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Comment by minimaxir | Hacker News Reader

This is a confusing marketing campaign because DDG is very much aware that the people voting on this poll are not a representative sample of DDG users.

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Yeah, but there are enough passionate anti-AI people out there that reaching out to them could be the killer marketing move of 2026. The poll is 4% Yes, 96% No when I checked it. It's pretty clear that pro-AI marketing falls flat, see "Copilot + PC"

People pushing AI might get investors today, but companies that take a stand against it might get the customers. Pick one.

If you vote Yes AI, you get a link to https://yesai.duckduckgo.com/ which references http://duck.ai/, DDG's AI platform, and the passionate anti-AI people don't like anything AI adjacent which DDG is doing.

DDG is trying to have their cake and eat it too.

Works in my books. All everyone ever wanted was transparency and a choice, and this does that. AI should be opt in, not use-it-or-else.

What does having both an AI and a non-AI mode have to do with the vote not being a representative sample? Did they promote this vote exclusively to one camp or the other?

Another aspect of internet polls as a marketing technique (and a poor source of representative opinion) is to implicitly encourage voters to brigade a certain option, which just increases visibility to the poll especially if it's a contentious topic.

Case in point: https://bsky.app/profile/lexfeathers.ca/post/3mckp3y57d52b

As long as they dont force people eat the cake, it sounds fine?

No ai goes to it too

I used to evangelize pro AI, but these days I am staunchly anti. Not AI specifically, but corporate involvement in any aspect of it's development or rollout. Behavior to date does not inspire confidence in competence or moral/ethical soundness.

The aggressive non-consensual attempts to force it into every aspect of our lives is itself plenty of proof for the fact we cannot trust it.

It's a general principle in marketing, leadership, parenting, government, etc. that people being told what to do or not having a choice, see:

https://phys.org/news/2025-12-climate-policies-backfire-erod...

and it's the case even if people want actually want the thing!

https://youtu.be/h4AnOrGOPdE

This looks like a marketing campaign to me too. It makes sense to just give users an option: In fact, users can already turn off AI in DDG search results by clicking the settings icon on the top right corner of the Search Assist panel.

I'd be interested to hear the source of that info.

That's just standard sampling bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_bias

It's why public internet polls are more for fun/validating confirmation bias than actually gleaning actionable statistical insight, and why no one does them anymore. In this particular instance, the presentation and call-to-action rules out the "fun" angle of the poll.

So... who is it confusing, exactly?

Confusing is my personal perspective, interpreting the campaign in good faith.

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