[TLLtchvL8KZ]

Didn't DDG recently have some controversy about censoring things they didn't like related to Russia or Russian sites/news?

I don't have links stored in history but it was fairly recent, it was their CEO on twitter I believe and they got a LOT of backlash.

[blamazon]

> "At DuckDuckGo, we've been rolling out search updates that down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation. In addition to down-ranking sites associated with disinformation, we also often place news modules and information boxes at the top of DuckDuckGo search results (where they are seen and clicked the most) to highlight quality information for rapidly unfolding topics."

https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1501716484761997318

[yegg]

I realize that due to own my unfortunate phrasing, how our news results rankings work have been highly misinterpreted since then. I subsequently put out a clarification thread (https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1515635886855233537) and then we (DuckDuckGo) made a help page to explain how our news rankings actually work. I suggest anyone interested check it out (it’s short): https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/ne...

In hope to quickly clear up some common misconceptions about them though: we don’t censor, we don’t move things so far down that they are effectively censored, we don’t have any definition of misinformation, and we don’t rank based on any political agenda or opinions (that includes mine!). This is just a summary though so would read the help page for details.

[torpid]

You still haven't convinced me, or many others who used your service to the contrary, and your explanation like in this thread here doesn't match what you are preaching.

https://twitter.com/pkm_inc/status/1515677462251945986

[yegg]

I’m honestly not sure what you are referring to as the contrary or contradiction here. The referenced help page is the most complete explanation of how our news rankings work. Put another way, what would it take to convince you?

[torpid]

You were given a screenshot with quoted text from an article that returned completely buried results in your search engine from the same rt.com article. You first replied by giving a person a URL to the RT.com article to search in the engine which brought up a result. Then when someone called you out on it you then said you'd get back to them.

Now today since I've linked this thread, you have now changed who could reply.

It's pretty clear that you will say or do anything to try to save your tanking company.

[yegg]

I did not change any of my Twitter settings today.

Also, all I'm doing in that old thread (and this one) is doing my best to explain how our news rankings actually work. Again, currently the best and most thorough explanation is in this help page (more than can easily be put on Twitter): https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/ne...

[wusher]

it was announced in a very political way at a time when everyone was trying to earn social points by supporting the other side. there was no mention of downranking disinformation released by the other side. i had been using ddg since probably 2017 and i switched that day.