DuckDuckGo Lowers Ranking of Russian State Media
Gabriel Weinberg, the founder and CEO of DuckDuckGo, announced that the search engine will lower the ranking of websites that spread “Russian propaganda” in its search results. This decision has sparked dissatisfaction among many users, as DuckDuckGo has always positioned itself as a privacy-focused and ethical alternative.
On Twitter, Weinberg stated that websites “associated with Russian disinformation” will now be ranked lower in search results. Additionally, DuckDuckGo will display special information boxes at the top of the page to help users find accurate and high-quality information on “rapidly unfolding topics.” However, Weinberg did not specify which websites would be affected by this policy.
“DuckDuckGo’s mission is to make simple privacy protection accessible to everyone. Privacy is a human right that goes beyond politics, which is why about 100 million people worldwide use DuckDuckGo,” Weinberg added.
Suspension of Partnership with Yandex
Recently, during a hearing in the House of Representatives, Katie McInnis, Senior Public Policy Manager at DuckDuckGo, stated that the company has “suspended” its partnership with the Yandex search engine in the Russian and Turkish markets.
Backlash and Accusations of Censorship
Twitter users accused DuckDuckGo’s CEO of censorship and reminded him that the search engine has always positioned itself as a more private and ethical alternative to Google.
One dissatisfied user wrote, “We don’t need a search engine where search results are manipulated based on the CEO’s political and emotional perspectives. How you ‘feel’ about political events should not affect content relevance. This is a huge loss.”
Weinberg responded to the criticism by saying, “Search engines by definition try to put more relevant content higher and less relevant content lower. This isn’t censorship, it’s search ranking relevance.”
Official Company Response
Later, journalists from Bleeping Computer published DuckDuckGo’s official response to the criticism:
“With every search query, search engines by definition must rank higher-quality, more relevant sites above lower-quality ones in search results. This is not censorship; it’s simply ranking. DuckDuckGo does not censor search results. We are simply using the fact that these sites are engaged in active disinformation campaigns as a signal that the content they produce is of lower quality. Similarly, there are well-known signals for spam sites and other lower-quality content. In addition to this approach, for certain topics that deserve media coverage, we highlight authoritative news and provide reliable ‘instant answers’ at the top of search results, where they are most viewed and clicked. We are currently considering other possible actions as well.”