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Far-right influencers often encouraged people Using DuckDuckGo, a small privacy-focused search engine instead of Google, saying that the giant search engine censors conservative ideas.
Praise for DuckDuckGo turned to anger this week after the company said it would minimize Russian disinformation on its site.
Gabriel Weinberg, CEO of DuckDuckGo tweeted out On Thursday, he said the search engine would rank “disinformation-related” websites lower in search results.
“Like others, I am fed up with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the huge humanitarian crisis it continues to create,” he wrote.
DuckDuckGo has little control over its search results because they are provided by Microsoft’s Bing. announced will follow European unionOrder to restrict access to Russian state news agencies RT and Sputnik.
However, criticism from the far right was directed at DuckDuckGo. Conservative website Breitbart said DuckDuckGo “adopted the censorship policies” of Big Tech. In social media channels devoted to conspiracy theories, users promised to switch to alternatives such as the Russian search engine Yandex. The hashtag #DuckDuckGone was trending on Twitter in the United States until Friday. And on YouTube, users criticized the company for silencing voices.
“If you use DuckDuckGo, I suggest you stop using it and move on to something else,” said Tarl Warwick, a self-libertarian YouTube user with nearly half a million followers. “I want tens of thousands of people to stop using it,” he added.
Kamyl Bazbaz, vice president of communications for DuckDuckGo, said in a statement that the affected sites are running “active disinformation campaigns,” meaning they are similar to other low-quality websites that have already been penalized by search algorithms.
“It’s not censorship, it’s just search rankings,” he said.
The backlash highlighted the difficulties some tech companies are facing in limiting the spread of Russian propaganda at a time when America’s pockets are empty. Express your support for the Kremlin and believes Big Tech companies censor his views.
Last month, The New York Times reported that search results on DuckDuckGo and Bing were popping up. more unreliable websites More of the same searches using conspiracy theory terms entered into Google.
DuckDuckGo controls about 3 percent of the search engine market in the United States. The site is particularly popular with privacy activists because, unlike Google and Bing, the company does not track its users.
The company also announced that it will do so this month. Pause your relationship with YandexRussian search engine that provides specific links for results in Russia and Turkey.
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