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> Yandex. It reminds me of old Google, returning reasonable results and much less "shaping results to please our corpo-political masters". As long as you don't

by sofixa 5d ago

> Yandex. It reminds me of old Google, returning reasonable results and much less "shaping results to please our corpo-political masters". As long as you don't search anything related to Russia itself, or to Russian interests elsewhere (like their invasion of Ukraine). Then it's very heavily biased, priority is given to state ran propaganda mills, independent media is hidden from results, etc. And before anyone starts thinking about whatabouting, Yandex are based in a country where journalists are openly and publicly assasinated to intimadate. It would be delusional to expect any sort of press and related (like search engine or aggregation) freedom, or to try to compare this to anything in any other developed country.

jimbob45 5d ago
Any proof of that? I’ve always found Yandex to be substandard but never for reasons of censorship.
- sofixa 5d ago
  Yep, plenty, and tbf it's entirely logical. The people working at Yandex do not want find themselves dying of a nerve agent or polonium, which is a real and acute danger for people who displease the ruling regime. https://hal.science/hal-03217497 https://hal.science/hal-03217497 https://euvsdisinfo.eu/yandex-from-tech-innovation-to-information-control/ https://euvsdisinfo.eu/yandex-from-tech-innovation-to-inform... https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10130930/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10130930/ https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/a-story-of-noncompliance-bias-and-conspiracies-how-google-and-yandex-represented-smart-voting-during-the-2021-parliamentary-elections-in-russia/ https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/a-story-of-non...
  - Cakez0r 5d ago
    If it's true just link to a first party example on the yandex site
- tryauuum 5d ago
  there was a source code leak and you can see some examples there which make the president's image more alluring. e.g. if you search for "Putin" they add an invisible "-crab" to your query that's the most innocent example from the top of my head. There probably are many more serious censorship issues
sureMan6 5d ago
> And before anyone starts thinking about whatabouting, Yandex are based in a country where journalists are openly and publicly assasinated to intimadate Thankfully Gary Webb is here with us today to laugh at this
hogs_get_fat 5d ago
So, I decided to check, and the first links that show up when I search for "war ukraine" in yandex.com are Google news are from rbc.ua and bbc.com. When I search for it in yandex.com, the first link is CNN, the second google news, the third is indeed TASS, but the fourth is novayagazeta. I then picked "bucha" as the query most likely the be affected by propaganda and censorship. In yandex.ru, there are propaganda outfits in the result (something called ruwiki.ru comes third), most links are of fairly direct accounts of the massacre by independent media. The AI summary says the town was "occupied" by the Russian army and "liberated" by the Ukrainian one and "После отступления российских войск в городе были обнаружены многочисленные свидетельства массовых убийств мирных жителей." On yandex.com on the other hand, the first page of results does look fairly propagandistic, including "globalresearch.ca" and "donbass-insider.com", which seem like propaganda outfits. But it also does include accounts from novayagazeta, al Jazeera a video of killings from Radio Free Europe. While they do put either own propaganda, neither Western, nor Ukraininan nor independent media is not hidden from the results and it's not visibly de-prioritized. Of course, I wouldn't discount the possibility that the results would look quite different from Russian territory. And, if anything, half the reason why Russian propaganda is so effective is that its self-aware and capable of subtlety when needed. "Fuck you if you can't handle the truth, this version of Biden is the best version ever." would never happen there. Unlike Scarborough, Soloviev knows exactly what he is. Open and constant suppression of information is not the regime's usual strategy in information space (though, they'd ratchet up the level of control when they deem it necessary), which is why I knew the claims here wouldn't stand up to scrutiny.
- avereveard 5d ago
  Have your tests been ran on vpn with vpn cloaks?
  - hogs_get_fat 5d ago
    I explicitly say, that I won't be surprised if the results change from Russian territory. I already put way too much effort to check the validity of an internet comment, but if anyone is interested, they can check.
- 5d ago
ta8903 5d ago
[flagged]
- yokoprime 5d ago
  What does israel have to do with this?
  - ta8903 5d ago
    According to OP >It would be delusional to expect any sort of press and related (like search engine or aggregation) freedom, or to try to compare this to anything in any other developed country. Israel is responsible for killing more journalists than any other country. Google has profited by providing services to Israel in the ongoing genocide. https://cpj.org/special-reports/record-129-press-members-killed-in-2025-israel-responsible-for-2-of-3-of-deaths/ https://cpj.org/special-reports/record-129-press-members-kil... https://afsc.org/gaza-genocide-companies#Google:~:text=Google%2FAlphabet https://afsc.org/gaza-genocide-companies#Google:~:text=Googl...
    - chadgpt3 5d ago
      It only counts when the country is our declared enemy. When our ally does a holocaust, it isn't a holocaust, it's just anti-terrorism operations.
      - dotancohen 5d ago
        Your Holocaust inversion is not only morally wrong, it is also factually incorrect.
        miroljub 5d ago
        Care to explain?
        dotancohen 4d ago
sugarkjube 5d ago
Reminds me of this old joke. A Soviet citizen and an American are sitting next to each other on a commercial flight. The American turns to the Russian and says, "I have to hand it to you — your state propaganda is very impressive. You really know how to shape what people think." The Soviet smiles, nods, and replies, "Thank you, but it's really nothing compared to American propaganda." The American looks shocked and says, "What are you talking about? We don't have any propaganda in America." The Soviet smiles again and says, "Exactly"
- sofixa 4d ago
  Nobody is denying the existence of American propaganda, but it's an absurd false equivalency to pretend it's comparable to Russia - the country where there are multiple Wikipedia articles with lists of murdered journalists and there is a day of remembrance for murdered journalists. The country which sends assassins to kill dissidents abroad. Especially when we have the Mitrokhin archives since the 1990s in which a KGB archivist painstakingly tried to warn us about the firehose of shit method. Do you know the conspiracy theories about AIDS were started by the KGB? This is the kind of shit we're talking about, not Americans jacking themselves off on their anthem thanking troops for their service. Actually sorry, it's beyond absurd.
  - Supermancho 4d ago
    > Actually sorry, it's beyond absurd. So is Fox News. That's the OVERT propaganda.
- libertine 3d ago
  What I think you're missing on the joke is that free speech in the USA makes it look like there's no propaganda, because of the plurality of opinions, media and propaganda. And the Soviet has no conception of what that is - in his fantasy the US state, and all the "satellites" are controlled by one single narrative thread like in the USSR. I think that's the actual punchline: he doesn't know what free speech is, so he thinks he's the one with the insight over the American. The sad thing is that still echoes today in Russia, they tolerate a corrupt regime and cope saying "the others are also corrupt and filled with propaganda, so this is ok, at least we know, but they don't" not realizing there's no free speech.
tryauuum 5d ago
I wish yandex worked well, but the enshittification wave reached it too. It used to have such a great reverse image search, now it's useless

