duckduckgo censorship

[anonaddict]

DDG search engine censors news based on what they classify as misinformation. A DDG search for Russia Today doesn't find rt.com https://duckduckgo.com/?q=russia+today&t=ffab&ia=web (without informing users)
They also censor certain (legal) NSFW content even with safe search disabled
They censor various piracy sites

This should be mentioned

[jonaharagon]

[flexagoon]

RT comes up as the first result when you set the search region to Russia.

Also, DDG did not censor piracy sites. It was an issue with Bing which is now resolved.

[anonaddict]

I was not aware piracy issue was resolved. Thank you.

However I don't think searching "Russia Today" requires your search region to be set to Russia to show up in search results. DDG CEO has also confirmed they do down-rank sites connected to russian disinformation https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1501716484761997318 which means they do curate search results based on politics in the same way google does. I'm not saying they are as bad as google, however this shows they are not a neutral search engine.

In the same way I would also expect BBC to show up if my location is set to russia and I search for "british broadcasting corporation" or "bbc" (which it does)

I should note I am not a fan of RT or in any way advocating people use it.

[RoseTheFlower]

It was not resolved at all. Search for site:thepiratebay.org batman and it will do nothing but link to the site itself, which is useless because someone searching within The Pirate Bay already knows what it is.

[dngray]

Realistically you're going to find even google does this, as misinformation websites are generally not what people are looking for. Startpage, uses Google results, DDG, gets some data from Bing.

[RoseTheFlower]

If we are to look at the specific examples given in this thread, Google is perfect, so one is definitely better off using an instance of SearXNG with Google toggled on.

[dngray]

definitely better off using an instance of SearXNG with Google toggled on

Worth noting Google regularly denies SearX/SearXNG instances, so your mileage may vary there.

[GlenMerlin]

especially when said misinformation sites are actively attempting to harm Ukrainian citizens. Not promoting government propaganda as legitimate answers to basic searches seems like a good idea imo.

They also didn't outright remove it. If you want to read government propaganda all they did was make it slightly harder to get too. That isn't censorship it's doing exactly what a search engine should do. Filtering results down to help people find answers to questions. If someone searches "Is the earth flat?" you would expect answers of the truth that it is round not a bunch of conspiracy theory wordpress blogs.

If you're searching "are the borders to [insert country here] open to ukrainian refugees?" you would expect real answers and not government propaganda spreading lies.

How people get so offended over such a small change like this I have no idea

[RoseTheFlower]

@GlenMerlin The problem is your perspective of trying to assess the damage of censorship based on whether you agree with a particular instance. One could pick a political ideology at random and always find instances of its supporters providing evidence of the other side being harmful.

You are also being dishonest when saying "it's doing exactly what a search engine should do. Filtering results down to help people find answers to questions.", while the OP here proves the opposite because it is clear as day that if you search for Russia Today, you want to find RT, not Al Jazeera, CNN or Daily Mail.