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Techdirt Has Been Deleted From Bing And DuckDuckGo

Techdirt

from the yeeted-from-search dept

Thu, Jul 27th 2023 10:51am -

A few months ago, Jack Yan pointed out to me that if they did a search for Techdirt on DuckDuckGo, it showed only one single link which was (bizarrely) to a random story from like eight years ago. There were literally no other results for Techdirt. I replicated it, but was travelling, and by the time I went back to write about it a few days later, everything seemed back to normal (in the interim there were a few days where it just found a couple hundred Techdirt posts). Jack wrote a short blog post on his own site about it.

This morning, however, someone alerted me to the fact that DuckDuckGo currently shows zero results for Techdirt. Not even some random old article. Zero. None. Zilch.

Of course, DDG is powered by Bing, so I went to check Bing, and sure enough there’s nothing there:

Bing appears to have deleted all links to Techdirt. Though at least it tells you that “some results have been removed.” Though it doesn’t say why.

At no point did anyone at Bing let us know that we’ve been removed from the search index. And, of course, BIng has every right to kick us out of their index for whatever reason they want. But it does seem odd.

So, hey, if you happen to know anyone at DuckDuckGo or on the Bing team, maybe ask them why they booted Techdirt? Apparently, I’m not the only person this has happened to.

Anyway, in the meantime, I figured I’d ask Bing’s space aged AI chat bot if it could tell me what happened. And… it actually provided a decent answer, first pointing to Jack Yan’s blog post:

And then coming up with a very speculative list of reasons why we got the boot:

I love that first one. Microsoft, a company with a $2.5 trillion market cap, “may not have enough resources” to crawl and index Techdirt? Cool. And the last one is of course possible: that Microsoft encountered “some legal or political pressure to remove or censor Techdirt.com, which is known for its critical and investigative reporting on various topics, such as technology, law, policy, and business,” but it would be nice if someone would just, you know, let me know?

I’m guessing it’s just a bug, but given that many Techdirt readers (for understandable reasons) prefer DDG to Google, it would be kinda nice if they could actually use it to get Techdirt results.

Now, of course, if this were a Trumpist nonsense peddler website, I’m sure there would be blaring headlines on Fox News and in the NY Post, and a whole set of hearings chaired by Jim Jordan about “censorship.” And we’d be hearing about it for years. That’s not going to happen with me. I’m sure the reality is much more mundane. I am guessing it’s just a glitch somewhere in the system.

But it would nice if it got fixed.

Updates: First off, I should note that it was Augusto Hermann who notified me this morning, and he’s now written his own blog post about it with some interesting additional info.

Second, after this story got popular on HackerNews, DuckDuckGo’s CEO chimed in to say this obviously wasn’t intentional and he was working on it. Later in the day, if you did the same search on DDG, it at least returned our front page… and nothing else. At least that’s some progress?

Bing, as of this moment late in the evening, still says it’s got nothing to show.

Filed Under: , ,
Companies: duckduckgo, microsoft, techdirt

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123 Comments

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Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:6

What we do is do what we’ve always done: blame Republicans and straight white males.

If we’re wrong, we respect the right to parody, as us demeaned and downtrodden minorities deserve the right to make fun of the privileged.

If we’re right, fuck those white jock Trumpers.

Either way white Trumpists get the blame. It’s a win-win.

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Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:8

Exactly. Everything that Trumpers say is a confession. We must hold them to everything they say and invalidate them, just like they tried to invalidate us.

We cannot let up on this. Letting up on humiliating straight white males caused Roe v. Wade to be repealed. Never again.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:2

I’d like to remind everyone that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is not a good foundation to build your damn conspiracy theories on. Or governments, for that matter.

And that the Republicans and their rich fucks have successfilly polluted the minds of many, many politicians.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/09/us-religious-right-lgbtq-global-culture-fronts

And it’s very likely that they’ve been at it since the 70s.

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ddg says:

Looks like a pattern

You must be doing something right, then.

It is a pattern now, going on for a few years. Sites with independent from MSM propaganda line which have large following and are influential are being targeted for shadow banning. That includes google/YT. By influential, I mean causing people to think independently on their own, and make their own informed decision on any given subject. Tiktokers are not influencers, since large number of click bites does not mean influence on informed decision at all.

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Anonymous Coward says:

but of coooourse

Well this site does suck.
And now everyone who took the COVID shot (at your behest) is passing more gas than they normally would, which is releasing more methane into the environment, and causing this ridiculous global warming.

Please send more aluminum foil Please!

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

No it isn’t. It’s incredibly patronizing.

When stuff breaks on Linux people want to know what distro you’re using, what version, what version of software, what you were doing, what time of day it was, whether the moon is gibbous/waxing/full…

Every single conceivable detail.

Microsoft cronies just love passing the buck.

bhull242 (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:

Linux is rarely used by people unfamiliar with technology. Windows and Bing absolutely are. As such, a lot of people calling Microsoft’s tech support are not familiar with troubleshooting at all, so they start off with the simplest fix first before moving on to the rest.

Eventually, Microsoft tech support will ask for more details, but they have to start off with the simple stuff.

