Using censorship to fight censorship (don't actually do this) - DuckDuckgo to donkrank russian sites related to war.

[Quackers101]

also

Quote

firefox 98.1
Yandex and Mail.ru have been removed as optional search providers in the drop-down search menu in Firefox.

 

[Brooksie359]

1 hour ago, steelo said:

I am not arguing that deprioritizing Russian propaganda is a bad thing. However, as I and several others have stated, this is a very slippery slope. It is all too easy for a corporation to see a certain political side as 'evil' or 'misinformed' and therefore label everything they say as 'disinformation'. This often is based on the cancel culture we are currently living in...ban the speech from the people we don't like or we will boycott and harass you into submission...Of course there ARE situations where hate speech that presents a danger to society should be banned.

 

You keep mentioning that you feel my posts are politically based. To an extent, they are. In my opinion, it is imperative that (American) society have free speech to share information, even if a certain group dislikes this information. And yes this includes information that goes against my personal beliefs as well. I have faith that the majority of my fellow neighbors will do their research and come to an intelligent conclusion without a tech corporation skewing results and essentially making the decision for them.

 

They are playing a dangerous game when it comes to information gatekeeping.

Again I think you are overthink this. They are downgrading the government run propaganda news that is blatantly telling lies. Any good search engine would put that down further on the list. Also you can still find it you just don't see it at the top for obvious reasons. This isn't the same as what you are talking about at all so idk why you think this somehow will lead to them downgrading legitimate new sources. 

[Quackers101]

It can also be nice to see what kind of propaganda is being pushed, as that is good information in itself.

Depending on what it is, and if one can tell it's propaganda that is pushed by x group or nation.

 

Also legitimate "news sources", is being push back on and sometimes hide the truth like in this current war, then again bots are able to push through with mixed information or important information.

[ArtisanFoxx]

With even more things being blocked on DDG, most recently the addition of torrents and YT-downloaders, can anyone suggest another search engine that won't filter what I want to look for?

[dalekphalm]

On 4/18/2022 at 9:35 AM, ArtisanFoxx said:

With even more things being blocked on DDG, most recently the addition of torrents and YT-downloaders, can anyone suggest another search engine that won't filter what I want to look for?

Blocked, or down ranked?

Because the OP was not about anything being blocked.

[RejZoR]

On 4/18/2022 at 3:35 PM, ArtisanFoxx said:

With even more things being blocked on DDG, most recently the addition of torrents and YT-downloaders, can anyone suggest another search engine that won't filter what I want to look for?

So much drama over something that wasn't even happening. DDG still shows all of it just fine. It was the weird use of commands that caused this. it was "site:rarbg.to search:somethingsomething" command iirc. I don't know why ppl even use this. Keywords are a thing, at least in Firefox. Just create search with keyword for said page and it'll work great. Just open page, right click in its search engine and select "Add keyword". Then you just type that keyword and search term in URL bar of Firefox and it'll search on that search engine directly without actually navigating there. Been using this stuff for many years and I basically can't live without it anymore.

[SolarNova]

Well damn ..thats unfortunate.

 

I have DDG as my default search engine to avoid stuff like this.

 

This keeps up all we'll have left is Tor 'Onion' search engines ..and i assure u ..from experience ..we DONT want those as our only option, some of those search engine have sh*t on there will make ur blood run cold regardless of what u type into the search box.

[idkwhat]

6 minutes ago, SolarNova said:

I have DDG as my default search engine to avoid stuff like this.

To avoid stuff like what? The literal goal of mainstream search engines (and DDG is certainly mainstream) is to present the best information available that corresponds to the user's search, and that presentation has essentially always had limits. There is nothing whatsoever inconsistent with that and DDG's privacy goals. If DDG were catering to whatever the latest hot button issue is, that might be concerning, but this is about de-ranking misinfo from an authoritarian state invading another country. Seems straightforward.

[SolarNova]

7 minutes ago, idkwhat said:

but this is about de-ranking misinfo

This ..this is why. This statement ..this way of thinking ..this is opinion based, predominantly, on cultural and political ideology.

 

I don't want that in my search engine. I want results that match my chosen search word or phrase ..AND THATS IT.

I don't want it filtered through someone else's opinion.

The only thing i dont want coming up is stuff not relevant to my given search term.

I don't care if what comes up comes from all sides of an opinion on any given subject .. i want it all.

Thats the original purpose of a search engine, to find what ur looking for without bias.

 

if i type in COVID i want ALL the info ..not just 1 set of info coming from 1 source thats then parroted by 100 more outlets all of which are the only results in the 'top 100' thanks to the engine predefined 'misinfo' filter.

 

I want more info ..more data ..more opinions ..more viewpoints... not just 1. Thats how you learn and thats how u stay level headed.

[idkwhat]

1 hour ago, SolarNova said:

This ..this is why. This statement ..this way of thinking ..this is opinion based, predominantly, on cultural and political ideology.

Strangely dramatic post. 

 

In any event, information vs. noise is only "based, predominantly, on cultural and political ideology" if you've already succumbed to the notion that it's impossible to find the signal from the noise on the internet, so we should just *shrug* present all sides to everything because that's fair. It's a sad perspective because the internet can serve to aggregate basically all human knowledge in an accessible way if companies and organizations are willing.

 

The best example of this? Wikipedia (and wikis in general), a site + format that relentlessly roots out misinformation and replaces it with information. I'm not optimistic we'll learn from it, though.