More and more conspiracy theorists rely on the DuckDuckGo search engine. In order to legitimize the post-factual world view of the scene, public service media have had their day for years. Now American tech companies should believe in it.
The internet is playing an increasingly important role in the news consumption of the German population. In 2021, 44 percent already stated that they use the Internet daily or several times a week to get the latest news and information. Especially in crisis situations, in which events are literally overflowing, one is dependent on the fast flow of information.
The Internet plays a particularly important role for anti-vaccination movements. National movements such as “lateral thinking” in Germany or “Qanon” in the USA have networked to a large extent via social media and private messengers. They receive the false information that supports their claims of a global world order or deadly vaccination risks primarily through their own Internet research.
Again and again, the big tech companies have tried to stop the spread of propaganda and misinformation. With warnings and links to official government statements or by deleting false information in search engines. But what to do if a social group wants to deliberately bypass these tools?
Criticism of Google is growing
Search engines have played a major role in right-wing populist and conspiracy theory circles since the beginning of the pandemic. Dealing with dubious content is a thorn in the side of many. Your assumption: Google would withhold important information in order to deny the public the truth. Many of the skeptics are therefore turning away from Google and switching to smaller providers. Particularly popular is DuckDuckGo, a privacy-focused search engine founded in 2008 by MIT graduate Gabriel Weinberg.
So far DuckDuckGo is only a marginal figure compared to the big providers Google, Yahoo and Bing. However, the number of users has been steadily increasing in recent years. In 2019, shortly before the coronavirus subsequently changed social life, around 15 billion search queries were made. In 2021, this number has more than doubled. And also in the first few months of this year, DuckDuckGo recorded a user gain compared to the previous year.
What makes this search engine so popular is how it handles personal information. While Google is known to collect a lot of user data, such as the IP address, search history or location, DuckDuckGo does not store any user data. Although both Google and DuckDuckGo earn their money with advertising revenue, the small company from Pennsylvania does not tailor this to the user, but to the respective search query. In addition, the search engine does not pass on any user data to advertisers.
Algorithm promotes dangerous search results
The downside of the coin are the search results displayed on DuckDuckGo. The search engine has little control over the links that appear after a query. Finally, with DuckDuckGo, these are provided by the algorithm from Microsoft provider Bing. Microsoft does not disclose how the hit page is arranged. The “New York Times” now reports that dubious websites with conspiracy-theoretical content are displayed much more frequently in search queries via Bing and DuckDuckGo than on Google and other providers.
A study by Stanford University from 2019 confirms the observations of the American newspaper. At that time, the researchers were able to prove that Bing displays false information and conspiracy theories to a significantly higher extent than Google, even if they are not actively searched for. In addition, racist and nationalist content, as well as Russian propaganda through Sputnik and RT, appear much more frequently than with other providers. A 2021 Cornell University study came to a similar conclusion. The Bing algorithm combined with DuckDuckGo’s strict privacy settings would therefore provide an ideal breeding ground for the post-truth views of conspiracy theorists and the new right.
DuckDuckGo has a disturbing reputation
One of the most important leaders of this post-truth movement is Joe Rogan. The former UFC fighter and comedian is now the most successful podcast host in the world. Rogan also recommends DuckDuckGo to his listeners. “If I want to find cases where people have died from a vaccine, I have to go to DuckDuckGo,” he said recently on his podcast. “I couldn’t find anything about it on Google.” Rogan was recently criticized from many sides for his podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience” because he is said to have spread misinformation about the corona vaccination and made racist comments several times.
Other conservative and science-skeptical podcast hosts, such as Ben Shapiro and Dan Bongino, have also joined in the praise of DuckDuckGo in the past. “Google is actively suppressing search results that don’t align with their traditionally left-wing views,” Shapiro said in March 2021. “I advise you to download DuckDuckGo and not Google to combat all of this.” In the meantime, some German Twitter users are also calling for DuckDuckGo to be used instead of Google.
Breeding ground for misinformation
The advertisement for DuckDuckGo reveals a central approach in the research work of conspiracy theorists. Again and again they switch to platforms that present their false statements and crude theories to an exclusive public in a comparatively unreflected manner. The switch from independent media, such as daily newspapers and public TV stations, to the Internet has been irreversible in this scene for years. But now the big American tech companies like Facebook and Twitter are also coming under fire. Instead of WhatsApp, the movements use Telegram, instead of YouTube, the video platform Rumble and DuckDuckGo instead of Google. As a result, all control mechanisms gradually fall away and the transition between facts and false information becomes blurred.
The research does not focus on uncovering the truth, but on an opinion that has already been formed in advance. There is also a special kind of exploratory joy in finding a hidden message that differs from the mainstream narrative, Ronald Robertson, one of the authors of the Stanford study, told the New York Times. Every website, no matter how dubious, is seen as an equal opponent to the established media, as long as it supports its own theory.
No search engine has any influence on the content of dubious articles and websites. However, the corporations can counteract the ranking of false information and place warnings. Google has been doing this since last year – among other things, when you want to find out about some guests of the “Joe Rogan Experience”. Meanwhile, DuckDuckGo announced that it would regularly report dubious posts to Bing in order to remove them from the hit page and rejected the allegations. In the last few days, DuckDuckGo itself has proven how easy it is to deal with false information. Shortly after the “New York Times” confronted the provider with its allegations, a large part of the conspiracy theory content disappeared from the hit pages.
Swell:The New York Times, DuckDuckGo, Stanford University, Cornell University, Heise.de, extra