Performative Conservatives Are Mad That A Search Engine Wants To Downrank Disinformation

DuckDuckGo, of course, is a popular alternative" search engine, using Microsoft's Bing as its underlying search engine but then doing a bunch of generally good stuff for the wider internet/public, such as not trying to collect as much information on you as possible for tracking based ads, but focusing instead of intention based ads around your search (like Google did in the early days). I regularly use it and appreciate the more privacy protective approach.

Like lots of internet companies over the last few weeks, apparently DuckDuckGo has been trying to figure out how to deal with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as well as the concerted effort by certain sources to push a Russia-driven narrative about the invasion. A few days ago, DDG's founder and CEO Gabriel Weinberg announced on Twitter that the company was rolling out a search update that downranked 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.

- Gabriel Weinberg (@yegg) March 10, 2022

Now, there are (of course!) reasonable questions to be asked about what any particular company considers to be disinformation." As we've spent years detailing, defining disinformation is a lot more difficult than most people think. It's also prone to abuse by governments looking to censor. And, quite frequently, disinformation flows are really more closely related to the issue of confirmation bias.

Still, the job of a search engine is to rank websites based on what that website thinks will provide the searcher with the most relevant information. It is, inherently, biased. It can't not be. This is why the entire concept of search neutrality" is nonsense. A neutral" search engine is a search engine that just returns random results, rather than useful results. Every search engine is biased, because that bias is what determines what results will be ranked first, second, third, etc.

But... a whole bunch of overly performative Trumpists who must always play the victim, responded to Gabriel's announcement by falling on their fainting couches to bemoan the fact that a search engine was downranking false information. This includes a Peter Thiel-backed Senate candidate, Blake Masters, who is shocked, shocked, shocked, that a search engine might try to minimize false information:

But there were lots more, and all seemed to be based on the idea that before this, DDG's results were somehow... pure and untouched by any bias.

I will determine for myself what is quality"just show all results and let people decide"How dare a website try to determine what's credible!manipulating search results" as if there's a natural order of search results handed down from God.If you don't want filtered" results, don't use a search engine, Brad.Yeah! How dare a search engine try to determine quality results!They are returning search results, dude.Search engines rank thinks?!? Since when?!?Can't believe a search engine would dare to try to figure out what's relevant. What is the world coming to?Just give me all the results in no conceivable order and let me decide for myself!That's kind of the whole point of a search engine, Grant.Apparently trying to show you relevant information above less relevant information is now censorship.You had ONE JOB: to provide me with random results in no particular order!I'm an adult: please make sure you don't rank any search results and force me to wade through garbage to find anything useful. Like all adults.If you want a search engine where you get to make your own decisions about information" then you don't want a search engine, Glen.It really is unfortunate when a search engine tries to prioritize more relevant results.Search engines must return all results and let me rank them.Time to find a search engine that doesn't try to find what's best for me.

There are SO MANY more tweets like this, nearly all of which seem to think that there's a divine set of search results that are perfect, unbiased, and untouched by human hands, and that somehow DDG's latest search ranking modification (something every search engine ever has always done as they attempt to continually rank information in a more relevant fashion) is against the norm.

It truly is incredible how little people understand how any of this works.