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Comment by nomel | Hacker News Reader

I was able to convince my wife to switch for anything remotely "controversial", when, during the pandemic, we caught the relatively "real time" disappearance of several "against the grain" articles about covid [1]. By disappeared, I mean top results for the rough concept one day to not being able to find it, even with the exact title and text, the next.

I want a search engine, more than a curated guide.

[1] https://www.mobihealthnews.com/news/google-takes-covid-19-va...

edit: I think the core problem is that "misinformation" was applied too broadly, and sometimes incorrectly.

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x-posting from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35980374

(I'm the CEO & Founder of DuckDuckGo.)

It is simply not true that we have censored anything or made ourselves "the arbiters of truth." I realized I previously explained how our news rankings work very poorly on Twitter but I subsequently put out a clarification in this help page with a much clearer (and detailed) explanation of how our news rankings actually work: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/ne...

From that page: "When we apply our own ranking signals we do so in a strictly non-political manner, meaning we don’t evaluate or otherwise take into account any potential political bias or leanings of websites in our search result rankings."

> Many sites may occasionally do one or more of these things, but we take action very rarely, only in the most extreme cases. To identify these rare, extreme cases, we rely on multiple non-governmental and non-political organizations that specialize in objectively assessing journalistic standards. To take any ranking action using this factor, we must see at least three of these organizations independently assess a site as having extremely low journalistic standards and also see that none of these organizations have assessed the same site as having even somewhat robust journalistic standards.

This is far too vague. Last year Bazbaz told Recode that sites like RT and Sputnik were "extreme" cases (https://www.vox.com/recode/22981115/duckduckgo-free-speech-p...). While I tend to agree, which other sites are extreme cases? This isn't published. Despite the claim that none of this is done for political reasons, I find it hard to trust that these "non-governmental and non-political organizations" act and are chosen without any bias. Your method isn't published or explained. I really think these organisations should, at minimum, be listed. So too should all the sites DDG considers to be "extreme" cases. Then we could decide if we think DDG is being politically neutral.

My confidence in DDG is shaken, and I don't think I'm alone. We live in a world where so many major software brands we love have made overt moves towards censorship on political grounds. If DDG could prove they reject this authoritarianism I think it would serve as a major USP.

It was crazy to see suggestions to wear masks or claims that covid was airborne getting "fact-checked" by the media only to reverse their position months later after WHO put out new statements. In particular, the phrase "no credible evidence" was wildly thrown around without mentioning whether there were any credible high-powered studies that had even attempted to find evidence of the phenomenon.

The WHO has a lot of blame itself for misinformation. And, I personally believe, a lot of conspiracy theories definitely caught fire from their mistakes.

https://twitter.com/who/status/1243972193169616898?lang=en

Also, as you can see in the replies, a lot of people called BS at the time, but who were they to question the official WHO line? Yes, the WHO later came around and came up with 6 feet instead of 1 meter, but those who called BS on the WHO's statement may have saved their lives.

Uh... are you suggesting that at some not-insignificant point into the pandemic someone credible was arguing COVID was NOT airborne?

Actually, yes. For the first half of the pandemic, much of the medical community was unsure if COVID was airborne.

Examples:

- https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/cdc-reverses-agai...

- https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7

- https://archive.is/wPD2D (Tweet from WHO)

Note that "airborne" has a specific meaning in medical literature. Everyone agreed COVID could be transmitted in the air by respiratory droplets. But to be truly "airborne" means the virus could be aerosolized and float freely, without being attached to a larger droplet.

Both droplet-based and aerosolized/"airborne" spread allows viruses to be transmitted in the air. But a truly "airborne" virus can travel much farther.

It's the difference between needing 6 feet and 20 feet of distance to prevent spread.

(To put it bluntly, it's the difference between avoiding spittle, or avoiding the equivalent of cigarette smoke. Two very different threat models.)

This is the excuse hospitals used to send nurses into covid units with no or insufficient PPE when they got caught flat-footed having no stored supply. (and it was BS)

I don’t know your definition of credible. But the Swedish institute of health (my translation) still has articles of it being spread by droplets. https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/smittskydd-beredskap/utb...

Yes I believe it was the WHO or US government (the only sources I was following at the time) that explicitly stated they "did not have evidence" covid was airborne.

Yes, in the early days of the pandemic there was a lot of official resistance to acknowledging this, mostly because doing so would have meant accepting that COVID was effectively unstoppable.

You don't remember health authorities telling people masks don't work, and to wipe your groceries down? I do.

I remember Pelosi telling people to go dance around the streets of Chinatown and celebrate the new year or they're racist.

