Hacker News Reader

Comment by tpoacher | Hacker News Reader

I want one which doesn't decide this for me, no-matter how "good for me" it may be, and relies exclusively on my search query to decide what is most relevant.

If you really want to flag disinformation, I'd be fine with some sort percentage reliability value or something along those lines, right next to the result. Preferably something that I can also order results by. Totally happy with a 'caveat emptor' clause regarding who comes up with those reliability values.

But down-ranking sites by default is not how this is supposed to work. "It's for a 'good cause'" is not the point. It's always going to be for a "good cause (TM)".

Besides, what's so bad about access to "disinformation"? I prefer being presented with bad arguments whose value I get to judge for myself, than being told I'm not getting all the arguments, only those whose value someone else decided on my behalf.

View on HN

Exactly. If I'm searching for Russian propaganda, I should see Russian propaganda in my search results. If I'm searching for good bicycle reviews, I should see good bicycle reviews.

What should be shown if you search for „why did russia invade ukraine“?

Whatever your Native State wants you to believe, of course.

a mix of both with a slider to parametrize the sentiment of the results "it's pure evil VS itls good"

or I dunno... it's a near-waste of time to imagine what this could/should be as I'm in no poisition to build it.

analysts and historians saying "it's complicated"

But its not complicated at all. Ukraine is every year more prosperous and more connected to the west and Russia is weakening kleptocracy led by a disconnected, malicious, evil dictator that fears that if it doesn't seize the opportunity to return to its vision of a greater Russia that has a seat at the table in the grand scheme of things that it will ultimately be subsumed by either the west or by its own people who see clear evidence of a better way so close at hand.

In service of this goal it has turned first to brutal invasion of another nations sovereign territory and when this proved ineffectual to brutal mass murder of the Ukrainian people, war crimes, mercenaries, and assassins in hopes of breaking a nations people and its leaders.

The complicated thing is a full analysis of why its war machine and intelligence is so broken as to lead them to believe this would lead to course of action would be profitable.

Let us not try to discount the complexity of the Russian motivation for war (and no matter what they are, it's still morally wrong).

Firstly, Ukraine was most prosperous in 2013. Even in recent years, Ukrainian wealth was growing more slowly than that of, say, Belarus. Even with sanctions, up until the pandemic, Russian GDP per capita PPP was increasing at a similar rate as with Ukraine. So it is unlikely that this was the only motivation, Ukraine was never on track to becoming more prosperous than Russia or it's satellites, nor even becoming relatively more prosperous in recent years. Indeed, Ukraine's economic system is pretty similar to that of Russia, and both countries have had similar levels of corruption by various indexes.

Then, there are obviously many other possible motivations, neither of them were a justification alone, and many analysts squabble still about what they were. So yes, "it's complicated".

You're literally just spouting the West's approved propaganda and don't even realize it.

Actually I have followed a plethora of information from individuals on the ground and historical information from multiple sources. What I have posted is as close to objective reality as I can obtain and I am very confident it its veracity.

The fact that you have information from "individuals on the ground" and from "multiple sources" doesn't make the information correct or unbiased. What you posted may as well have come directly from Ukrainian state media.

"Putin was jealous that Ukraine was doing so much better than Russia, so he attacked them for no reason to bring them back down" is just a laughable take on the situation.

It's also not what I said. I said Putin had a vision of a "Greater Russia" composed of the components of its former empire and reached out to grasp them before its declining strength made this impossible. This is literally what Putin said in prior speeches.

I also said that democracies on their doorstep are a dangerous precedent for the serfs the kleptocrats are presently robbing.

Ok, enlighten me. What is the real reason?

The data of the past decade doesn’t show this to be the case. Check Ukraine with Belarus and Russia economic numbers. It negates your or really the west’s framing.

“ Ukraine is every year more prosperous”

jesus christ. stopped reading here

I don't regard carriage of misinformation used to justify genocide as morally neutral nor do I hope many others. If you feel existing search engines are insufficiently neutral towards evil you are free to start your own.

Search engines results represent and will continue to ultimately represent a human value judgement because there is no mathematical answer to what is the right answer for what is the right set of results for this query because both engineers at the search engine and the pages indexed are adjusting their software based not on mathematical correctness but instead on the first parties desire to return humanly useful results not mathematically useful results and the latter's desire to be visible regardless of utility to the end user.

