> However, I don't think it's unreasonable at all to disagree with them on that assessment, and I think it's extremely reasonable to ask why DuckDuckGo feels safer about downranking certain kinds of misinformation and feels nervous about taking stances about other misinformation.

It may look like that on a first glance, but assuming even spread of 100M DDG users, those users from Russia, China, India, Indonesia, Middle east may be more sensitive to other kind (in this case western media) of misinformation.

Since this is easily half of the world population I would argue that stance they took could also be easily seen as an 'extremely unreasonable' at the same time.