Early in the pandemic there was a very aggressive "you don't need masks and please don't buy them because hospitals need them"

Ex: "US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams not only wants people to stop buying facemasks to prevent the novel coronavirus, but warns that you actually might increase your risk of infection if facemasks are not worn properly. [...] On Sunday, Adams posted on Twitter that people should stop buying masks. Rather, he tweeted that to keep yourself and those around you healthy, wash your hands often, avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth with unwashed hands and disinfect surfaces."

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/02/health/surgeon-general-corona...

The entirety of first half was "Nurses and Doctors need the mask, please don't buy them."

The consensus and official line amongst epidemiologists (and the health organizations and media that relayed this official line to the public) was that COVID was only transmitted by droplet transmission i.e. droplets that fall to the ground within several feet (hence the 6 feet / 2 meters social distancing rule) and don't float around in the air. This was despite obvious evidence of outbreaks that could have only occurred via ventilation systems or the virus floating around in the air in an elevator.

Here's an article going over the issue and what convinced them to change their mind: https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwu...

It turned out they were wrong not just about COVID, but a whole host of other diseases, based on erroneous criteria about what sized droplets could float in the air. Ironically, doctors from centuries ago with their theories of "miasma" / bad air would have been closer to the truth.

With hindsight we can see their mistakes but isn't following the expert line the best thing to do in an uncertain situation?

I mean there was a very sizable group that saw the mistakes in real time. Not necessarily the medical mistakes but the censorship mistakes. I’m not sure how anyone can know what to do in an uncertain situation like that but being unable to question authority isn’t good for most societies.

Unfortunately, we've learned that the experts are there mainly to reinforce whatever makes businesses money. That's who gets access to the airwaves and government press conferences. So if you think there's an alternative reality that might be unprofitable, you have to figure it out for yourself. The best COVID info is and was on Twitter since 2020. Just stunning amounts of primary lit being shared with expert opinion. You have to tune your bullshit sense though, and unfortunately that might require having a science background...

This is how many people realized that COVID is airborne and that only N95 and better respirators provide real protection. People now discuss air cleaning, the impacts of Long COVID, etc. The vaccines were seized upon by the political parties as a wedge issue to force the economy open. They help with medical system capacity, but do not block transmission and Long COVID.

You can find an ongoing science based pandemic response policy at https://pandemicjustice.icu

Trusting in appointed experts instead of critical thinking is the worst thing to do in uncertain times.

Nobody knew if covid was airborne at the time, so the most correct answer was nobody knows. Some people got lucky by making things up on the spot and guessed it was airborne. At a certain point their confirmation bias and distrust of media broke their perception of the world and they became antivax etc, still no critical thinking taking place.

Many did not know and took extra steps like wearing a mask. What the experts did was say anyone wearing masks is racist against asian people.

Their was no vaccine at this point so no one against it yet.

The critical thinking can be found in the independent minds of those who made the choice to wear a mask. Listening to an expert didn't play out well.

Your genius is only validated by the experts eventually proving that wearing a mask was a good idea.

Do you have the quote from the WHO saying the use of masks was racist?

Thank you. Because what you're talking about is blind trust in someone who has been put into a position of supposed authority. I can't bring myself to do it - I don't know these people so until I'm presented with credible evidence that makes sense to me, I believe a position of extreme skepticism is warranted.

Many of these things were obvious at the time if you were paying attention.

Many people were also certain of obvious beliefs that turned out to be untrue.

Following the best guess of those with the knowledge and experience is definitely the best best, but I find myself, like most people, questioning their motives. It's healthy to do so but also a sad commentary.

When experts are wrong ignore them as noise. I trust the cdc as much as I trust Jim Cramer on investments. Both are technically experts

Sure as a general rule, but that doesn't render those experts free from criticism when they make mistakes. That low confidence scientific hypotheses were treated as high confidence scientific results is a valid critique of expert interaction with the general public, as it led to search engine censorship of objectively true information.

This isn't quite correct. They eventually knew that masks worked, but delayed to help doctors get them: https://www.businessinsider.com/fauci-mask-advice-was-becaus...

"delayed"? They lied.

> the phrase "no credible evidence" was wildly thrown around

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence...

DDG may not be the best if you want to avoid political meddling. I switched to Brave after https://web.archive.org/web/20220831110219/https://twitter.c...

I get so tired of seeing yegg raked over the coals for this one.

A search engine by definition takes an editorial stance on things. They take in all of the internet and decide what to present to users. For a search engine to take no editorial position is to yield the floor to whoever can best game the system, and a propaganda machine like Russia's is absolutely capable of exploiting a search engine that doesn't proactively take measures to avoid being exploited.

