Search Engines and Agendas

Originally published on March 10, 2022.
Last Updated on February 28, 2024.

Did a little experiment this morning. Comparing the search results of Google, vs DuckDuckGo vs Brave Search. Brave and DDG claim to be ‘privacy’ search engines, but are they messing with the results?

Lets see what they show for the following search term: ‘ukraine army shelling its own people’. (This is a controversial topic right now but there is extensive evidence that the Ukrainian Army has been indiscriminately shelling it’s own people in Eastern Ukraine for 8 yrs now. Will your search engine tell you this?)

Using the top 10 results from each:

Google: Zero articles talking about Ukraine shelling it’s own people for 8 yrs. All articles talk about Russians bombing residential areas. All ten articles are pro Ukraine or anti-Russia. Nothing that would give you any hint about what the Ukraine Army has done, either now or in the past. 100% US government line of propaganda. Garbage.

DuckDuckGo: 3 of the top 10 results talk about the Ukrainian army either firing 1st, or landing bombs on it’s own people. However, 7 of the top 10 results are pro-Ukraine and talk about either blaming the Russians for bombing civilians or that any reports of the Ukrainians bombing their own people is ‘misinformation’ from the Russians. So you might get some info on this topic from DDG, but the overwhelming results push you toward Ukraine good, Russia bad narrative.

Brave Search: 4 of the top ten actually discuss the Ukrainian army shelling Eastern Ukraine including a Bitchute video as the top result. However, they also have 2 ‘fact checking’ links which are clearly pro US/Ukraine propaganda sites downplaying any evils the Ukrainian army might have done. Overall, these results will give you some information that you can at least chase down and verify.

The results of this little test are:

Google. 100% party line agenda.
DDG. Some balance with info that you might be able to chase down.
Brave Search. Also some balance, almost 50/50. Included Bitchute which is clearly an alternative less agenda driven video site.

Of the 3, Brave Search wins this battle, but only barely over DuckDuckGo and only because they have clearly indexed Bitchute.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *