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Comment by lexlambda | Hacker News Reader

> “We could de-rank results from unethical or unsustainable companies and rank good companies higher,” Kroll says of the eco-minded Ecosia.

Understandable knowing Ecosias goals, but I find it rather concerning their vision of a better search involves deciding what is good and bad.

Ranking by quality (against spam & SEO sites) is fine, but it should be applied equally to all Websites, and not target specific companies.

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The measure of success of a search engine is how quickly I leave it with the info I want in hand.

I too find this a bit strange. Downranking results that would otherwise be naturally highly ranked seems only to inhibit the operation of the search engine.

Yes, people aren't going to use a search engine that politically skews the results. It will end up as a tiny website for a very narrow niche of person, similar to eg Mastodon.

> I find it rather concerning their vision of a better search involves deciding what is good and bad

the entire purpose of a search engine is to do this, you've been grossly confused about the entire space if you think this isn't exactly what everyone is trying to do.

Yes, but it usually isn't "good or bad" in the moral judgement sense. Not to mention the many logical flaws involved with trying to make such prioritization. If I'm searching for say desert eagles refusing to return any gun related content and only giving me birds isn't helping anything or anyone.

Although come to think of it I'm surprised that I haven't heard of any attempts of fundamentalists to make "moral" search engines that do things like exclude evolution.

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