If we correctly abandon neutrality as the lie it is then it is merely a question of whether lies that justify genocide have greater utility than actual facts. This is I think an easier question to answer.

What is a query you would use to search exclusively for Russian propaganda?

search rt.com

Now blocked in several countries.

Really?

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rt&ia=web

Works fine for me in the US. RT.com is the first result.

What countries are you referring to? And is this DDG’s decision or are they being forced to comply with the country’s law?

I was mainly referring to the EUs ban on RT. I think the law forces the ISPs to comply, not the engines. that way it prevents direct access via the URL.

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/03/08/eu-officials-d...

RT is not banned in the US as far as I know, although it appears engines are banning some content of their own free will.

This is TV broadcast ban. Thankfully EU currently doesn't have methods to block websites.

> Besides, what's so bad about access to "disinformation"?

Disinformation doesn't just try to present an alternative view, it also tries to drown out other viewpoints. I don't think it's possible to accurately and neutrally present search results when bad actors try to subvert rankings.

I think propaganda can be interesting, I don't think it should be banned. But penalizing it seems fair to me. I don't want other searches to get flooded with clickbait.

"Disinformation doesn't just try to present an alternative view, it also tries to drown out other viewpoints."

So, basically what is done now by downranking "disinformation", right?

If I want to know if a Foobar Baz Sedan is a good car then legit reviews and spam generated by paid shills aren't equally useful and since there is a finite time available to produce quality content having 1000x more spam will make it absolutely impossible for the real information to be obtained by anyone.

Searching google for war in ukraine returns over 2 billion results. It is impossible not to privilege some information over others. Believing that any software designed by people can possibly be unbiased is absolute misunderstanding.

We are not talking about believing if something is unbiased, or if something can be unbiased, we are talking about said something being actively biased in the name of "the greater good"

> Searching google for war in ukraine returns over 2 billion results.

Google always lies about the number of results. You'll see the real number once you dig in. First screenshot shows what you get by default, second shows what you get after you enable "omitted results."

https://imgur.com/a/pgiTYuV

No one disagrees with this in principle. The huge problem is that no one is capable of building a reliable propaganda detector, for many reasons. Furthermore, a good amount of propaganda comes from the "good" guys.

> Besides, what's so bad about access to "disinformation"?

This is an excellent point that doesn’t get as much discussion as it deserves. Censorship of misinformation seems to be rooted in the idea that the masses cannot/should not have the freedom to think and discuss information freely.

Also, there is a great deal of valuable insight which can be gained by analyzing a country’s propaganda.

There is great value in analyzing propaganda if you know it's propaganda. The danger comes in the fact that the majority of people can't distinguish actual reporting from disinformation. That's why it gets down-ranked.

You are correct. However, the solution should be better education, not censorship.

If DDG can overhaul the worldwide education system, I'm sure we'd all be in favor of that.

But since the best solution is impossible, at least right now, a half measure like this seems reasonable to offer some amount of protection.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We should do what we can now, and keep pushing for better solutions. Holding out for perfection does nothing to help people now, or possibly ever, depending on your definition of "perfect".

Educate who and how? What concrete steps should be taken right now instead of downranking manipulative information warfare?

the problem is the stuff getting downranked is going to be the real information. the powerful people who control everything, including the news, are going to push propaganda and censor in whatever way makes themselves richer at the expense of everybody else, which is how they got to be in that position in the first place

Are you claiming that the search results currently being downranked, i.e. Russian propaganda, is the "real information?" If so, who is that making richer?

Propaganda can be useful to analyze, yes. But only if you know that it's propaganda. Most people casually searching DDG are probably not aware of that. If you know enough to know that some news source is spreading propaganda and you want to study it, then you know enough to be able to access it directly. Propaganda wants to be found, and you can always just go to RT yourself.

Propaganda should be treated as a hazardous material. Yes, it can be studied, and there is value in studying it, but there are safety protocols that should be followed to protect yourself and others. Uranium is very useful and scientifically valuable, but it shouldn't be on the shelves at your local Walmart where people can stumble upon it, unaware of the dangers.

Propaganda is an infohazard and should be treated as such; an information retrieval service should not surface it readily for a casual search.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com