DuckDuckGo Search Engine Wants To Penalize Sites Associated With Disinformation

greatgameindia.com ^ | March 12, 2022 | GGI Staff

[ransomnote]

The CEO of search engine DuckDuckGo Gabriel Weinberg has said that they want to penalize sites which are associated with Russian disinformation.

Weinberg took to social media and said “Like so many others I am sickened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the gigantic humanitarian crisis it continues to create.”

“At DuckDuckGo, we’ve been rolling out search updates that down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation,” he added.

“To highlight quality information for rapidly unfolding topics,” Weinberg noted, DuckDuckGo is also inserting information bubbles at the top of the search results page.

DuckDuckGo is a Google alternative that has grown in popularity in recent years, in part due to the fact that it does not track users. In the past, Weinberg has enticed consumers to switch from Google by promising “unbiased results.”

Some users, including Tom Fitton, president of the Judicial Watch nonprofit, questioned the CEO’s response right away.

“Contrary to its implicit promises to the contrary,” he said on Twitter, DuckDuckGo “is now in the censorship business.” “Are there any search engines that respect users?”

“Today, you are removing Russian disinformation Tomorrow you will be removing genuine protests,” another user wrote.

A request for comment from DuckDuckGo was not answered.

Some of the critics were eventually addressed by Weinberg.

“Search engines by definition try to put more relevant content higher and less relevant content lower—that’s not censorship, it’s search ranking relevancy,” he added.

Since 2017, Google has ranked Russian official media posts lower in its search results.

At the time, Google parent company Alphabet’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, remarked “We don’t want to ban the sites. That’s not how we operate. I am strongly not in favor of censorship. I am very strongly in favor of ranking. It’s what we do.”

One of the outlets, Russia Today, pushed back at the time, claiming, “His colleagues admitted three weeks ago that RT did not violate any rules of the platform.”

In early March, Google also stopped selling web advertising in Russia.

Around the same time, DuckDuckGo’s senior public policy manager, Katie McInnis, informed a congressional subcommittee that the company had terminated its partnership with Yandex, a Russian search engine.

“In light of Russia’s assault on democracy and Ukraine, we have paused our relationship with Yandex,” McInnis told the House Committee on Energy & Commerce. “The index was used to provide traditional links, meaning non-news links, in Russia and Turkey.”

[lee martell]

I wish they would re-name that web site, but it’s not going to happen just to make me happy.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

https://www.qwant.com/

[algore]

Thanks Gabby, just duck duck and go.

Don’t think we will forget.

(i never trusted you anyhow)

[dayglored]

As I understand it, DDG is literally BING. DDG uses BING search to get their results, they're not a separate search engine.

So whatever restricting BING does, DDG does also.

The only difference is that DDG does -not- track you, whereas BING -does-.

[Flavious_Maximus]

I use the Brave browser and their search engine.

https://brave.com/

[Dr. Sivana]

I don’t know of any issues with startpage.com

[butlerweave]

OMG just shut up and Search

[ChildOfThe60s]

I’ve been using startpage for several years.

I don’t like what I am reading about DDG

[motor_racer]

DuckDuckGone

[Keflavik76]

TrustTrustGone

[Angelino97]

According to Wiki:

"in March 2022, Qwant filters Russian media websites from it's [sic] search results."

So Qwant is no different from DDG in that respect.

Qwant is a French company that uses Bing as well as its own search results. It is the official search engine of the French government. It's also subject to EU privacy laws.

Some other search engines you might want to try:

https://www.baidu.com/

https://gibiru.com/

https://www.gigablast.com/

https://english.sogou.com/

https://swisscows.com/

https://goodgopher.com/

https://you.com/

[truthkeeper]

I’ve also been using Brave and am very happy with it.

[Karliner]

So, what is a semi reliable search engine or must we hunt and peck for a tidbit or truth?

[Revel]

Search Engine Censorship Test Results: Find Out Which Search Engine Is The Least Censored

https://michaelsuede.substack.com/p/search-engine-censorship-test-results?s=r

The results were pretty shocking to me. Here’s a summary grid showing the highlights, but it’s worth reading the test results because this snapshot doesn’t tell the whole story.

Google: passed 2 out of 10 tests.
Bing: passed 7 out of 10 tests.
DuckDuckGo: passed 5 out of 10 tests.
Qwant: passed 5 out of 10 tests.
Startpage: passed 1 out of 10 tests.
Mojeek: passed 6 out of 10 tests.
Yandex: passed 9 out of 10 tests.

[icclearly]

Bye, Bye — GONE

[TangoLimaSierra]

Who TF are you to tell a Freeper to shut up.

How about you just piss off.

[eyeamok]

penalize sites which are associated with Russian disinformation.

Does this mean that CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS... and virtually EVERY News Publication and the Entire Democrat Party will be Cancelled for the Russian Collusion with Trump, Disinformation???

[PAR35]

It would be completely inappropriate to note what Weinberg and Zelinsky have in common.

[Williams]

Omg and this is the search engine that supposedly doesn’t care what you search for.