DuckDuckGo Is Demoting Russian Propaganda, and Some Users Aren’t Happy

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is now more than two weeks old, and companies worldwide have primarily sided with Ukraine. Apple, Microsoft, McDonald’s, and many other US-based companies have stopped doing business in the Russian Federation, but what’s a search engine to do? Over at DuckDuckGo, they stand with Ukraine, according to founder Gabriel Weinberg. The company has decided to demote Russian propaganda, but the user base is up in arms about this decision, which many believe is a “slippery slope.”

DuckDuckGo has made its name as a privacy-focused alternative to Google. While it has ads, it does not collect any user data that would enable them to target those ads. This has attracted a user base that dislikes Google’s hands-on, in-your-face approach to search. That might help to explain the reaction to Weinberg’s announcement.

Several days ago, Weinberg said that DuckDuckGo would begin demoting Russian disinformation. Google was widely praised when it demonetized Russian-affiliated YouTube channels and websites, but the reaction to DuckDuckGo’s move has been the polar opposite. A number of prominent conservative voices chimed in to object on Twitter. A number of people, most of whom don’t appear to be Russian bots, have also complained on Twitter and on the DuckDuckGo subreddit.

just so you understand, this is not a good look for @DuckDuckGo which was marketed as pro-privacy and no political tweaking. you can be anti Ukraine invasion without attempting to censoring/filter out information. the answer to bad info is more info. be better.

— Adam Back (@adam3us) March 10, 2022

If we take the complaints at face value, DDG’s users don’t necessarily want Russian propaganda on page one of their search results. However, they also don’t want DuckDuckGo arbitrarily deciding what they should see in search results. Many see this as the beginning of a slide into the behavior that drove them away from Google. This laissez-faire approach to search results is increasingly hard to come by because of the nature of search engines. DuckDuckGo runs on the Bing search algorithm, and as Engadget reports, analysis has shown that Bing’s system pulls up more conspiracy theories than Google’s algorithm. Clearly, these platforms already make judgment calls about how to rank search results, but they’re expressed in behind-the-scenes code rather than a Twitter post.

In a statement, DuckDuckGo has said it believes the goal of a search engine is to “provide access to accurate information.” By demoting sites like RT and Sputnik, DDG believes it is furthering that goal in the same way it does when down-ranking spam and scams. The company is also considering other alterations to improve the accuracy of its search results around the Ukraine-Russia war.