The free speech search engine that never was

A lot of tech companies have responded to the Russian invasion of Ukraine by restricting their services in or to the country. DuckDuckGo, the search engine that markets itself as a privacy-first alternative to Google, was no different: On March 9, its CEO Gabriel Weinberg announced that it was going to down-rank sites that spread Russian disinformation. The response from many of its users, however, was different. While companies including Apple, Meta, Amazon, and, yes, Google, have largely been praised in the United States for pulling out of Russia, DuckDuckGo was attacked.

“Privacy is a human right...