That DDG wanted to avoid spreading Russian propaganda that argues against the very existence of the Ukrainian people isn't DDG meddling in politics, it's them steering clear of enabling genocide.

They could simply add a “propaganda” tag and give an option to filter out the search results marked with that tag. If anything I can specifically search for Russian propaganda, for whatever reason.

Yes, you can, and downranking propaganda wouldn't stop it from turning up if you go looking.

But when my naive sister-in-law hears something about how Ukraine isn't a real country, I don't want the first page of results for "history of Ukraine" to turn up Russian propaganda.

I live in a red state, and there are astonishing numbers of people here who already buy Putin's story. I'm fully behind DDG deciding they didn't want to play a role in spreading his message even further.

> wouldn't stop it from turning up if you go looking.

Yeah, same goes for your naïve sister-in-law. So why don’t they add the “propaganda” tag, so that your relatives could clearly see it and I could search for it (for whatever reason)? They could even add some links to some better sources, as an option. And use some disclaimer when you click on these results, like “Hey, this is a propaganda resource, be careful. Here’s the links where you can read up on the topic if you need unbiased information”. That would probably have at least some educational value, unlike removing and/or downranking the results.

it is not a search engine's job to filter their results based on acceptable politics. the only explicit filtering out they should be doing is filtering out manipulation, explicitly illegal content, spam, fraudulent content and stuff like that. aside from that the filtering algorithm should be largely neutral and unbiased. it's not a search engine's job to refuse to answer search results because the owner finds it distasteful.

Does bad-faith propaganda not qualify as fraudulent content?

yes they should obviously be filtering out or downranking manipulated and fraudulent propaganda content. these policies would have existed before the invasion happened so there would be no reason to say that you are going to be downranking russian information unless you are planning on adding additional filtering and manipulation to the ranking on top of what you would normally do to content. they should be filtering all content neutrally and equally, not filtering russian content more because the owner wants to inject politics into their algorithm.

So no more NYT?

How do you think search engines detect manipulation, down, fraudulent content, etc, if not by judging the content? Content is all a search engine sees.

An article about a Nigerian prince who needs money is likely to be a scam. An article about how Ukraine is really just a rebellious Russian province is likely to be state-sponsored propaganda.

>manipulation

This seems to be the case being argued here

>explicitly illegal content

Illegal according to who?

>fraudulent content

Fraudulent according to who?

These things you name are an editorial decision and are not unbiased

> A search engine by definition takes an editorial stance on things.

That editorial stance should be "show the user what they are looking for and want to see". The customer is always right, otherwise the real customer is someone else.

> For a search engine to take no editorial position is to yield the floor to whoever can best game the system

I am not against search engines having heuristics against state-sponsored propaganda, but there is no need for those heuristics to single out a particular state. Russian state-sponsored content shouldn't be treated differently than American, Chinese, Ukrainian, or any other state's propaganda.

> The customer is always right, otherwise the real customer is someone else.

Sometimes a company takes an ethical stance for the sake of being ethical. Shocking, I know, but it occasionally happens.

I'm not sure I would consider downplaying misinformation websites as "political meddling". In fact, I think I like DDG more for it.

Do we really need a search engine that censors incorrectly when we really need facts?

Similarly, some people can't handle the truth, but that is not the search engine's job to correct, is it?

Yeah. Like downranking Iraqi websites in a hypothetical 2003 when they said "We dont have WMDs". So much better.

Same here. I can't debate what the "other side" is thinking if I don't know what it is.

If they want to add a side link to more authoritative sources (like what Spotify does for podcasts discussing Covid), then fine, but don't censor me if I'm actively looking for "disinformation."

Oh, DuckDuckGo just does that sometimes. Pretty often I'll pick a result then back out to the search results, and the one I had in mind to click next just isn't there anymore. However annoying, I wouldn't immediately jump to a political motivation.

Do you put "everything" in "quotations" all the "time"?

I used it to convey some external concept, rather than my own thoughts.

"controversial": Others called it controversial. I did/would not.

"against the grain": Others thought that there was a grain. I did/would not.

"real time": Not literal.

Maybe this is a regional/age thing?

edit: actually, asking ChatGPT why they're in quotes gives the similar answers as mine, so I guess it's not too odd. New session prompt with 4.0: "Why are some of these words in quotes?"

Fluff removed, same order as my answers:

> ... In this case, "controversial" could imply that the speaker doesn't personally find the topics controversial, but acknowledges that others may perceive them as such.

> ... indicating that it's being used in its typical idiomatic sense.

> ... Here, the quotation marks might be used to stress that the term isn't being used in its strictest sense.

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