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DuckDuckGo has recently announced that they will be down-ranking sites associated with disinformation with regards to the recent Ukraine-Russia conflict.
Now while I think Russia is absolutely in the wrong for invading a sovereign country while pretending that it's not, as well as a whole host of documented awful war crimes, I still don't think this is a call for DDG to make.
Who gets to decide what is disinformation? In this day and age you can't even be sure anymore. They should let the users decide for themselves in my opinion. Some make the argument that it becomes annoying to find "real" information with all the propaganda and to that I suggest adding a user-controlled filter instead.
2 years ago · 👍 eph, staticvoid, bencollver, smokey, kevinsan, toast, falschdenker
What if you don’t know you’re being subjected to propaganda? · 2 years ago
To be fair to DDG, from what I understand this is actually an law now passed in the EU that requires all search enginges to deprioritize Russia results. Goolge, Bing, etc are all doing the same. I agree it's ridiculous to do so, but this is what happens when public information gathering falls into private hands. · 2 years ago
@bencollver I agree, regardless of the reason, disinformation inevitably comes from all sides the best approach is to take in information from different sources to come to a personal conclusion instead of relying on one "truth"
@r2aze bing is just one of their sources as smokey said
@smokey if I remember correctly, Elon Musk supposedly also got government requests to block Russian news source on Starlink which he refused saying that he's "Sorry to be a free speech absolutist" but I guess he's got more weight to throw around than DDG · 2 years ago
@r2aze Did some digging on this the other week, according to their own words, they aggregate from many search engines Bing only being one of them. · 2 years ago
"who gets to decide what is misinformation" Probably the same people who control what is seen on the news, or what the official wikipedia page says on huge controversial national events. I wouldnt doubt that the owners of DDG were pressured into this by the gov't they are based out of. All the more reason to use an alternative decentralized search engine like SearX or YACY · 2 years ago
IMO, disinformation is inevitable, and it increasingly comes from all sources. This seems to me a good time to build skepticism and self-trust; a good time to double down on integrity, in contrast to letting one's self get sucked into the maddening crowd. A sovereign being needs neither protection from disinformation nor protection from the unnecessary protection. You do you, and do it fearlessly and valiantly. Let "THEM" fear you. · 2 years ago
If I recall correctly, DDG basically piggybacks on Bing. They might not have a choice. · 2 years ago