Gabriel Weinberg, the CEO of the purportedly unbiased, privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo, has announced that they will be manipulating their search results to hide “Russian disinformation,” causing a dramatic backlash from furious users.
“Like so many others I am sickened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the gigantic humanitarian crisis it continues to create,” said Weinberg. “At DuckDuckGo, we’ve been rolling out search updates that down-rank 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.”
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
Weinberg refused to clarify when asked what sites would be targeted by the down-ranking, along with what was classified as Russian disinformation.
A number of stories regarding the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, such as the claim that the US has bio-research labs in Ukraine, were originally marked as disinformation by fact-checkers, but later proven to be true.
Although Weinberg claimed that DuckDuckGo’s mission was on privacy, not being an “unbiased” platform, the CEO attacked Google in 2019 for having biased search results, promoting DuckDuckGo as an unbiased alternative.
Unsurprisingly, the move shocked and angered many who saw the site as abandoning their principles.
Larry Sanger, one of the co-founders of Wikipedia, argued that the fact that Weinberg said what he did so “proudly and publicly” is to him a “smoking gun revelation that DuckDuckGo is just becoming another Google, doing the bidding of the establishment.”
The fact that Weinberg says this proudly and publicly is to me a smoking gun revelation that DuckDuckGo is just becoming another Google, doing the bidding of the establishment.
— Larry Sanger (@lsanger) March 10, 2022
duckduckgo really makes me angry because we are just out here trying to be human beings making sense of the world in a heavily censored environment and these people lie and say they will help and then turn a round and tell us we cant be trusted with MUH DISINFORMATION
— helena (@lacroicsz) March 10, 2022
Forget about DuckDuckGo. They just abandoned their principles and jumped right Into the control of what you can and can’t see. https://t.co/5EWN97BkAN
— Grummz (@Grummz) March 10, 2022
DuckDuckGo ruins the reason for DuckDuckGo to exist.
The CEO of DuckDuckGo just decided to start manipulating results for political reasons, just like Google does. @yegg https://t.co/Mbyvf0vOmT
— Wall Street Silver (@WallStreetSilv) March 10, 2022
Duckduckgo sucks so bad
The only reason to use it was that they claimed they wouldn't pull this kind of shit https://t.co/Y395bz7FpV
— Bennett's Phylactery (@extradeadjcb) March 10, 2022
Long time users of DuckDuckGo were quick to declare that they were done with the search engine, and that they would instead move to alternatives, such as the search engine from Brave, or the Russian search engine Yandex.
I've been using Duck Duck Go for years because I don't want corporate fascists controlling what I see.
Now that we've lost DDG, can someone recommend a search engine that doesn't manipulate information? https://t.co/NGaJhXlB2u
— Dr. John Ocasio-Nolte (@NolteNC) March 10, 2022
Since @DuckDuckGo is basically turning into every other Big Tech search engine by manipulating your search results, I suggest you look into Brave. https://t.co/5BDSRFBm3h
— The🐰FOO (@PolitiBunny) March 10, 2022
https://twitter.com/HazardHarringto/status/1501933095653548035
Conservative commentator Elijah Schaffer highlighted that DuckDuckGo had been on track to move towards a more pro-censorship, Big Tech stance, as the company was being infiltrated by “woke workers.”
One incident that gained traction as evidence of Schaffer’s claim occurred in September last year, when an anonymous mobile developer posted that DuckDuckGo rejected his job application as himself, a white male, but enthusiastically accepted a modified version where he claimed to be a “black lesbian” with 7 years less experience “who can’t program or spell.”