by sofixa 5d ago

jimbob45 5d ago

Any proof of that? I’ve always found Yandex to be substandard but never for reasons of censorship.

sofixa 5d ago
Yep, plenty, and tbf it's entirely logical. The people working at Yandex do not want find themselves dying of a nerve agent or polonium, which is a real and acute danger for people who displease the ruling regime. https://hal.science/hal-03217497 https://hal.science/hal-03217497 https://euvsdisinfo.eu/yandex-from-tech-innovation-to-information-control/ https://euvsdisinfo.eu/yandex-from-tech-innovation-to-inform... https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10130930/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10130930/ https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/a-story-of-noncompliance-bias-and-conspiracies-how-google-and-yandex-represented-smart-voting-during-the-2021-parliamentary-elections-in-russia/ https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/a-story-of-non...
- Cakez0r 5d ago
  If it's true just link to a first party example on the yandex site
tryauuum 5d ago
there was a source code leak and you can see some examples there which make the president's image more alluring. e.g. if you search for "Putin" they add an invisible "-crab" to your query that's the most innocent example from the top of my head. There probably are many more serious censorship issues

sureMan6 5d ago

> And before anyone starts thinking about whatabouting, Yandex are based in a country where journalists are openly and publicly assasinated to intimadate Thankfully Gary Webb is here with us today to laugh at this

