Goodbye Duckduckgo, DuckDuckGo’s CEO Gabriel Weinberg announced on Twitter that his privacy first search engine will be manipulating its search results to only show users what the company deems not to be “disinformation” about the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

you may think he's imposing an ideology by doing this, but there's also an ideology when you don't. I'd rather people not read disinformation on something so important. the russian government is bombarding their citizens with lies about ukraine. this is a good choice, the opposite would be complacency

Meeeeh, it's marginally Bing-dependent - why even bother about free speech on such platform?

@darksideofyay nope, I refuse someone else to decide instead of me. You are talking like anti-Trump freak democrats.

@aviophile I'll take that as a compliment? thanks

it's fine if you do check your sources and do your own research before drawing conclusions, but most people don't, and I don't blame them, cause it takes time

@darksideofyay Precisely this can also affect people who does their own research, because when researching you may need to know both sides of the argument.

@cafecortado the thing is that there isn't "both sides", there's reality and there's russian propaganda. people shouldn't even be given the chance of chosing to believe that crap, and it's really scary that sometimes they do. just last week a coworker was spouting some nonsense about how it'd be a good thing to side with russia.

@aviophile as opposed to the alternative? But I guess insurrections are good by you then?

I think it is laughable to think that search engines actually represent the internet anymore. There was a significant change in 2016. Researchers watched as overnight 90% of the pages they could find in search engines on the internet disappeared. They already burned the second great library. I suspect most search engines are practically echo chambers at this point.

@darksideofyay while I agree that we'd be better off without that nonsense propaganda, this sets a dangerous precedent. Furthermore, one man (DDG's CEO) deciding what is truth and what is lie ("misinformation") goes again information freedom and democracy (which are the things DDG's users actually tend to seek).

@ess3sq media outlets filter what we see anyway, make no mistake. no editorial is impartial. that's just their choice as a company to filter their results.

@ess3sq i recommend reading the relevance of algorithms by gillespie, it has really good talking points about this type of interference. the mager essay from 2012 is also really good and they talk a lot about google, and i think a lot of what they say applies here

@darksideofyay that may be so, and I am not saying they aren't allowed to do that. Because they certainly are. What I'm saying is that it's a contradiction as censorship is not a solution to misinformation.

@ess3sq we have very different definitions of censorship. this is not censorship, and i know that because my country has a history with authoritarian regimes. this is the exact opposite. we can't tolerate these lies, we can't treat them like they're "other opinion, cause they're simply lies. this is why europe bans nazi propaganda on their websites btw

@darksideofyay you raise a good point, but again, it's dangerous to have one person decide what's truth and what isn't.

Oh come on. Yes, the constant brave talk is slightly annoying. But that surely is no reason to ban CNN from the search results.

@darksideofyay what a damn fascist ideology, people shouldn’t read something because it is not true(in my opinion). How about you ban religions too, because they are wrong?

@ess3sq she is a second rate western leftist. They can not realize their idioctly while whole life sitting on it.

Is this the tweet, @TinusLorvalds?

Gabriel Weinberg‏ @yegg
"Like so many others I am sickened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the gigantic humanitarian crisis it continues to create. #StandWithUkraine️ At DuckDuckGo, we've been rolling out search updates that down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation."
4:28 PM - 9. March 2022

https://twitter.com/yegg/status/... (Twitter)
https://nitter.net/yegg/status/... (Nitter)
https://archive.org/web/... (Wayback Machine)

@aviophile oh I'm all for taking religion out of political editorials. faith should have no power over news outlets. i think faith based beliefs should stay inside churches and temples.

Thanks for sharing. I really like duck duck go, but it’s time to move on it seems.

I'm with @darksideofyay on this one.

Propaganda and dis-information is how we get "peaceful riots" in merica!!

It's amazing how you go from propaganda to anti-trump so quickly here though, people will believe anything because the internet / media said so, and these same people fail to get past a headline. Headlines and conspiracy theories are not reasearch, but then I'm just a guy on an island without ma free range gun rights. 🤷‍♂️

@darksideofyay well do non techies use DDG or have even heard of it?

I even don't, just use the browser cause it's the easiest to clear cache to get around pay walls

@donuts what?

@donuts DDG is good for technical searches. Google sucks shit for that.

@jonas-w https://play.google.com/store/apps/...

@Demolishun really, like coding stuff or using quotes and operators?

All one used is Google and well I'm sorta retired from coding now

@donuts i know this app but you said you don't even use duckduckgo??

@jonas-w the search engine, just the browser

@donuts but then you are using the search engine? If you use the browser.

@jonas-w browser address bar.. just paste in the url from chrome.

Somehow just incognito doesn't work...

@donuts so you are using google?

@TinusLorvalds

i thought IE was retired.

Why are you responding so late to his tweet?

@donuts a few years ago I noticed google got harder to find things. I tried ddg and I was able to find things faster/again. I don't know what happened to google. I had used quotes and operators with google then too. Also google started putting a crap ton of ads in at the time.

@jonas-w yea...

@Demolishun google favors their business model over anything else. it's their own platforms first, their clients second and the real results always come last

@donuts ? i don't see how that's relevant to this discussion