Gabriel Weinburg, CEO of DuckDuckGo, announced on his Twitter feed March 9, 2022, the popular search engine known for its privacy first policy will begin down-ranking sites the company deems are associated with disinformation.
His tweet read –
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
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.)
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
Just like that, DuckDuckGo was DuckDuckGone.
The company is not alone in their response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine as many are restricting services in or to Russia. However, the response toward DuckDuckGo for their action has been particularly vicious and many of the search engine’s users have not been shy about voicing their displeasure.
While there has been great praise for companies such as Apple, Google, Meta and Amazon for pulling out of Russia, Weinberg’s tweet announcing the change, generated thousands of comments from users, many of whom were furious. DuckDuckGo had been perceived as the company fighting Big Tech censorship and with this single announcement now joined the ranks of the censors. The content DuckDuckGo was demoting and calling disinformation was Russian state media, whose side some in the right-wing contingent of DuckDuckGo’s users were firmly on.
One Twitter user replied to Weinberg, and said, “The whole point of DuckDuckGo is for you to NOT do that.”
But hold on a minute. Is this action really all that unexpected? An article by Jacob M. Thompson author of ‘The WinePress’, reminds us, “Duck Duck Go was being included in “the club” for several years now, and was openly endorsed by Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, (this) speaks for itself. Moreover, one YouTuber points out that the search engine supports and funds progressive groups and charities”.
“The push to further control the narrative is continuing, and is the same tactics to a ‘T’ that were and are used for the shamdemic”.
Breitbart News senior technology reporter Allum Bokhari wrote:
Breitbart News spoke to an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) expert, a 25-year industry veteran, whose job consists of analyzing traffic data from Google’s own website performance portal, Google Search Console.
The expert, who wished to remain anonymous, said he had never seen anything like this graph — and that it indicates highly probable manipulation on the part of Google.
“I’ve never experienced such a wholesale removal of rank and visibility on specific concepts on a site as I have seen being applied to Breitbart,” said the expert. “Removal is the key, not dropping in rank, which would be an organic devaluing. These ranks are just simply gone, overnight, while other topics have been untouched.”
“The sheer fact that there are thousands of pages of Breitbart content that reference Biden that were ranking before May 6, that now have no rank or impressions on search is a sign of manipulation, not algorithmic devaluing.”
(Breitbart News will continue to cover search engines and the continuing struggle to find a solid replacement for Google Search. – Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com)
We are going to have to get real. Any privacy or free speech we think we have on the internet, is an illusion. Everything is tracked and recorded. Privacy left the building long ago. Making us think we had privacy was just a great marketing ploy by DuckDuckGo.
https://www.vox.com/recode/22981115/duckduckgo-free-speech-privacy-oops
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