If I were in a position of power, and I knew that DDG was more difficult to get user data from, then I'd absolutely find a way to have articles published like this. I imagine that disenfranchised people are less likely to seek alternatives and are more likely to resign themselves to being monitored. It also seems like it would be more politically acceptable as well as offering a layer for plausible deniability.
Were I in charge, and a nefarious actor, I'd be slipping stories like this into the media quite frequently. It's low cost, low risk, and probably has a good chance at success with at least some percentage of the population.
I'm not sure I have the lack of ethics required to really do such a job. I'd like to hope that I'd resign before I helped do those sorts of things.
Since this article I have, which was in the making for some time already, switched from Chrome to Firefox with duckduckgo as my main search engine. Added Disconnect and Ublock origin as well. And yes I realize it doesn't help against NSA tracking of a certian magnitude.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/06/the_psycholog...
I meant to turn that into a standalone essay, too, but forgot about it. Thanks for the reminder.
I checked various dictionaries available online and all of them have a common definition like "a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful."
Of course there are nutty conspiracy theories but there are nutty math and physics papers too. I feel like the blanket ridicule of any notion of conspiratorial action is meant to discourage any form of investigative journalism or deeper probing below the surface of the narrative.
Your hypothesis is reasonable and plausible.