isn’t a poorly argued political post. What’s the difference? Just because you may disagree with someone it doesn’t mean they NEED to be silenced.
        • stonogo 3y ago
          Politics is about how you think things should be run. Science is about what we have evidence for. They are not the same thing.
          • ipaddr 3y ago
            Science is about coming up with a hypnosis or theory and testing it. The evidence comes at the end not before the theory
            • muti 3y ago
              We don't give any credence to untested hypotheses
            • stonogo 3y ago
              We generally don't employ hypnosis. Sometimes we even skip the hypothesis step, because "what the hell is that" is enough to start generating data. Don't confuse all of scientific research with the scientific method; it's just one method of investigation.
  • Jcampuzano2 3y ago
    I can see both sides to the argument. I personally don't mind deletion of antivax stuff because I'm not antivax. But I can see the point of view those mentioning what happens when there is deletion/censorship of things in the future that I could have interest in. We also do know that there exists "some" subset of things that were mentioned that seemed antivax on the surface but did actually turn out to be true or at least somewhat true. But these were usually not outright false claims, but informed speculations or very niche. It was such a dividing topic that any form of skepticism however small was seen as an attack. This as someone who is vaxed and has gotten every booster available.
    • ifyoubuildit 3y ago
      > I personally don't mind deletion of antivax stuff because I'm not antivax The term antivax is a problem. Very few people are actually anti all vaccines, and nobody should be pro all vaccines for everyone all the time. There have been actual truly failed vaccines, are you "antivax" if you wouldn't volunteer to take them? Should articles about past failed vaccines be censored from the internet? Of course not. The term is sloppy and careless, but people love it, probably because it lets you be part of a team. But everybody means something different by it. Nobody should presume any new implementation of a class is good just because there have been previous successful implementations. Reality doesn't make things so easy for us.
  • apienx 3y ago
    I'd much rather see the antivax garbage debunked. Think of it as a form of vaccination for the mind.
  • colordrops 3y ago
    Nonsense. There isn't some super clearly defined line between pro-vaxx and anti-vaxx across the thousands of issues and questions related to covid. Science isn't anti- or pro- anything. Particular beliefs that were labeled "anti-vaxx" were often just not clear or understood yet. Also, it's not the job of a search engine to be your nanny. What if you are researching conspiracy theories or opposition beliefs, even if you don't believe in them? How would you find them?
• Georgelemental 3y ago
  DDG may not be the best if you want to avoid political meddling. I switched to Brave after https://web.archive.org/web/20220831110219/https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1501716484761997318 https://web.archive.org/web/20220831110219/https://twitter.c...
  • lolinder 3y ago
    I get so tired of seeing yegg raked over the coals for this one. A search engine by definition takes an editorial stance on things. They take in all of the internet and decide what to present to users. For a search engine to take no editorial position is to yield the floor to whoever can best game the system, and a propaganda machine like Russia's is absolutely capable of exploiting a search engine that doesn't proactively take measures to avoid being exploited. That DDG wanted to avoid spreading Russian propaganda that argues against the very existence of the Ukrainian people isn't DDG meddling in politics, it's them steering clear of enabling genocide.
    • allarm 3y ago
      They could simply add a “propaganda” tag and give an option to filter out the search results marked with that tag. If anything I can specifically search for Russian propaganda, for whatever reason.
      • lolinder 3y ago
        Yes, you can, and downranking propaganda wouldn't stop it from turning up if you go looking. But when my naive sister-in-law hears something about how Ukraine isn't a real country, I don't want the first page of results for "history of Ukraine" to turn up Russian propaganda. I live in a red state, and there are astonishing numbers of people here who already buy Putin's story. I'm fully behind DDG deciding they didn't want to play a role in spreading his message even further.
        • allarm 3y ago
          > wouldn't stop it from turning up if you go looking. Yeah, same goes for your naïve sister-in-law. So why don’t they add the “propaganda” tag, so that your relatives could clearly see it and I could search for it (for whatever reason)? They could even add some links to some better sources, as an option. And use some disclaimer when you click on these results, like “Hey, this is a propaganda resource, be careful. Here’s the links where you can read up on the topic if you need unbiased information”. That would probably have at least some educational value, unlike removing and/or downranking the results.
• ummonk 3y ago
  It was crazy to see suggestions to wear masks or claims that covid was airborne getting "fact-checked" by the media only to reverse their position months later after WHO put out new statements. In particular, the phrase "no credible evidence" was wildly thrown around without mentioning whether there were any credible high-powered studies that had even attempted to find evidence of the phenomenon.
