DuckDuck..Gone: "Why not signal" (archive.ph)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by rcbrk@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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So, this is interesting. I wanted to find that essay by @dessalines@lemmy.ml outlining the many issues of Signal and suggested alternatives, but DuckDuckGo had nothing for me. Not on the first page, not on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th page.

I thought maybe I just imagined the title, but sure enough, on searching lemmy posts, it was right there. Then I thought "hang on, there's hardly a mention let alone criticism of signal on any page of those search results!".

Hmm.. the wording might be a bit ambiguous, but let's compare:

DuckDuckGo "why not signal" - NOTHING
Google "why not signal"
- Plenty of results! Dessaline's essay is first up, followed by a plethora of discussions about the essay on HN, Reddit, lemmys, mastodons, and more. Not evil! ..this time.
DuckDuckGo "why not signal" dessalines
- Okay, so DDG has indexed it just fine. Maybe dessalines is "downranked" à la RT.com?
DuckDuckGo "why not market socialism"
- Nope, finds one of dessalines' socialism essays just fine, half way down the page.

All of the following except Gigablast returned a healthy list of results including the original essay:

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[-] BlackXanthus@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

I thought I'd test this. I got the essay as the 4th result, the top 3 are about mobile phone signal, with the essay coming in as 4th.

I use Vivaldi on Android. DDG has my location set to the UK.

[-] 01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 5 points 1 year ago

Same here. 4th result on DDG browser and 3rd result on Chromium DDG.com

DDG browser:

Chromium DDG.com:

[-] janonymous@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Same, using Firefox with DGG as default search engine

[-] vacuumoftalent@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I don't see it when I search for Why not signal but I see it if I search Why not signal lemmy

[-] dessalines@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

Thanks for doing this work! I just tested it now, and same results: ddg doesn't show my page while google does.

My only guess is that ddg is completely removing pages that have links to sites they have on political blocklist.

this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2022

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