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Anonymous Coward says:

Deindexing

Maybe someone is submitting [bogus] deindexing requests to Bing, claiming DMCA or using a forged court order, and Bing is acquiescing without taking a good look.

For comparison, see Eugene Volokh’s articles about people trying to “vanish” his pages in Google.

Anonymous Coward says:

Maybe it’s just me but I’ve noticed fewer and fewer sites showing up on DDG. Now it’s mainly Reddit and a few other big sites. I wonder if Bing is doing a big purge and starting to move to a site whitelist in a misguided effort to reduce hate speech or misinformation or succumb to the latest moral panic. I wish DDG would build its own index instead of relying on Bing.

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Anonymous Coward says:

Now, of course, if this were a Trumpist nonsense peddler website, I’m sure there would be blaring headlines on Fox News and in the NY Post, and a whole set of hearings chaired by Jim Jordan about “censorship.”

because it was just a glitch when Twitter shut down the NY Post’s account days before a presidential election when they had real evidence of a scandal involving a presidential candidate and his family?

you need scare quotes around “censorship” when hinting at real concerns of people who you deem to be beneath you. I mean, why does it matter if some filthy “trumpers” are censored, right? In fact, it matters so little, that you are actively admitting here that you won’t even consider the idea that you might be being censored yourself.

Also, those scare quotes are especially rich considering we now know for a fact that the FBI was explicitly in contact with Twitter and Facebook to tell them what to take down. So the FBI was in contact with Twitter, and Twitter censored the oldest newspaper in the country’s factual story about candidate days before an election

and you think it’s WRONG to have hearings about that, so the American people can learn what happened? To the point where you won’t even consider that Microsoft may have done the same to you, because that might put you in the same category as your political opponents, in being anti-censorship or in having the audacity to notice that they’re being censored?

You sir, are a coward.

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Strawb (profile) says:

Re:

because it was just a glitch when Twitter shut down the NY Post’s account days before a presidential election when they had real evidence of a scandal involving a presidential candidate and his family?

The election was more than two weeks away when NY Post’s Twitter account was suspended, and it was reinstated two days later.
Moreover, it wasn’t “real evidence” when the account was suspended, it was believed to be hacked material.

you need scare quotes around “censorship” when hinting at real concerns of people who you deem to be beneath you. I mean, why does it matter if some filthy “trumpers” are censored, right?

Trumpers not being able to whine about something on a certain platform isn’t censorship, dingus.

In fact, it matters so little, that you are actively admitting here that you won’t even consider the idea that you might be being censored yourself.

That’s because, unlike you, Masnick knows what is or isn’t censorship.

Also, those scare quotes are especially rich considering we now know for a fact that the FBI was explicitly in contact with Twitter and Facebook to tell them what to take down.

Feel free to provide evidence of that. So far, there’s been none.

So the FBI was in contact with Twitter, and Twitter censored the oldest newspaper in the country’s factual story about candidate days before an election

Twitter suspended an account for two days and stopped people from linking to a story because of an internal policy about hacked materials. Again, feel free to provide evidence that it was at the FBI’s behest.

and you think it’s WRONG to have hearings about that

Yes, because if politicians had demanded hearings because of the editorial decisions Fox News makes, there would have been an uproar. The hearings were ridiculous, from beginning to end.

You sir, are a coward.

And you, sir, are a liar.

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JMT (profile) says:

Re:

because it was just a glitch when Twitter shut down the NY Post’s account days before a presidential election…

That was shocking right?! They were completely silenced and couldn’t share their crap with anyone! No wait, don’t they have a website or something…?

…when they had real evidence of a scandal involving a presidential candidate and his family?

You upset you couldn’t look at Hunter’s dick?

NYCK says:

I see search results

I see full details using DuckDuckGo as of 4pm EDT July 27th. I can’t post a screen shot, so I copied some of the text:

All
Images
Videos
News
Maps

Shopping

Settings

All regions
Safe search: moderate
Any time

https://www.techdirt.com
Techdirt.

Techdirt is an American Internet blog that reports on technology’s legal challenges and related business and economic policy issues.
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Techdirt
Techdirt – Wikipedia
Techdirt founder Mike Masnick in 2012. Techdirt is an American Internet blog that reports on technology’s legal challenges and related business and economic policy issues, in context of the digital revolution. It focuses on intellectual property, patent, information privacy and copyright reform in particular.
https://twitter.com › techdirt
techdirt (@techdirt) / Twitter
techdirt. @techdirt. ·. May 23. Hey folks, just letting people know that the end came last week. While they had said the API cutoff would come at the end of April, they actually cut us off last week. Techdirt can no longer automatically post to Twitter, because of the new API rules. You can find us elsewhere. Quote Tweet.

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BernardoVerda (profile) says:

Re:

“Overall, we rate Techdirt Left-Center biased based on policy positions and story selection that moderately favors the left. We also rate them High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing and a clean fact-check record. (D. Van Zandt 10/20/2018) Updated (06/30/2023)”

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/techdirt/

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Tom Johnson says:

Found the article about techdirt being potentially censored to be interesting until the article spoke negatively about conservatives and conservative websites.
As a result of the negative comment about conservatives, it may be that the search engines are correct in their actions against techdirt.

