DuckDuckGo to Down-Rank Sites Associated With Russian Disinformation

[THX-1139]

The move is in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. However, some users are complaining the action goes against DuckDuckGo's goal of unbiased search results.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/duckduckgo-to-down-rank-sites-associated-with-russian-disinformation
*It seems nothing is sacred anymore

[Pentium4User]

Maybe I should think about changing the search engine if that is real.

[EMH_Mark_I]

And that change comes right on the heels of The New York Times posting “Fed Up With Google, Conspiracy Theorists Turn to DuckDuckGo.” (Feb. 23)
We mere mortals are only permitted the state sanctioned "facts," and none others; as if their dogma was any more legitimate.

• Conspiracy theorist is to skepticism

• Misinformation is to rumors and hearsay

• Disinformation is to anti-narrative

• Fact is to Fiction

It's all an effort to control speech, and inevitably your minds.

[THX-1139]

And Just Like That, DuckDuckGo Becomes Google — One Time Free Search Engine Now Down-Ranks Conservative Content – Bans Gateway Pundit.
And more of the same: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/0 ... ay-pundit/
I just searched DDG for "www.thegatewaypundit.com" and came up zilch. smdh

[andyprough]

Major search engines are not a good source of info on conflicts. DDG is certainly better than Twitter or Facebook, but the typical algorithms of the various search engines are always going to point you toward websites that publish large volumes of popular nonsense.

A good place to start if you want to track what's probably actually occurring in the Ukraine right now is TheDuran podcast, on youtube, rumble, bitchute, and odysee. The two podcast hosts are English speaking Greeks who have deep familiarity with both Ukraine and Russia, and they interview and link to other people who are also knowledgeable sources. They've been posting new videos multiple times a day throughout the conflict. Here's their odysee url: https://odysee.com/@theduran:e

Good luck! Lot of heavy propaganda from all sides right now. Fog of war and all that.

[EMH_Mark_I]

good place to start if you want to track what's probably actually occurring in the Ukraine right now is -

Honestly, I don't really care about these wars. I'm just giving my unnecessary drive-by two cents on the subject of web search engines as the controls are being put into place.

[MrMobodies]

I always wonder, why can't they just leave it alone.

I do one search with DuckDuckGo and Google after and maybe another but disappointing they would interfere like that.

I reported a few times on DuckDuckGo last year of clickbait news articles flooding it at times that don't show any content but tries to get the user to sign up and pay a subscription fee but I have been seeing them more and more recently where i left feedback. Maybe they should be focusing on that more in reducing poor quality/spammy results.

[andyprough]

I just searched DDG for "www.thegatewaypundit.com" and came up zilch. smdh

I just did that search on DDG and got lots of hits, including to the TGP website itself. Maybe DDG changed back its search algorithm after receiving complaints?

[RealityRipple]

A website is not a public computer filled with public data. It's a private computer that allows the public to access (and in some cases submit) private data. Any data you put on a website belongs to that website, not you. Any data you receive from a website is data the owner of the website chooses to provide. To hold any website to the standards of a public works is to infringe on the freedoms and rights of the owner of that website. What you guys want is something distributed and ownerless, like IPFS.

[Moonchild]

Censorship (political or otherwise) has no place in a search engine.

Rest assured I've written to DDG management (Including Gabriel Weinberg directly) and am waiting for a reply.
If they do not correct this they may not just be losing users, but partners as well. I'll have to look around for a different search engine for Pale Moon to have as default and hopefully one that will offer partnerships that support the browser (please don't start suggesting alternatives in this thread - I will do my own research, thanks; a lot more things need to be considered from a software vendor perspective than from a user perspective).
Maybe I will be forced to make a combination of SearX and YaCy and run my own fully independent search server/cluster but I don't know how to fund such a thing at scale for all Pale Moon users without significantly more financial support.

[Pentium4User]

Censorship (political or otherwise) has no place in a search engine.

Thank you for supporting freedom instead of censorship. I will definitely continue to donate to the PM project every month.

[coffeebreak]

I just searched DDG for "www.thegatewaypundit.com" and came up zilch. smdh

I just did that search on DDG and got lots of hits, including to the TGP website itself.

Just did that search too and got lots of hits from them as well, top of the list:

ddg-gwpundit.png

[moonbat]

Seems on par given the web increasingly caters to consumers, not users. To use something implies action on one's part, making choices. A consumer in this context is no different from a couch potato of an earlier generation, instead of flipping through channels with a TV remote, they flip through social media and multiple video channels. Rather ironic how we've come full circle back to TV, from when the early internet was touted as superior to mainstream media because you had control over what you did online and could interact with people involved.
Consider how even here every newcomer expects to be spoonfed, no one can be bothered to do a simple search for addons before asking for some feature to be baked into the browser the way they've been trained to by other browsers. We got here because tech companies decided to focus exclusively on the lowest common denominator of internet users, following Apple's lead. Because such people need to be saved from their own idiocy when it comes to internet security, we will restrict everybody from making any sort of changes and set expectations that the users are powerless to change any aspect of their internet usage by themselves and everything has to be dictated from the top. So you the end user have no more say in whether your search engine shows up unbiased results, or your other software don't keep messing around with change for the sake of change any more than an earlier generation could decide what TV show they wanted to watch at what time.

[Marcus]

Censorship (political or otherwise) has no place in a search engine.

Rest assured I've written to DDG management (Including Gabriel Weinberg directly) and am waiting for a reply.

Thanks Moonchild. Your consistent stance on a handful of basic principles is one of the reasons I use Pale Moon.

[Pentium4User]

It seems that they already censor their search results: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Ade.rt. ... oon&ia=web
You can also just search for RT DE or Russia today to see that they completely remove them from their page.
If they continue with that I'll need to find a new search engine.

[andyprough]

It seems that they already censor their search results: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Ade.rt. ... oon&ia=web
You can also just search for RT DE or Russia today to see that they completely remove them from their page.
If they continue with that I'll need to find a new search engine.

When I use your RT search link from America, DDG is still providing the links to the German version of RT. Maybe that's something that the German government is enforcing? Are you able to access de.rt.com directly?

[Pentium4User]

It seems that they already censor their search results: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Ade.rt. ... oon&ia=web
You can also just search for RT DE or Russia today to see that they completely remove them from their page.
If they continue with that I'll need to find a new search engine.

When I use your RT search link from America, DDG is still providing the links to the German version of RT. Maybe that's something that the German government is enforcing? Are you able to access de.rt.com directly?

I am able to access it directly, but the EU censorship (EU already has internet censorship - mass media just doesn't report) is already there. At this time the DNS resolvers of the providers forge the reply for the zone rt.com, but I don't use these resolvers. But what really annoys me is that DDG implements that censorship too and doesn't tell that the users in the country.

[Giraffe]

SlashDot had an article saying that DDG gets its results via Bing and MS is responsible for this.

[Pentium4User]

SlashDot had an article saying that DDG gets its results via Bing and MS is responsible for this.

Makes sense, but this doesn't explain the behaviour of Mr. Weinberg.

[Moonchild]

SlashDot had an article saying that DDG gets its results via Bing and MS is responsible for this.

Makes sense, but this doesn't explain the behaviour of Mr. Weinberg.

DDG's source document states they collect results from many sources, so I don't believe that it's just because "an upstream search result provider made changes".