Comment on Every news result on duckduckgo links to MSN

• icegladiator@lemy.lol ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  tldr after the beginning of the russian invasion into Ukraine, DuckDuckGo began explicitly down ranking “Russian disinformation”, with the exact definition for “Russian disinformation” not being given archive.is/g2eL9 archive.is/laxkZ

  source

  • gigachad@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    To be honest, I absolutely agree with them. I read the whole article and I do not see what is wrong with these statements? Russia is flooding the web with disinformation, we need to do something against that. Fuck the conservatives, Fuck Russia in particular, Slava Ukraini!

    Weinberg’s tweet announcing the change generated thousands of comments, many of them from conservative-leaning users who were furious that the company they turned to in order to get away from perceived Big Tech censorship was now the one doing the censoring. It didn’t help that the content DuckDuckGo was demoting and calling disinformation was Russian state media, whose side some in the right-wing contingent of DuckDuckGo’s users were firmly on.

    DuckDuckGo spokesperson Kamyl Bazbaz told Recode that the decision was simply about doing what a search engine is supposed to do: ensure that users were getting the best results for their searches. “Sites like RT and Sputnik that deliberately put out false information to intentionally mislead people directly cut against that purpose,” Bazbaz said

    source

    • icegladiator@lemy.lol ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Russia is flooding the web with disinformation, we need to do something against that Giving one person the authority to decide what is Russian disinformation and what isn’t is very dangerous. Isn’t the whole reason why we use the fediverse in order to prevent information being filtered through Big Brother/Big Corps, etc.? I think educating the average person that news sites like RT and Sputnik are owned by a foreign state is a better approach.

      Fuck the conservatives, Fuck Russia in particular, Slava Ukraini! This isn’t me arguing in favor of conservatism or Russian imperialism, and you putting this at the end of your comment makes it seem like you don’t want to have an honest conversation. If it was 2001, I feel like you would be arguing in favor of The Patriot Act because Fuck Terrorists, Fuck Osama in particular, Slava US-led Coalition!

      Sites like RT and Sputnik that deliberately put out false information to intentionally mislead people directly cut against that purpose Why don’t we start delisting Fox News and other conservative media while we are at it? Given that shows like Tucker Carlson have been proven in court to be spreading known lies

      source

      • gigachad@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Isn’t the whole reason why we use the fediverse in order to prevent information being filtered through Big Brother/Big Corps, etc.?

        Yeah that’s why reasonable instances defederate from lemmygrad & co.

        I think educating the average person that news sites like RT and Sputnik are owned by a foreign state is a better approach.

        That’s not how it works. The average person is dumb as fuck and they need to be protected against disinfo. Also RT is not just “owned by a foreign state”, it is 100% state controlled propaganda, that is deliberately spread in the west to influence the public opinion.

        Also, as an educated person myself I do not want to skip through 10 websites run by the Kremlin until I find a good result.

        Why don’t we start delisting Fox News and other conservative media while we are at it?

        I am all in for that! As far as I know Fox is not run by the white house though, but I am not from the US so I am not sure.

        As long as there is not a good alternative for corporate search engine as in similar to the fediverse, we have to work with what we have.

        source