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Matthew M Bennett says:

To be serious, SEO often penalizes self-links

The algos are always evolving (and I’ve been out of that game for years), but for a while the algos were basing a lot on in-coming links, and then when the SEO people got hold of that they fought that in various ways, including penalizing self-links, and…..

…..90% of your citations and links are to your own articles. You’ll say “debunked” and link to your own article, which just means you said the same thing (often a lie) already. Besides being obnoxious and self-promoting, it may well be hurting your score.

Probably should get…someone who understands the modern tech ecosystem to fix that for ya.

Anonymous Coward says:

Hundreds if not thousands of sites get ‘delisted’ every day, and I’d lay long odds that none of those sites are “alerted” or otherwise contacted about such action. The obvious question then becomes ‘why should TD be an exception to that fact of business life?’

More to the point, if one can correctly spell ‘techdirt.com’, then why isn’t one simply going to the site directly – why does one need a search engine to find what they’ve already typed into the address bar? Oh, you’re looking for a specific article on a specific topic, is that it? Then the proper syntax is site:www.techdirt.com, not ‘domain something something’. (That site:… portion can be placed anywhere on the address bar, it doesn’t matter where.)

And whereas most browsers, and DNS servers, will just automatically insert the ‘www.’ portion for a correct resolution, failing to enter it into the search query can often result in a lack of responsive entries. Just sayin’……

Avatar28 (profile) says:

Re:

Oh, you’re looking for a specific article on a specific topic, is that it? Then the proper syntax is site:www.techdirt.com, not ‘domain something something’. (That site:… portion can be placed anywhere on the address bar, it doesn’t matter where.)

And whereas most browsers, and DNS servers, will just automatically insert the ‘www.’ portion for a correct resolution, failing to enter it into the search query can often result in a lack of responsive entries. Just sayin’……

Doing that makes no difference with this current issue.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

Hey you, yeah you out there in left field….. It would probably help if you participated a little more often in these discussions. Who knows, you might actually ‘get’ both the gist and the back-story of what’s going on, both here and in general.

IOW, keep your eye on the ball. Sometimes it bounces around all crazy-like, but paying attention is the only way to catch the damned thing.

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Anonymous Coward says:

Maybe it’s karma for continuing to mock, slur, insult and demean the half of America whose political views you disagree with, MM?

And why would you expect Fox News or the NY Post to rush to your defense with outrage coverage over something that you yourself literally admit IN THIS VERY POST is probably:

“just a bug”

??

But anyway, cry harder. Play the victim more.

David says:

Re: Re:

“Half of America” only according to electoral college votes (taking the “America = U.S.” myopia in stride). The popular presidential vote (which would better correspond to the “half of” claim) or the de-gerrymandered representative votes tell a different story. As for the senate… if you get the same number of senators for Wyoming and California (which has about 70 times the population), talking about “half of America” seems like quite the euphemism.

It’s a stretch to say “this is like the Founding Fathers wanted it” since Wyoming and California are not even among the original union states.

mgallagher says:

Results look different to me

Using Mozilla on Linux (16:19 CDT), the first thing that appears on DDG (under the page menus) is a link to Techdirt with a description and logo. The information box appears to on the top right with a link to Techdirt, description, Wikipedia link and Techdirt social media links.

Below are a few not very helpful search results, but the are related to Techidrt.

So…maybe temporary or maybe something client-side related?

Anonymous Coward says:

Re:

Search for “techdirt.com”:
– techdirt.com landing page link, wikipedia, and various references to techdirt by other sites.

Search for “site: techdirt.com”:
– Not. One. Link.

Search for “site: slashdot.org” (Just to be sure the above worked for some sites):
– Plenty of slashdot articles.

Seems pretty broken to me.

Narp says:

From the YCombinator post, this person had the same problem. Months after contacting Bing (apparently fruitlessly), their site magically reappeared.

https://www.jessesquires.com/blog/2022/03/25/my-website-disappeared-from-bing-and-duckduckgo/

A comment there refers to a LinkedIn blog post which may be relevant to this more controversial site, Bing Exploit Allows Website Owners to Deindex Competitors (not having an account, I can’t read it).

Out of Order (profile) says:

TechDirt Shows Up on DuckDuckGo

I use DuckDuckGo regularly and have never had a problem with TechDirt not showing up. I checked it just now about 2 p.m. CDST, July 29, 2023, and the site showed up with a link that took me right into the main site as well as with other second party references. I don’t know what other people’s issues are, but I don’t have any with DDG.

LostInLoDOS (profile) says:

The others

I don’t use DDG (it doesn’t save search history) nor Google (search results are too mainstreamed to popularity over quality):
But as of today, Bing, my hand-set default, offers over 1million results for the search Techdirt and “over” 10,000 for a site search site:techdirt.com. More accurately 100+ pages of 100 results. Clicking page 100 brings up only td site results.

It was clearly a bug.

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