Google - it's a really good search engine, but obviously biased and doesn't care about your privacy. I use it on my work machine.
Brave Search - I'm not sure if another service (like Bing) powers their results, but it works pretty well for my personal use cases.
`yegg` can do whatever he want's, I just want no part of it.
> Return search results by randomly selecting an exact string match from the index.
It could potentially surface results that you could not have found otherwise. A random dump of links, each one's relevance you must determine on your own. Or another way to put it: you do the ranking. Not a very fun idea to most.
what type of content did they censor? Do you have a link with more info?
Are they supposed to just let governments astroturf their way to the top with propaganda?
Any algorithm for which there is incentive to game, people will game. And legitimate sources often have no incentive to game the algorithms. There’s no one algorithm that will do everything perfectly. Eventually you’ll have some phishing scam, life-threatening suggestions, or illegal content popping up as a top result, and you’ll have to add manual exceptions.
Like prioritizing a legitimate website over a scam website isn't punishing the scam website because of a controversial opinion or the search engine operator didn't like the content, it's because the website is objectively a scam, it's easy to objectively identify it as such, and everyone agrees it's one.
When it comes to Ukraine vs. Russia and propaganda, it is entirely impossible to have objectivity. As angry as this will make some people, opinions on the war in Ukraine are subjective. Russian outlets shouldn't be ranked lower than Ukrainian ones solely because a lot of people are on the side of Ukraine.
I'm sure some Russian outlets are spreading objective falsehoods, and some Ukrainian outlets are spreading objective falsehoods. These individual outlets should be punished in search rankings, but to classify all Russian outlets as spreading misinformation and all Ukrainian outlets as objective truth completely demolishes the objectivity a lot of people want their search engines to have.
It's a difficult topic, I feel like I talked in circles writing this comment.
I'm not convinced that DDG isn't downranking all junk. Russian disinfo spreaders and consumers just scream the hardest when their garbage is rightfully pushed aside. Same as the Q-worshipping crowd.
Is it actually easy to identify all scam content? Then why is it possible to find scams in search results?
> When it comes to Ukraine vs. Russia and propaganda, it is entirely impossible to have objectivity.
So should they treat every news outlet as equally ranked? Because I'm struggling to think of any news reporting that could be said to be free of bias or could be said to be completely objective.
> ...to classify all Russian outlets as spreading misinformation and all Ukrainian outlets as objective truth
Is that what they did? Because what I read was that they would "down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation." So you have to dig a few pages deeper to get to 'Russian disinformation', and I don't see any anything indicating that 'Russian disinformation' means everything published by a Russian News outlet (re: the invasion).
I don't think something being a top search results implies that it is an objective truth either, especially with ongoing news reports.
I think to a knowledgable observer and moderator, sure. Algorithmically it's probably more difficult, which is why you still see it in some search results. These scams are less prone to subjectivity, which is why you rarely see Twitter uproars about a bitcoin pyramid scheme being booted off a search engine.
>So should they treat every news outlet as equally ranked?
Yes....
>Because I'm struggling to think of any news reporting that could be said to be free of bias or could be said to be completely objective.
....and that is the reason for why they should be equally ranked. You can see on the initial page load the full spectrum of reporting from MSNBC to Fox News. Of course one of them has to be ranked above the other in the UI (it's a list of items) but that should relate to objective things like what words from the search query appear, etc.
>Is that what they did?
I think what people take issue with is that we're trusting these sites to determine what disinformation is. How is DDG deciding what is and isn't misinformation? Without a clearly defined process for misinformation, this becomes subjective.
>> "Weinberg didn’t elaborate on the decision, or how the down-ranking will work."
But other sites are simply doing a blanket ban:
>> "Since then, the internet industry has responded by blocking access to Russian state-sponsored media outlets such as RT and Sputnik News for users in the EU. In addition, Twitter has placed warning labels on tweets linking to Russian state media. (Google News decided to de-rank RT and Sputnik News back in 2017 for allegedly circulating propaganda.)"
>I don't think something being a top search results implies that it is an objective truth either, especially with ongoing news reports.
Not right now, no, and that's the issue. Most people assume it to be though.
>Yes....
>>Because I'm struggling to think of any news reporting that could be said to be free of bias or could be said to be completely objective.
>....and that is the reason for why they should be equally ranked.
Just because you can find a fault with a source does not mean that all faults are equal. For instance, the AP should probably be ranked above the National Enquirer.
> I think what people take issue with is that we're trusting these sites to determine what disinformation is. How is DDG deciding what is and isn't misinformation? Without a clearly defined process for misinformation, this becomes subjective.
It is an inherently subjective process and always will be. There are organizations that have attempted to make the process objective (i.e. fact checking organizations) but they can all be criticized as subjective as well. Pure objectivity simply isn’t possible.
Russia is discrediting truth as a concept entirely, the narrative being "we are obviously lying, but so is anyone else". That others might not be lying as much seems to be harder and harder to understand by the targets of these campaigns (based on firsthand witnessing). With objective facts / reporting discredited what's left is opinions. Opinions generated by a carefully managed army of influencers promoting whatever cause is deemed useful (from bloggers to friendly/financed foreign government officials). And this _is_ done with the secrecy and subtlety you'd expect.
It might not be possible to have complete objectivity regarding the invasion of Ukraine, but imho a blanket ban of any media with Russian ties would be a heck of a lot better than to let Russia continue to destroy objective reporting, one of the foundations of our modern society.
If Russia sends armies of trolls to clandestinely influence social media consumers as part of their information warfare operation then we should try to stop that.
But if Russia officially publishes its own position under the name of its own news agency or in their government media then we should not censor it and we should not keep it off western platforms where it can be clearly marked and disputed.
I want to know how Russia justifies its brutal war of aggression against a neighbour. I fully expect that their justification is full of lies and distortions. But it's truth in the sense that it is in fact how Russia justifies the war. I want to know that truth.
When I was growing up, certainly before even RT existed, it was common knowledge that journalist will cover the events according to their own (or bosses) interests. IME (not russian, but also not american), the idea of objective reporting is the anomaly.
A search engine is largely two things:
(1) crawling and discovering all available resources (2) parsing a user’s request for a resource of some kind and providing the user with a means of accessing “best matches”
This process is inherently, unequivocally and fundamentally biased. It HAS TO be. There is no abject, absolute, canonical result for a search engine query. Ddg/google “censor” () all kinds of results constantly. Malware sites, sites that just mirror content from stackoverflow, sites that may cause public harm, etc. That’s the whole point.
Another note: they may be downranking those results because users are unsatisfied with their quality. DDGs job is to help the user find what they are looking for, and if the user finds a bunch of Russian propaganda that is blatantly not what they wanted when they search for something (perhaps because Russia is exploiting SEO or using other techniques to inflate their position), why wouldn’t they tweak their product?
Unfortunately it seems that in 90%+ of cases "willful misinformation" is just anything that contradicts the political views of the democrat-leaning Google management.
DDG makes revenue from serving ads and participating in affiliates networks.
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