It appears that once-trusted search engine DuckDuckGo has decided to do our critical thinking for us, to decide on our behalf what data is “disinformation” to be disregarded.
CEO Gabriel Weinberg tweeted:
Like so many others I am sickened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the gigantic humanitarian crisis it continues to create. #StandWithUkraine️
At DuckDuckGo, we’ve been rolling out search updates that down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation.
Google Lite.
I dumped Google, and several other search engines, years ago in favor of DuckDuckGo. That was partly for the privacy enhancement (as compared to Eye-In-The-Pyramid Google), and partly because they didn’t censor search results so badly. I can and will do my own critical thinking. I am capable of discerning between information and “disinformation.”
Oftentimes, something I do turn to Google for, I search for “disinformation” so I can keep up with what propaganda the enemies of freedom are spouting.
I’ve have largely trusted DuckDuckGo to give me the results for which I’ve searched. That trust appears to have been misplaced.
In addition to down-ranking sites associated with disinformation, we also often place news modules and information boxes at the top of DuckDuckGo search results (where they are seen and clicked the most) to highlight quality information for rapidly unfolding topics.
To hear Weinberg, tell it, they are only doing this to “Russian” disinformation… except for what they’ve already been doing. Which includes what, exactly?
Will DuckDuckGo also “downrank” disinformation from the USA, Ukraine, and Poland?
On what other topics might DuckDuckGo believe it should be doing users critical thinking for them? The Second Amendment? Free Speech? What does it take to be considered a “disinformation site by DuckDuckGo?
Might The Zelman Partisans, with its unstereotypical Jewish take on firearms and freedom, be “disinformation”?
Suggestions for a new search engine are welcome. Among others, I’m trying out Brave search, since it touts its privacy protections. On the downside, it’s still in beta and search results are limited.
TZP reached out to DuckDuckGo, but has not received a reply. However, Claire Wolfe did receive a seemingly personal reply.
DDGone’s Weinberg appears to believe we’re idiots.
Brave is a fraud as well and avoid anything Opera but that is just a browser.
Believe it or not a locked down IE with everything stripped out and Bing works.
It is fun to check search terms in various browsers to see the bias and disinfo.
Another interesting alternative is “millionshort” which will remove the first n results. If you start your search at the millionth result, you can get some interesting results. And, of course, there’s yandex for Russian results, Baidu for Chinese results, and Naver for S. Korean results (though only a subset of the latter two are in english). There are also an increasing number of privacy-oriented search engines.
One very interesting one for more conservative-leaning folk is Gibru, which does not downgrade conservative results, and includes sites that are “censored” by Google (at least that’s Gibru’s claim). For instance, if you search for “Trump” on Gibru, the first results are OANN, EpochTimes, Trump.com, and TheHill. If you search for “Trump” and choose “censored content”, the first four are TheHill, Truthout, Buzzfeed, and New Statesman.
#DuckHunting
#DeadDuck
sorry, I couldn’t resist.
https://freespoke.com
A friend of mine sent that this morning. I haven’t used it yet but it says they don’t censor. It like some other sites has a bunch of stories listed on it, but it also has a little tag at the bottom of it saying if it’s left or right leaning source. One story says satire which in this day and age is probably necessary.
I’m just mentioning it because I hadn’t seen it listed elsewhere.