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Comment by TobyTheDog123 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not entirely sure what market DuckDuckGo is trying to serve.

- Non-privacy-conscious people are just going to use Google.

- Privacy-conscious people know enough to realize that DuckDuckGo isn't really protecting your privacy, and that it's akin to using ExpressVPN or NordVPN to "hide your IP address".

Didn't they also have some kind of censorship uproar back in the day?

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> Didn't they also have some kind of censorship uproar back in the day?

They recently down-ranked Russian propaganda-linked sites (like RT). I can't remember if that change has remained in place or they reversed it.

Oh right I remember now - I guess the point I'd make about that is I'd think there's a large overlap between those that are privacy-conscious and those that are conscious to those kinds of algorithmic manipulations.

I don't think toeing the line is a viable business strategy when your competition blows your search result quality out of the water. There's no benefit in that case.

I agree. There are cases where I appreciate this sort of thing, like when it's a child performing the search. When it's me doing it, I would prefer to not have sources artificially de-ranked because they're government-affiliated and/or propaganda. However, I could also see having some sort of visual indicator like Twitter used to use being useful. I don't always know in advance whether a particular source has a background conflict of interest I should be aware of...but it's still a bit of a slippery slope.

ExpressVPN is still good for hiding your IP if you torrent.

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