> Besides, what's so bad about access to "disinformation"?
This is an excellent point that doesn’t get as much discussion as it deserves. Censorship of misinformation seems to be rooted in the idea that the masses cannot/should not have the freedom to think and discuss information freely.
Also, there is a great deal of valuable insight which can be gained by analyzing a country’s propaganda.
Propaganda can be useful to analyze, yes. But only if you know that it's propaganda. Most people casually searching DDG are probably not aware of that. If you know enough to know that some news source is spreading propaganda and you want to study it, then you know enough to be able to access it directly. Propaganda wants to be found, and you can always just go to RT yourself.
Propaganda should be treated as a hazardous material. Yes, it can be studied, and there is value in studying it, but there are safety protocols that should be followed to protect yourself and others. Uranium is very useful and scientifically valuable, but it shouldn't be on the shelves at your local Walmart where people can stumble upon it, unaware of the dangers.
Propaganda is an infohazard and should be treated as such; an information retrieval service should not surface it readily for a casual search.
There is great value in analyzing propaganda if you know it's propaganda. The danger comes in the fact that the majority of people can't distinguish actual reporting from disinformation. That's why it gets down-ranked.
If DDG can overhaul the worldwide education system, I'm sure we'd all be in favor of that.
But since the best solution is impossible, at least right now, a half measure like this seems reasonable to offer some amount of protection.
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We should do what we can now, and keep pushing for better solutions. Holding out for perfection does nothing to help people now, or possibly ever, depending on your definition of "perfect".
the problem is the stuff getting downranked is going to be the real information. the powerful people who control everything, including the news, are going to push propaganda and censor in whatever way makes themselves richer at the expense of everybody else, which is how they got to be in that position in the first place
Are you claiming that the search results currently being downranked, i.e. Russian propaganda, is the "real information?" If so, who is that making richer?
This is an excellent point that doesn’t get as much discussion as it deserves. Censorship of misinformation seems to be rooted in the idea that the masses cannot/should not have the freedom to think and discuss information freely.
Also, there is a great deal of valuable insight which can be gained by analyzing a country’s propaganda.