[HN Gopher] Which search engine is the least censored?
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Which search engine is the least censored?
Author : Nuzzerino
Score : 24 points
Date : 2022-03-11 19:40 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (michaelsuede.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (michaelsuede.substack.com)
| Nuzzerino wrote:
| Personally, I don't think this was a complete/valid test - Yandex
| could be censoring other things. The input test data primarily
| covered things that would fit a specific narrative, not one for
| the 'other side'. Has anyone done a more complete test?
| bjourne wrote:
| Can you give examples of queries for the "other side"? I'd like
| to test them out.
| marcusverus wrote:
| Zelensky is a hero -- should return five results in which the
| author considers Zelensky to be a hero.
|
| Russia thousands arrested -- should return five results about
| arrests at recent war protests in Russia
|
| Russian casualties in ukraine -- should return five results
| listing figures in the thousands.
| kordlessagain wrote:
| This is why the index shouldn't be full of crap. A smaller
| collection, curated by the user, is where it's at.
|
| Maybe you should do a pull request!
| sacrosancty wrote:
| Yes. I think the conclusion is that you would do well to use
| both Yandex and a typical western one for anything political.
| mrozbarry wrote:
| I think the validity is mostly scoped the current major world-
| wide events. It would be interesting to have some sort of topic
| censorship ranking website; give it a topic, and it ranks
| various search engines.
| sharemywin wrote:
| I found lots of articles from top media outlets about "Obama
| Ukraine biolab". I just put "fact check" in front of it. as I do
| with most random blog and/or facebook posts.
|
| https://www.factcheck.org/2022/03/social-media-posts-misrepr...
|
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/02/25/fac...
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-08/china-pus...
| egberts1 wrote:
| And often you will get factcheck'd by others for your said
| citations.
| jrm4 wrote:
| But this gets me thinking.
|
| "Censored" is definitely the wrong word here; it implies that
| there is some objective pool of information that we could all be
| getting to if it weren't for the search engines getting it wrong,
| and that's just not it.
|
| It's definitely much closer to -- imagine 5 hypothetical
| bookstores owned by different people. Each has to make decisions
| on what to choose to carry based on their business interests, and
| so they do. But there's nothing I would call "censorship" about
| that.
|
| And if we're deciding it is, then we have to be much more serious
| and intelligent in what to do about it. I'm thinking something
| like the EPA or FDA for search engines. If they have to tell us
| whats in the ketchup, then they have to tell us what's in the
| "search engine algorithms."
| Nuzzerino wrote:
| When a company gets large enough, whether in the US or Russia,
| "good relations with the government" becomes one of your
| aforementioned "business interests". Call it whatever you want.
| gruez wrote:
| >"Censored" is definitely the wrong word here; it implies that
| there is some objective pool of information that we could all
| be getting to if it weren't for the search engines getting it
| wrong, and that's just not it.
|
| 1. I think that when it comes to "search engine censorship",
| most people know it's about search engines downranking/hiding
| certain results, not them literally going around burning books
| or blocking/taking down websites.
|
| 2. The definition for "censorship" is "The use of state or
| group power to control freedom of expression or press, such as
| passing laws to prevent media from being published or
| propagated". When it comes to the internet, getting
| downranked/hidden from search engines does a pretty good job at
| preventing such information from being "propagated", even
| though you could still access it via the deep web. As a thought
| experiment, suppose the government banned 1984 from being
| sold/read anywhere, save for you going to the library of
| congress in person. You can theoretically still read it, but at
| great difficulty. It's certainly more work than reading harry
| potter or whatever. Would you say such measures are not
| "censorship"?
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