Posted on 02/23/2022 10:12:09 AM PST by yesthatjallen
On an episode of Joe Rogan’s popular podcast last year, he turned to a topic that has gripped right-wing communities and other Americans who feel skeptical about the pandemic: search engines.
“If I wanted to find specific cases about people who died from vaccine-related injuries, I had to go to DuckDuckGo,” Mr. Rogan said, referring to the small privacy-focused search engine. “I wasn’t finding them on Google.”
Praise for DuckDuckGo has become a popular refrain during the pandemic among right-wing social media influencers and conspiracy theorists who question Covid-19 vaccines and push discredited coronavirus treatments. Some have posted screenshots showing that DuckDuckGo appears to surface more links favorable to their views than Google does.
In addition to Mr. Rogan, who has recently been at the center of an outcry about misinformation on his podcast, the search engine has received ringing endorsements from some of the world’s most-downloaded conservative podcasters, including Ben Shapiro and Dan Bongino.
“Google is actively suppressing search results that don’t acquiesce to traditional viewpoints of the left,” Mr. Shapiro claimed last March. “I recommend you install DuckDuckGo on your computer, rather than Google, to combat all this.”
The endorsements underscore how right-wing Americans and conspiracy theorists are shifting their online activity in response to greater moderation from tech giants like Google. They have increasingly embraced fledgling and sometimes fringe platforms like the chat app Telegram, the video streamer Rumble and even search engines like DuckDuckGo, seeking conditions that seem more favorable to their conspiracy theories and falsehoods.
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(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Morons must love Google tracking their every move on the web.
It’s no conspiracy that Google tracks your every keystroke thru Chrome, and your web searches.
Pathetic leftists.
Google is just another method for the libtards to track you via their tech cronies who will gladly accommodate 🤪
I started out using Prodigy and the green screen!
DDG has changed, gradually at first, and much worse lately.
They use Google’s algorithms, just not the spyware.
I’m pretty sure the Borg in Star Trek are aspirational for most of the leftist techies.
I’m thinking Google’s manipulation is becoming obvious and annoying to people who are now looking for alternatives so they asked the self-proclaimed “newspaper of record” to spread rumors and lies
Agree.
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