Re:DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disin...
by JakeAl on Thursday March 10, 2022 @06:41PM
(#30634174)
Back during the first Iraq war (Kuwait) my sociology class did an analysis of all the news to see how they reported it differently. We look at the 6:00 news on ABC, NBC, and CBS and I asked if we could also add CNN because this was when cable was still being adopted. What we learned was back then CNN largely reported the facts/observations with qualified statements and not much commentary at all, and all the other news outlets got the bulk of their facts (except for local news) from the CNN newswires/people on the ground and then fluffed them with their own subjective language. That was when CNN was just Headline News. They've really lost credibility since then. I'm not even sure if Headline News even exists anymore. It used to just be every 30 minutes the news cycled over and over and updated as new info came up.
Re:DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disin...
by Spellman on Thursday March 10, 2022 @07:27PM
(#30634564)
AP News is generally what everyone pulls from and reports mostly straight facts
Re:DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disin...
by prox on Thursday March 10, 2022 @06:24PM
(#30634020)
I see this comment in so many forms across many channels. “Oh no, there is no truth anymore!” (Sorry if I sound a bit pedantic)
But that’s not truth either. While gaining a 20/20 truth picture is hard, it’s not impossible to get a picture that’s accurate enough.
Lots of information can be lock-stepped into a picture that gives enough clarity. A combination of experts, reports and documentation, high quality sources, context awareness, and people I know around the globe gives me a good enough picture.
Also the message that there is no such thing as truth is exactly what disinformation strategists want to amplify.
Yes it’s worrying, but not unsolvable.
Re:DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disin...
by ece on Thursday March 10, 2022 @09:32PM
(#30635453)
I feel like good news can distill down to: if there's not enough fact checking in the right domain(s), the editor fucked up. Conspiracy theories, and propaganda obviously fail this test, but do not do so online often enough. Especially not when grifters/propagandists are trying to make money through ads or are state funded by an autocratic government.
Should DDG take into account what is and isn't fact-checked? Absolutely, and if DDG gets better at this, their users will benefit.
The point is that there is no such thing as a perfect arbiter of truth. I may trust a friend with whom I have a close personal relationship to always tell me the truth, but it seems foolish to place that kind of trust in a corporation full of people you don't know.
In the end, we're back to just not filtering information at all, but instead leaving it up to each individual to decide what's true and which isn't. This also clearly has not worked. Maybe this problem is just not solvable.