DuckDuckGo Announces They Will Censor “Disinformation” Through Search Result Manipulation

We live in an age of increasing censorship by Big Tech. Part of the problem is that most people don’t even realize it’s happening. They don’t know how much they don’t know, because Big Tech doesn’t allow them to know that there are things that they aren’t being allowed to know. Does that make sense? People search the internet and see a ton of information populate in response, but they don’t realize it’s just an illusion of choice. They are led to believe that they can choose from a wide variety of all available information and thus be well informed, but they don’t realize that the information has been curated for them. Certain information intentionally buried in the results by the search engines, either dozens of pages down in the search results where people won’t see it, or simply not permitted to populate in the search results at all and you’d have already know to go directly to the website to find that specific information.

And part of the problem is this concept of “misinformation” and “disinformation.” Who decides what constitutes “misinformation?” Who decides what people are allowed to see? Apparently, DuckDuckGo thinks they do. We’re watching the implementation of wide scale “for the greater good” information censorship by Big Tech in real time.

Like so many others I am sickened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the gigantic humanitarian crisis it continues to create. #StandWithUkraine️

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

— Gabriel Weinberg (@yegg) March 10, 2022

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

DuckDuckGo’s mission is to make simple privacy protection accessible to all. Privacy is a human right and transcends politics, which is why about 100 million people around the world use DuckDuckGo. (We don’t have an exact count since we don’t track people.)

— Gabriel Weinberg (@yegg) March 10, 2022

Like I said, who get to decide what constitutes “Russian disinformation?” Believe me, Russia has a proven track record of disseminating mis and disinformation. That’s a fact. But guess what? So does the American mainstream media. We’re literally coming out of the most comprehensive 2 year mainstream media misinformation campaign the country may have ever seen. Rachel Maddow told us for months that if you got the vaccine, you literally could not get covid and that the transmission stopped with you. You would not get nor infect others with the disease. That was all misinformation. And remember the lab leak theory that was “debunked” and labeled dangerous and hateful misinformation? And now it’s the reigning Covid origin theory. Think about how many times recently things that were labeled mis or disinformation have been ultimately proven to be accurate. And right now, we KNOW that there is rampant propaganda surrounding the Ukraine Russia conflict, and it’s coming from both sides. So why does DuckDuckGo get to decide what constitutes disinformation and what information the public is allowed to see? And where does it stop? Does it stop with this particular Russia issue, or will they simply quietly keep these policies in place for other topics, and people won’t realizing that they’re getting carefully curated search results. Might as well keep using Google, then.

Just this week we saw this “misinformation” issue happening in real time. There was a widely debunked “conspiracy theory” about biolabs in Ukraine, funded by the U.S., being targeted by Russia. Mainstream media literally labeled it “Russian disinformation.” Then Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland testified before the Senate and essentially confirmed the entire “debunked conspiracy theory.” Now, Psaki continues to maintain it is “Russian disinformation” despite the Under Secretary’s senate testimony and emerging supporting evidence. So, like I said, who decides? And what if they decide wrong? And what if people don’t know they’re deciding for the public?

My favorite example of this Big Tech search result manipulation was from a couple of years ago.There was a particular article from a major mainstream news outlet about George Soros spending tens of thousands of dollars on the Ferguson riots. I can’t give too many specifics because it’s been heavily “fact checked” by activists who play word games to pretend like they are debunking legitimate verifiable information. You know how they do it. Now, I had a screenshot of the article title, the date it was published, and the author. I first tried searching key words. The article I knew to exist didn’t populate. So I tried the whole title. Still didn’t populate. So I tried the article, date, and author. Still didn’t populate. Ultimately, I had to go to the media organization’s website and try a search there. It still didn’t populate. I actually had to search by publication date and scroll through dozens of articles to fine the article that I knew to exist. Because Big Tech did NOT want me to be able to search for and find that information.

Now imagine if I didn’t already know that article existed and have all the information to find it despite their best efforts to hide it.

That’s the situation that the general public is in, and most don’t even realize it.