It turns out DuckDuckGo-itself based in Valley Forge, PA, about 90 miles east of Route 15-knew something I didn’t. I found it hard to imagine that the other drivers on the road were really the audience for an internet company that occupies a very specific niche. Far more typical are road signs advertising a fireworks store, a sex shop, or Donald Trump. Highways in and out of Silicon Valley may be lined with billboards advertising startups, where they can be easily spied by VCs and other industry influencers, but the post-industrial communities hugging the Susquehanna River will never be confused with Palo Alto. The sight of a tech company on a billboard in rural Pennsylvania was surprising enough to lodge in my memory.
It was the logo for DuckDuckGo, the privacy-focused search engine, along with a message: “Tired of Being Tracked Online? We Can Help.” The backlash underscored the difficulties some technology companies face in limiting the spread of Russian propaganda at a time when pockets of America express support for the Kremlin and believe Big Tech companies are censoring their views.I was driving up through Pennsylvania last summer, somewhere along US Route 15 between Harrisburg and Williamsport, when I saw a familiar face: a goofy cartoon duck wearing a green bowtie. “This isn’t censorship, it’s just search rankings,” he said. In a statement, Kamyl Bazbaz, the vice president of communications for DuckDuckGo, said that the affected sites were engaged in “active disinformation campaigns,” meaning they were similar to other low-quality websites already penalized by search algorithms. He added: “I want tens of thousands of people to stop using it.” “If you’re using DuckDuckGo, I suggest you stop using it and switch to something else,” said Tarl Warwick, a self-described libertarian YouTube user with nearly half a million followers. And on YouTube, users criticized the company for silencing voices. The hashtag #DuckDuckGone trended across Twitter in the United States by Friday. In social media channels devoted to conspiracy theories, users vowed to switch to alternatives like the Russian search engine Yandex.
The conservative website Breitbart said DuckDuckGo was “adopting the censorship policies” of Big Tech.
DuckDuckGo has little control over its search results because they are provided by Microsoft’s Bing, which announced that it would follow the European Union’s order to restrict access to the Russian state news agencies RT and Sputnik.īut the criticism from the far right was directed at DuckDuckGo.
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