The DuckDuckGo search engine is applying a new sorting criterion: sites spreading Russian disinformation will be less visible in its results.
Can a search engine be neutral in the face of websites spreading misinformation? For DuckDuckGo, the answer is now no when it comes to Russian propaganda. The founder of the service, Gabriel Weinberg, announced on March 10 a change of course which will soon result in a lowering of the ranking of certain sites.
” Like so many others, I am sickened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the massive humanitarian crisis it continues to create. At DuckDuckGo, we’ve rolled out search updates that lower the rankings of sites associated with Russian disinformation », he said. The sites that will be affected by this downgrading are not specified.
Added to this is another measure. In addition to reducing the visibility of sites that are accused of propaganda, the search engine will display modules and information inserts at the top of the search results, where the eye is primarily focused. The goal is to “ highlight quality information on rapidly changing topics “.
Search engines necessarily discriminate based on various signals to order the results of a query. These criteria are usually technical, depending on the way the page is structured, the use of tags, the links that point from the page, etc. But the sorting of the results can also be done on the merits.
There may also be legal obligations forcing search engines to change their index: this has recently been observed with sites such as Russia Today and Sputnik. These are not just downgraded: they are even dereferenced. DuckDuckGo is no exception, since the service no longer seems to return results related to these sites.
“At DuckDuckGo, we have rolled out search updates that lower the rankings of sites associated with Russian disinformation
Gabriel Weinberg
The decision taken by DuckDuckGo was greeted with coldness by part of its community, which sees in it the advance of censorship: “ DuckDuckGo, contrary to its implied promises to the contrary, is now in the realm of censorship », said one. Gabriel Weinberg applies censorship to his tool which he sells as free », says another.
DuckDuckGo’s change in approach to Russian propaganda seems insufficient to permanently affect DuckDuckGo’s traffic, which is steadily increasing and now exceeds 100 million requests per day. It may make some disgruntled Internet users leave, but the other main engines (Google, Qwant, Bing, Yahoo) will not be more flexible.
DuckDuckGo distances itself
DuckDuckGo being a private group, it has complete freedom to choose what it puts or not in its index. He can do so at his discretion, even if it may contradict his speech, if he goes further than his regulatory or judicial obligations. The question that arises is whether this will set a precedent: what about disinformation on covid? Or the climate?
DuckDuckGo’s decision is perhaps not entirely surprising given its recent evolution. As the Protocol site recalled on March 1, DuckDuckGo “paused” its partnership with the Russian search engine Yandex due to the war in Ukraine. This allowed to inject specific results for the Russian and Turkish versions of DuckDuckGo.
DuckDuckGo uses information from over 400 sources. They ” include hundreds of vertical sources providing niche instant answers, DuckDuckBot (our crawler) and collectively sourced sites (like Wikipedia, stored in our answer indexes) “. There are also search engines, like Bing, but not Google. Neither Yandex now.