Fed Up With Google, Conspiracy Theorists Turn to DuckDuckGo

The topic of search engines was brought up on an episode of Joe Rogan's popular show last year.

Mr. Rogan said that if he wanted to find specific cases about people who died from vaccine-related injuries, he had to go to DuckDuckGo.

Praise for DuckDuckGo has become a popular refrain among right-wing social media users who question Covid-19 vaccines and push discredited coronaviruses treatments. Some people have posted pictures showing that DuckDuckGo appears to have more favorable links to their views.

The search engine has received endorsements from some of the world's most-downloaded conservative podcastsers, including Ben Shapiro and Dan Bongino.

Suppressing search results that don't acquiesce to traditional viewpoints of the left is what Google is doing.

The endorsements show how right-wing Americans and conspiracy theorists are shifting their online activity in response to moderation from tech giants. They have embraced fringe platforms like the chat app Telegram and even search engines like DuckDuckGo in order to get more favorable conditions for their conspiracy theories.

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The attention has put search engines in a difficult position, fielding queries from a growing group of Americans who seem to be gripped by conspiracy theories. They have to try to deliver relevant results for obscure search terms while avoiding possible misinformation.

The links in DuckDuckGo's search results are generated by the Bing search engine, which is owned by Microsoft. The companies that create the search engines don't completely reveal what informs their decisions.

In a statement, DuckDuckGo said it condemned acts of misinformation and that its users had a wide mix of political orientations. The company is studying ways to limit the spread of false and misleading information.

The New York Times looked at the top 20 search results for conspiracy theories and right-wing topics on the internet. A snapshot of what a single user might have seen on a typical day is provided by the comparisons.

Bing and DuckDuckGo were found to be more trustworthy than Google, when results were compared with website ratings from the Global Disinformation Index, NewsGuard and research published in the journal Science. DuckDuckGo uses Bing's algorithm, but their search results can be different.

Some websites were included in search results, but they were less common and lower on the search page.

The content on the linked pages was reviewed by the Times to see if it advanced the conspiracy theory or not. The differences between the two companies were often sharper.

Two recent studies concluded that Bing's algorithm was more supportive of conspiracy theories than it was of other theories.

When the terms were specific, the differences among search engines were clearest. Several links to the conspiracy theory were found when searching for "Satanist Democrats", a theory that Democrats worship Satan or perform satanic rituals. The results from all the search engines were more trustworthy when searching for more established claims.

Use the drop-down to explore some of the searches.

The role of search engines has grown as online conspiracy theorists have placed more value on doing their research online to deepen their theories rather than relying on mainstream news outlets or government sources.

A Telegram user wrote in a channel dedicated to fighting vaccine mandates.

Ronald E. Robertson is a researcher at the internet observatory and has studied search engines.

He said that it is more convincing to look up information, find it and feel that sense of discovery.

DuckDuckGo flagged problematic search terms so they could be addressed. Several of the search results changed completely after The Times shared some data on search results spread by conspiracy theorists.

Bing said in a statement that finding the right balance between delivering authoritative results that match the intent of a search query and protecting users from being misled is a very challenging problem.

The vice president of communications for DuckDuckGo said that the company's results were similar to those of the internet giant.

Adding a few more words to a search will usually lead to misleading information on the internet.

If you are looking for this stuff, no matter where you are, you can find it.

Bing's search results are less trustworthy than those of Google when searching for conspiracy theories. A study last year showed that Bing and DuckDuckGo results were less than half for six popular conspiracy theories. About a quarter of links mentioned the ideas, but not many of them supported them. The Russian search engine Yandex was the worst among the group.

The so-called data void is a factor that makes newer and more obscure conspiracy theories more likely to return false results. Conspiracy theorists tend to publish content about new ideas long before mainstream sources, dominating search results as the terms begin spreading online. Conspiracy theorists have a long-term presence in search results because other topics never grab the attention of mainstream sources.

Search engines have been criticized for not addressing data voids. The spread of misleading and false news stories caused alarm among misinformation watchdogs. A white supremacist website was the top result of a search for "did the Holocaust happen". The website's relevance to the search term and its reliability have been taken into account by the search engine.

For terms that gain sudden popularity, the warning boxes have been added.

The warning appeared after Dr. Robert Malone appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience. The idea of mass formation psychosis was raised in the interview by Dr. Malone, which he said was a kind of groupthink mentality.

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The search term exploded in interest after the show, and a warning label appeared on the results. Fans of the doctor claimed that the term had been targeted by the search engine and that links had been removed or edited.

There is no merit to the suggestion that search results were edited, according to a statement from the company.

To combat data voids, search engines have put information boxes in their search results that show more trustworthy information, like news carousels showing articles from trusted media sources higher in the search results. DuckDuckGo said it was working with researchers at the Center for Information Technology Policy to study how to mitigate misinformation through information boxes and instant answers.

The automated nature of search engines meant that conspiracy theorists would continue to prey on data voids to promote misleading information online.

The data void is the main problem at the core of this technology, and there is no way to fix it, according to Mr. Bush.