Re:DuckDuckGo email protection beta now open
by rpdillon on Thursday August 25, 2022 @03:58PM
(#32599206)
They rank based on relevancy. Domains that are found misleading readers often are less relevant than domains that are misleading readers less often. That's it. All search engines have to make these calls all the time, and I see no viable alternative approach that would be better. There is no 'natural' ordering of the web...it's all judgment. If you think DDG's results are less relevant than those you get elsewhere, use the better engine!
Re:DuckDuckGo email protection beta now open
by yegg on Thursday August 25, 2022 @02:18PM
(#32597778)
Not sure if you read the whole thread as it says explicitly "We are not ranking based on any political agenda or my (or anyone else's) personal political opinions. We are also not assessing any individual news stories."
That said, the help page I referenced is the most detailed explanation of how our news rankings work: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/ne....
To be clear, that means we do not have a definition of "disinformation". I'm to blame for tweeting something that was highly ambiguous but we were never actually doing what we've been accused of doing.
Re:DuckDuckGo email protection beta now open
by Agentlien on Friday August 26, 2022 @02:15AM
(#32603900)
Accused is a strong word. It's more like "what we accidentally claimed to be doing".
It's a very tough situation, needing to assure people that you honestly aren't doing what you claimed and just misspoke.
This is censorship, since DDG is now deciding what is considered "Disinformation".
Your clarification thread does not state DDG is not down-ranking these sites based on what DDG feels is "disinformation". It merely asserts DDG is not purging results - these are two very different things.
Just to be clear, I too support Ukraine, and am aghast at the deliberately misleading information ("disinformation") coming out of the Russian War Machine. However, as I previously wrote, the truth needs no defense. Hiding away things we don't like doesn't make them go away, it just makes them go underground. We need this information freely available so it can be discussed and disproven out in the open.
If users wanted curated search results, they might as well use Google or Bing...
Lastly, to repeat, Privacy + Censorship (of any kind) do not go together. This was quite a large misstep for DDG, and has burned a lot of trust.