  • gjsman-1000 3y ago
    The WHO has a lot of blame itself for misinformation. And, I personally believe, a lot of conspiracy theories definitely caught fire from their mistakes. https://twitter.com/who/status/1243972193169616898?lang=en https://twitter.com/who/status/1243972193169616898?lang=en Also, as you can see in the replies, a lot of people called BS at the time, but who were they to question the official WHO line? Yes, the WHO later came around and came up with 6 feet instead of 1 meter, but those who called BS on the WHO's statement may have saved their lives.
  • thatnerdyguy 3y ago
    Uh... are you suggesting that at some not-insignificant point into the pandemic someone credible was arguing COVID was NOT airborne?
    • tjohns 3y ago
      Actually, yes. For the first half of the pandemic, much of the medical community was unsure if COVID was airborne. Examples: - https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/cdc-reverses-again-now-says-covid-19-sometimes-airborne-n1242167 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/cdc-reverses-agai... - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7 - https://archive.is/wPD2D https://archive.is/wPD2D (Tweet from WHO) Note that "airborne" has a specific meaning in medical literature. Everyone agreed COVID could be transmitted in the air by respiratory droplets. But to be truly "airborne" means the virus could be aerosolized and float freely, without being attached to a larger droplet. Both droplet-based and aerosolized/"airborne" spread allows viruses to be transmitted in the air. But a truly "airborne" virus can travel much farther. It's the difference between needing 6 feet and 20 feet of distance to prevent spread. (To put it bluntly, it's the difference between avoiding spittle, or avoiding the equivalent of cigarette smoke. Two very different threat models.)
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• low_common 3y ago
  Do you put "everything" in "quotations" all the "time"?
  • nomel 3y ago
    I used it to convey some external concept, rather than my own thoughts. "controversial": Others called it controversial. I did/would not. "against the grain": Others thought that there was a grain. I did/would not. "real time": Not literal. Maybe this is a regional/age thing? edit: actually, asking ChatGPT why they're in quotes gives the similar answers as mine, so I guess it's not too odd. New session prompt with 4.0: "Why are some of these words in quotes?" Fluff removed, same order as my answers: > ... In this case, "controversial" could imply that the speaker doesn't personally find the topics controversial, but acknowledges that others may perceive them as such. > ... indicating that it's being used in its typical idiomatic sense. > ... Here, the quotation marks might be used to stress that the term isn't being used in its strictest sense.
• yegg 3y ago
  x-posting from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35980374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35980374 (I'm the CEO & Founder of DuckDuckGo.) It is simply not true that we have censored anything or made ourselves "the arbiters of truth." I realized I previously explained how our news rankings work very poorly on Twitter but I subsequently put out a clarification in this help page with a much clearer (and detailed) explanation of how our news rankings actually work: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/news-rankings/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/ne... From that page: "When we apply our own ranking signals we do so in a strictly non-political manner, meaning we don’t evaluate or otherwise take into account any potential political bias or leanings of websites in our search result rankings."
  • BobTheDestroyer 3y ago
    [flagged]
  • calculatte 3y ago
    [flagged]
  • Gareth321 3y ago
    > Many sites may occasionally do one or more of these things, but we take action very rarely, only in the most extreme cases. To identify these rare, extreme cases, we rely on multiple non-governmental and non-political organizations that specialize in objectively assessing journalistic standards. To take any ranking action using this factor, we must see at least three of these organizations independently assess a site as having extremely low journalistic standards and also see that none of these organizations have assessed the same site as having even somewhat robust journalistic standards. This is far too vague. Last year Bazbaz told Recode that sites like RT and Sputnik were "extreme" cases (https://www.vox.com/recode/22981115/duckduckgo-free-speech-privacy-oops https://www.vox.com/recode/22981115/duckduckgo-free-speech-p...). While I tend to agree, which other sites are extreme cases? This isn't published. Despite the claim that none of this is done for political reasons, I find it hard to trust that these "non-governmental and non-political organizations" act and are chosen without any bias. Your method isn't published or explained. I really think these organisations should, at minimum, be listed. So too should all the sites DDG considers to be "extreme" cases. Then we could decide if we think DDG is being politically neutral. My confidence in DDG is shaken, and I don't think I'm alone. We live in a world where so many major software brands we love have made overt moves towards censorship on political grounds. If DDG could prove they reject this authoritarianism I think it would serve as a major USP.
• okwubodu 3y ago
  Oh, DuckDuckGo just does that sometimes. Pretty often I'll pick a result then back out to the search results, and the one I had in mind to click next just isn't there anymore. However annoying, I wouldn't immediately jump to a political motivation.