DDG: We are not “purging” any media outlets from results | Hacker News Reader

DDG: We are not “purging” any media outlets from results

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33 pointsEastSmith28 comments

"Unlike independent media, Russian state-sponsored media is highly censored and violations are punishable by jail time or worse. This makes it inherently more spammy relative to independent media. The same is true for all censored media."

US media is also heavily state biased, even worse, pharmaceutical companies sponsor media. Government controlled media is not "inherently spammy", sure it's very biased, but it's disingenuous to censor them under spam guise.

The media that he believes in, and controls who needs to be censored is "unbiased".

The US has a 1st amendment that protects the press. Russian state media must publish blatantly false propaganda. This does not mean that all US news is accurate, but Russia state media is legally required to be inaccurate. I think this is sufficient reason for censorship.

Why are you only quoting the US constitution without also quoting the Russian constitution?

Why would the Russian constitution be relevant? Journalists in Russia often end up dead.

https://www.politifact.com/article/2016/jan/04/does-vladimir...

The US gov banned RT. So I guess it just protects some press

Also YouTube channels, Facebook pages... All banned... At some point even the 'rt.com' was unaccessible

Even worse, CNN is still allowed is to transmit in Russia

Same applies to EU, UK, BBC...

They are all free to broadcast in Russia... if they adhere to Russias censorship rules.

When/how did the US ban RT? I am in the US and just verified I was able to visit rt.com.

Also Russia basically banned real news: https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/04/media/bbc-cnn-russia-putin-me...

Possibly to do with sanctions

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_America

> "The network was removed from the services offered by DirecTV on March 1, 2022, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, with Ora Media pausing production on several shows it produced for RT America.[19] Dish Network dropped the channel on March 4.[20]"

RT America ceases productions and lays off most of its staff https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/03/media/rt-america-layoffs/...

At same time in EU and UK

EU officials defend move to ban RT and Sputnik amid censorship claims https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/03/08/eu-officials-d...

UK regulator Ofcom revokes RT’s license to broadcast https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-regulator-ofcom-revokes-r...

> Also Russia basically banned real news:

They suspended themselves probably to make a point about of the new law, but at least BBC resumed broadcasting

BBC to resume English language reporting in Russia https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/mar/08/bbc-resume-eng...

Rt.com was down for some days. Only accessible by Tor or some VPNs https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30466791

Exactly they are all free and independent but somehow their message is exactly the same. In EU, US, UK, all media TV channels very similar

There was no TV channel calling the Iraq war other than freedom for the Iraqi people, or security for the US/UK

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cNUCD4F4T1c

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5BwxI_l84dc

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WejYdT3Lof8

It could be Putin speaking

>Gabriel Weinberg @yegg Apr 17, 2022 · 10:18 AM UTC Hoping to clear up some misconceptions about our private search engine. First, there is a completely made up headline going around this weekend. We are not "purging" any media outlets from results. Anyone can verify this by searching for an outlet and see it come up in results. Similarly, we are not "purging" YouTube-dl or The Pirate Bay and they both have actually been continuously available in our results if you search for them by name (which most people do). Our site: operator (which hardly anyone uses) is having issues which we are looking into. We are not and have never been owned by Google, and we also don't rely on Google's results for any of our search results. We have been an independent company since our founding in 2008. We don't track our users so don't have any search histories and therefore cannot alter results based on search history. This is different from "unfiltered" because every search engine's job is to filter millions of possible results down to a ranked order of just a handful. Search ranking and censorship are entirely different things. We make our results useful by ranking spam lower. 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. Unlike independent media, Russian state-sponsored media is highly censored and violations are punishable by jail time or worse. This makes it inherently more spammy relative to independent media. The same is true for all censored media. Our product vision is much more than private search: it's the "easy button" for privacy in one app. Today it's an everyday browsing app with built-in private search, tracker blocking, HTTPS upgrading, button, email protection, and (for Android) app tracking protection.<

I don’t buy his line. As others have mentioned, picking one country’s state media or corporate media over another’s is bias, no matter the rationalization.

I would stop using DDG, but I am not yet aware of anything better…

The point of search of search engines is to have bias. Without bias how could they possibly separate spam from legitimate websites?

No, the point of a search engine is not to have bias. The point is to provide the user with the results they are looking for.

Calling things people want to censor "spam" is just the trendy talking point of the day.

What users are looking for Russia propaganda?

I don't know, perhaps people who follow the news (which is mostly propaganda anyway), and like to see some alternative propaganda.

On the other hand, if no one is looking for it, why would DuckDuckGo need to do something special about it? Sticking to the telos would suffice.

Sure Jan, you are NOT purging media outlets, but merely "down-ranking" "spam".

Also, you didn't purge Youtube-dl from the results, you merely gave them porn-like status: you have to explicitly search for it by name.

Gabriel Weinberg, @yegg CEO & Founder @DuckDuckGo - Nitter : https://nitter.net/yegg/

That they said they will manipulate the results was enough for me to start using Yandex.

It's a tight-rope for any search engine. Either you rank/filter nothing and everything showing up at the top is stuff abusing SEO and spam, or you try to get rid of the junk and ultimately piss someone who values it.

Agreed; but certainly the red line is sites which some people believe are scum and others believe are holy (thepiratebay, fox news, RT, DDGs direct competitors).

If anything this story/non-story has taught us is, there still exists potential cursed product changes which can sink large internet phenomena, like Digg was sunk.

But you will always find people who believe one or the other and who would consider it a red line? In my opinion that's an impossible task to solve. The only solution would be for everyone to preset what kind of information bubble they want to be a part of... which would result in a myriad of other problems.

How would it be possible for them to not manipulate results? The very definition of a search engine is ranking and filtering sites based on a query.

Manipulation in this context means modifying the results after the search algorithm ranks the relevant results for the query. A good recent example of this on Google was all during March Madness, any searches for "NCAA tournament schedule, "March Madness schedule" etc. would deliver the women's basketball tournament schedule (and results) above the men's, despite all of the interest being around the men's games.

Google would say this was a noble thing, hoping to remind people that women's basketball exists, knowing how many queries were pouring in non-stop to find out what time a specific men's game was on.

That is manipulation. You see the same "noble lies" surrounding political, news, & covid related searches as well.

Lol Yandex is about to be the Russian Baidu if it hasn't started already. Dodging a little censorship to dive headfirst into a government controlled search engine.

Sounds bullshit. Coincidentally I've noticed them shadow banning my searches from a VPN with fake error messages. Go figure.

Telling us that the headline going around is "completely made up" and that DDG is "not ranking based on any political agenda or my (or anyone else's) personal political opinions" is woefully disingenuous. On March 10, he himself tweeted

> Like so many others I am sickened by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the gigantic humanitarian crisis it continues to create. #StandWithUkraine

> At DuckDuckGo, we've been rolling out search updates that down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation.

This just more gaslighting by the censors of the internet.

Why should DuckDuckGo help spread Russia’s lies?

It's propaganda and lies all the way down. If DuckDuckGo doesn't want to help spread lies, they should just close up shop. But instead of being honest that they have picked one set of lies over the other, they are instead themselves lying about that decision.

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