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The Day DuckDuckGo Betrayed Us All
Google is evil. No doubt about that. They make marvelous tools that are immensely powerful but they also manipulate the masses; whether the masses realize it or not. Nevertheless, the word “Google” is synonymous with internet search and that is true worldwide. Check out the chart below. See how much the world searches the web via Google verses other search engines.
So, what does Google do with its enormous influence? Make finding information easy? Sure, there’s that. There are also these things.
- Google censors the internet.
- Google kills small businesses
- Google pays millions of dollars to politicians for protection
- Google spies on you – constantly.
- Google manipulates election results
- Google worked with China to jeopardize human rights
- Google actively supports the Chinese military
- Google may be anti-American
Like so many Americans, I had no idea what Google was really like. Once I did, I began scouting an alternative who can deliver results on par with them. I was delighted when I stumbled across DuckDuckGo (DDG). So much so, I produced a video about why I was dumping Google and using DDG as my primary search engine.
And for a while, I was happy, very happy with my choice. DDG consistently delivered for me and I had the added bonus of supporting a company that valued privacy and freedom. Unfortunately, my support for DDG changed dramatically this week. Check out this quote from Reclaim The Net.
The founder of DuckDuckGo, a Google-alternative search engine that has touted its “unbiased” search results for years, has announced that it has started down-ranking sites based on whether they’re deemed to be associated with Russian disinformation.
“Like so many others I am sickened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the gigantic humanitarian crisis it continues to create,” DuckDuckGo CEO and founder Gabriel Weinberg tweeted. “At DuckDuckGo, we’ve been rolling out search updates that down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation.”
Weinberg also noted that in addition to down-ranking these sites, DuckDuckGo also often places “news modules and information boxes at the top of DuckDuckGo search results (where they are seen and clicked the most) to highlight quality information for rapidly unfolding topics.”
The practice of suppressing content that is deemed to be disinformation while elevating content that’s deemed to be “high quality information” is something that has been embraced by Google, particularly on YouTube where so-called “high authority channels” are up to 20x more likely to top search results and censoring “misinformation” is its number one priority.
Prior to Weinberg’s announcement, DuckDuckGo had made multiple statements over a period spanning more than five years that positioned DuckDuckGo as a search engine that provides “unbiased results,” criticized other search engines for failing to show “neutral, unbiased results,” and criticized bias in algorithms.
When I heard that DDG was moving in the direction of censorship, I felt an intense disappointment. Immediately, I thought of that scene in The Godfather when Michael kissed his brother Fredo.
How could a company whose whole premise was built on privacy and freedom go so horribly wrong overnight? Well, it turns out that DDG has been compromised for years. How do I know that? Someone followed the money and reported on it. Check out this video from April 2019 which goes into some detail.
Although I missed this video when it debuted, according to the Vlogger – Sarah Corriher, there was quite a stir about it. She made another video about DDG a few months later to further clarify her point. Care to guess how DDG is connected with Google, Facebook and Twitter? Watch the video below and find out.
Wow.
I thought the DDG news could not get any worse then, someone sent me an article that had me shaking my head with utter contempt. The headline is enough to get my point across, I think.
Sigh.
Fredo, was any of it even real? Or was it all a lie? Why did you consistently call out big tech and then do EXACTLY the same thing?
Curiously enough, DDG was a real competitor to Google in terms of popularity. According to Reclaim The Net…
Since DuckDuckGo’s 2018 claim that its users will get unbiased results, it has become the largest search engine outside of Google and Google-owned YouTube and its total queries have almost quadrupled from 9.2 billion in 2018 to 35.3 billion in 2021.
Despite being a turncoat, DDG is a solid product that people have grown to depend on. Its the reason why I think they will retain a sizable chunk of their users. However, since they have revealed who they truly are, I predict their growth trend to stall as news of this gets out. If nothing else, DDG proved that there are millions of people hungry for a search engine that respects privacy and values freedom. I suspect that several search engines are trying to position themselves now to fill that vacuum. Who knows? Maybe the next DDG will be one of these…
Time will tell.
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