News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:DuckDuckGo owns the #2 position in mobile market share in... by yegg on Wednesday May 17, 2023 @04:20PM (#35980747)
x-posting from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35980374

(I'm the CEO & Founder of DuckDuckGo.)

It is simply not true that we have censored anything or made ourselves "the arbiters of truth." I realized I previously explained how our news rankings work very poorly on Twitter but I subsequently put out a clarification in this help page with a much clearer (and detailed) explanation of how our news rankings actually work: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/ne...

From that page: "When we apply our own ranking signals we do so in a strictly non-political manner, meaning we don’t evaluate or otherwise take into account any potential political bias or leanings of websites in our search result rankings."

Re:DuckDuckGo owns the #2 position in mobile market share in... by BobTheDestroyer on Wednesday May 17, 2023 @04:50PM (#35981118)
That's an awful lot of pilpul. You admitted it proudly on Twitter expecting praise, it's too late to talk your way out of it now because you didn't get the reaction you expected.
Re:DuckDuckGo owns the #2 position in mobile market share in... by calculatte on Wednesday May 17, 2023 @04:57PM (#35981186)
Are you trying to rewrite history? Sorry, you don't have that kind of clout. You 100% censored search results. Also remember that time you got caught hiring based on race instead of actual qualifications? We do. DDG is a propaganda machine with racist policies. I wouldn't use your product if you paid me.
Re:DuckDuckGo owns the #2 position in mobile market share in... by Gareth321 on Thursday May 18, 2023 @03:29AM (#35985013)
> Many sites may occasionally do one or more of these things, but we take action very rarely, only in the most extreme cases. To identify these rare, extreme cases, we rely on multiple non-governmental and non-political organizations that specialize in objectively assessing journalistic standards. To take any ranking action using this factor, we must see at least three of these organizations independently assess a site as having extremely low journalistic standards and also see that none of these organizations have assessed the same site as having even somewhat robust journalistic standards.

This is far too vague. Last year Bazbaz told Recode that sites like RT and Sputnik were "extreme" cases (https://www.vox.com/recode/22981115/duckduckgo-free-speech-p...). While I tend to agree, which other sites are extreme cases? This isn't published. Despite the claim that none of this is done for political reasons, I find it hard to trust that these "non-governmental and non-political organizations" act and are chosen without any bias. Your method isn't published or explained. I really think these organisations should, at minimum, be listed. So too should all the sites DDG considers to be "extreme" cases. Then we could decide if we think DDG is being politically neutral.

My confidence in DDG is shaken, and I don't think I'm alone. We live in a world where so many major software brands we love have made overt moves towards censorship on political grounds. If DDG could prove they reject this authoritarianism I think it would serve as a major USP.