What is Whoogle?
It’s a free+open source front-end for google that can work with javascript disabled. Like nitter is for twitter (teddit for reddit, invidious for youtube, etc). If I feel like the search results for brave are poor, I can use tor with a public instance of whoogle and javascript disabled to get reasonably anonymous results from google search.
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Good point. There is no perfect solution in my opinion, and it is always reader’s responsibility to do the fact checking. Big problem nowdays and in the future is that people are too lazy and/or ignorant to do fact checking. I think idea is good but definition of disinformation is subjective like you mentioned. The most people seem to hate it but both solutions have good and bad sides.
Let’s say that we would switch to another search engine, it still have the same trust problem, because you could easily hide the fact that you are down-ranking search results. You wouldn’t have to tell about it nor reveal how the search algorithm works. It doesn’t matter what they tell you because unless you are the developer then you wouldn’t know for sure how it works.
Edit:
If everyone would be like you then we wouldn’t need it but I think it is intended for less educated people. It still has problems yes.
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I seem to disagree with most people here. When I use a search engine I want to
anonymously find relevant information. I actually hope that my search engine can
help in separating “information” from “disinformation”. How is a search engine supposed
to do this? It certainly seems to be fair game to use Bayesian inference based on
“source accuracy”. It’s certainly how humans do it. For example: I trust people with health/medical credentials to assess the health risks of meth more than I do a meth-addicted-street-whore who, while having direct experience with meth, may not be
a reliable source of anything.
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Do you have any examples where it works well?
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I think it is to protect highly educated people who are lazy and simply repeat the doctrines in which they have imbibed at university and who think that it is the less educated people who can’t think.
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I agree with you, but the problem is when it becomes more and more obvious that sifting information from misinformation is not based on any measures that attempt to be objective or fair. People rightly feel that this form of censorship is increasingly aimed at manipulation, profit, and political wins, rather than truth or reliability.
That’s the double-edge of a totalitarian society: it can be great, in theory, with extremely competent, benevolent oligarchs; but it is ugly and horrible with corrupt, exploitative oligarchs. If google and apple are in charge of everything, life will be great as long as google and apple are benevolent and extremely competent, but it is foolish to rely on such good fortune into the future.
I think one good solution is increased choice (e.g. multiple independent web crawlers and search engines based in a variety of jurisdictions and using a variety of technologies (centralized/decentralized ranking method, open/proprietary algorithms, crowd-sourced/internally-managed inputs, etc). Maybe Yandex and Baidu are good alternatives to balance google/apple/microsoft, but they don’t seem like great options.
Anyway, I don’t like this announcement from ddg, but then again, I’ve never trusted ddg and avoid using them, so I guess it doesn’t change anything for me.
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I should have said for less knowledgeable people because I agree eduction != knowledge in some cases. I know in some countries school systems are not optimal but that doesn’t mean it happens everywhere.
People are just speculating what will ddg do. Just like I speculate that they are labeling disinformation in a way that I agree. In reality you can’t trust any search engine unless you made it. I don’t fully trust ddg but I trust it enough to continue using it.
I agree with you, but the problem is when it becomes more and more obvious that sifting information from misinformation is not based on any measures that attempt to be objective or fair.
I don’t disagree. If the method of training the Bayesian inference were open
and objective that would be ideal. Why is there an assumption that DDG isn’t going
to be open and objective. Some search engines don’t want to make
such methodology public (since they don’t want people to “game it”)
That said, what needs to be pointed out is that every search engine has some
methodology for ranking their output based on relevance. It would be useless without
such a ranking.
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Both Yandex and Baidu are controlled by goverments which are known for corruption, lying and silencing the truth with physical violence and intimidation. I would rather use google than any of those.
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We just spent two years in which knowledgeable people made decisions and encouraged the suppression of “disinformation” that took issue with their decisions with devastating effects:
- the decisions;
- the consequences.
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You seem to assume that all knowledgeable people have bad intentions. Knowledge is power and people decide how to use it. If we want to get rid of the trust problem then we need to get rid of the people. 
Your statements imply that it is sufficient to have “more” knowledge; my counter example shows that your assumption is wrong. I assume people are good, bad and indifferent. Sometimes they are right and many times they make mistakes.
… my counter example shows that your assumption is wrong. …
You did not provide a counterexample. You provided one person’s opinion that the Ugandan covid response was an unnecessary overreaction. IMO their opinion is uniformed sophistry.
Other tweets by that some poster are trying to imply (by asking stupid questions rather
than showing anything) that vaccines don’t work ( https://nitter.net/i/status/1442527352467058695 )
“In every one of these states, cases are higher this year than last year, despite widespread vaccination.”
and
“Deaths have also begun to rise in each of these states with no discernable gap between high and low vax states. Perhaps vaccination rate correlates with hospitalizations but not deaths?”
The data is quite clear that death rates for vaccinated people are much lower (depends on age, but is between a factor of 6 [younger] and 20 [older]) for vaccinated people vs. unvaccinated people. IMO he is an actual supplier of disinformation. So, no, it turns out that you are believing someone who is clearly a supplier of misinformation.
And, as any human who sees a pattern of deception vs. actual conclusive facts, one
should discount that source. They aren’t reliable.
Ok, what I was trying to say that many people can’t easily tell what’s true and what’s not in the internet and real world. That is why I think ddg’s ranking-systeming is good but not without its problems. There’s always risk that someone at ddg will censor something that you think should not be censored. That is why you can still read that information and make up your mind.
I think it’s good that you don’t automatically trust people no matter of their position or title. Still sadly many people will believe everything what they see in their social feed or search results. Even though it’s not perfect I’m assuming ddg’s ranking system might help some people to avoid harmful information. Of course it also works opposite way, if we assume that someone at ddg has evil intent, then they can easily manipulate people.
Thank you for your opinion.
Thank you for your opinion.
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Great. As long as you understand that the link you provided is not a “counterexample” in any sense of the word.
Thank you for your opinion.
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That’s true. That’s why some people in this topic are talking about distributed, open source search - or even running their own dedicated search engine.
That assumes that there is objective fact involved.
But, in the example above of political propaganda, noone could seriously suggest that there is only objective fact involved. There is ideology. That will influence the weighting given to different, potentially conflicting, objective facts even where facts are available. Then there is opinion. There are often forecasts of the future consequences of some choice, bringing in inherent uncertainty e.g. forecast made in good faith but that doesn’t make it factual or non-factual.
You also run the risk of your search engine becoming an echo chamber. It will only tell you what you want to hear. (That is, if it isn’t only telling you what someone else wants you to hear.)
You only have to read Round Table in this forum to see that the world is not black and white. I mean sure if you want to to know the best way of doing task Y at the shell prompt then your search approach will be fine but that doesn’t tend to be where so-called disinformation lives. Pick any controversial topic and things rapidly become messy and non-simple.
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It’s very interesting to read that people think disinformation are no information. An example (no real numbers):
Russian tells you “we lost 100 tanks”.
Ukraine said “we destroyed 1000 Russian tanks”.
What do you think is information and what is disinformation? In worst case both is disinforming you. But at same time both combined will inform you that there is a highly chance that Russian lost 100-1000 tanks. You may counter “but that’s a huge difference” … maybe, but it tells at least that’s not zero or 5000.
Also disinformation of Corona can be information in a different context. And you don’t know in which context I want to make a research. Why not just mark a website as “potential disinforming” instead of removing from list? Why not an user option with “show disinformation websites”, “warn about disinformation websites” or “removing known disinformation websites”? All better than define disinformation as cancer in any information context.
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