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Comment by hombre_fatal | Hacker News Reader

Downranking "disinformation" could be seen as creating the sort of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble that Weinberg often denigrates.

> As a result, users become separated from information that disagrees with their viewpoints, effectively isolating them in their own cultural or ideological bubbles. The choices made by these algorithms are not transparent.

I don't think it's unfounded criticism.

One problem is how arbitrary the categorization of "disinformation" can be. Once you go down the path, it can also create a scenario where you tacitly approve the things you don't decide to censor/downrank. While I can argue both sides, it simply doesn't come without trade-offs.

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No, it can't. A filter bubble is specifically defined as users getting personalized results for the same query based on what an algorithm knows about them. It's right there in the first paragraph on wikipedia.

A hyper-partisan search engine that only showed results that favor one viewpoint would be bad, but it wouldn't be a filter bubble.

When I read the wiki page, I don't personally think much swivels on whether a human or algorithm creates the filter since the reason it's an issue is the end result.

Or rather, "it's okay since it's not an algorithm doing it" doesn't wave away the concerns very effectively.

The argument you're responding to wasn't "it's okay since it's not an algorithm doing it". It was "it's not a filter bubble since it's not personalized".

This is not an us or them case, is a true or false case. And false and true don't share a value of 50/50%. Unless we want to use a browser as moron-classifier, false results had a value of 0 in a search.

False facts are valuable in a search only as if tagged as debunked as false in the same page.

With search taken as a whole, the search results a person gets varies depending on a personal factor (namely, their go-to search engine) and not just the query. That's similar to a filter bubble, even if it isn't precisely one.

Filter bubbles are personalized. This is not personalized.

No it doesn't. What creates filter bubbles is ranking sites differently for each person, what has no relation at all with the criteria you use on your rank.

Personally, I use DDG because it's useful. As long as the new ranking makes them more useful, more power to them. If they do it wrong, I'll start looking for some replacement.

If Google did that (as they do) it would require some discussion about censorship and monopolies, but yeah, there's nothing wrong with DDG doing it.

>No it doesn't. What creates filter bubbles is ranking sites differently for each person, what has no relation at all with the criteria you use on your rank

That's assuming there's only one platform. When users can choose other search engines (or social media sites, video platforms, etc) then it absolutely creates a filter bubble when each platform injects its own bias into its content. No algorithm is perfect but I'd generally prefer my search results without deliberate bias.

Plus you'd have to be knee deep in the koolaid to think that only russian sources are propaganda. It just ao happens they are obviously on the "other side" today but let's not pretend that US and Ukranian sources aren't coming with their own healthy dose of spin.

For example, all the recent reports of civilian infrastructure being bombed are most certainly leaving out that these buildings were being used by Ukranian forces, much like reports of Israel targeting civilian buildings. That doesn't justify the russian actions since putin is fighting an unjust war of aggression, but that important context is an example of spin that is all over the "approved" sources of information.

The case of different platforms is not a filter bubble. It's just a social bubble like it always existed.

The fundamental feature of a filter bubble is that you can not escape it. If all it takes is looking at another site, it's not it.

Anyway, I prefer my search results devoid of known falsehoods. I don't believe it at all that DDG can achieve this, but if there's a loud known source of that can be cut without false positives, I do prefer that it's cut. Unfortunately, verifying the mainstream news isn't such an easy task, so that DDG will become both more reliable and more biased at the same time. Personally, I don't care much for the bias. I care about the reliability.

(And yes, all of your conclusions are probably true.)

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