hogs_get_fat 5d ago

So, I decided to check, and the first links that show up when I search for "war ukraine" in yandex.com are Google news are from rbc.ua and bbc.com. When I search for it in yandex.com, the first link is CNN, the second google news, the third is indeed TASS, but the fourth is novayagazeta. I then picked "bucha" as the query most likely the be affected by propaganda and censorship. In yandex.ru, there are propaganda outfits in the result (something called ruwiki.ru comes third), most links are of fairly direct accounts of the massacre by independent media. The AI summary says the town was "occupied" by the Russian army and "liberated" by the Ukrainian one and "После отступления российских войск в городе были обнаружены многочисленные свидетельства массовых убийств мирных жителей." On yandex.com on the other hand, the first page of results does look fairly propagandistic, including "globalresearch.ca" and "donbass-insider.com", which seem like propaganda outfits. But it also does include accounts from novayagazeta, al Jazeera a video of killings from Radio Free Europe. While they do put either own propaganda, neither Western, nor Ukraininan nor independent media is not hidden from the results and it's not visibly de-prioritized. Of course, I wouldn't discount the possibility that the results would look quite different from Russian territory. And, if anything, half the reason why Russian propaganda is so effective is that its self-aware and capable of subtlety when needed. "Fuck you if you can't handle the truth, this version of Biden is the best version ever." would never happen there. Unlike Scarborough, Soloviev knows exactly what he is. Open and constant suppression of information is not the regime's usual strategy in information space (though, they'd ratchet up the level of control when they deem it necessary), which is why I knew the claims here wouldn't stand up to scrutiny.

avereveard 5d ago
Have your tests been ran on vpn with vpn cloaks?
- hogs_get_fat 5d ago
  I explicitly say, that I won't be surprised if the results change from Russian territory. I already put way too much effort to check the validity of an internet comment, but if anyone is interested, they can check.
5d ago

ta8903 5d ago

[flagged]

yokoprime 5d ago
What does israel have to do with this?
- ta8903 5d ago
  According to OP >It would be delusional to expect any sort of press and related (like search engine or aggregation) freedom, or to try to compare this to anything in any other developed country. Israel is responsible for killing more journalists than any other country. Google has profited by providing services to Israel in the ongoing genocide. https://cpj.org/special-reports/record-129-press-members-killed-in-2025-israel-responsible-for-2-of-3-of-deaths/ https://cpj.org/special-reports/record-129-press-members-kil... https://afsc.org/gaza-genocide-companies#Google:~:text=Google%2FAlphabet https://afsc.org/gaza-genocide-companies#Google:~:text=Googl...
  - chadgpt3 5d ago
    It only counts when the country is our declared enemy. When our ally does a holocaust, it isn't a holocaust, it's just anti-terrorism operations.
    - dotancohen 5d ago
      Your Holocaust inversion is not only morally wrong, it is also factually incorrect.
      - miroljub 5d ago
        Care to explain?
        dotancohen 4d ago

sugarkjube 5d ago

Reminds me of this old joke. A Soviet citizen and an American are sitting next to each other on a commercial flight. The American turns to the Russian and says, "I have to hand it to you — your state propaganda is very impressive. You really know how to shape what people think." The Soviet smiles, nods, and replies, "Thank you, but it's really nothing compared to American propaganda." The American looks shocked and says, "What are you talking about? We don't have any propaganda in America." The Soviet smiles again and says, "Exactly"

sofixa 4d ago
Nobody is denying the existence of American propaganda, but it's an absurd false equivalency to pretend it's comparable to Russia - the country where there are multiple Wikipedia articles with lists of murdered journalists and there is a day of remembrance for murdered journalists. The country which sends assassins to kill dissidents abroad. Especially when we have the Mitrokhin archives since the 1990s in which a KGB archivist painstakingly tried to warn us about the firehose of shit method. Do you know the conspiracy theories about AIDS were started by the KGB? This is the kind of shit we're talking about, not Americans jacking themselves off on their anthem thanking troops for their service. Actually sorry, it's beyond absurd.
- Supermancho 4d ago
  > Actually sorry, it's beyond absurd. So is Fox News. That's the OVERT propaganda.
libertine 3d ago
What I think you're missing on the joke is that free speech in the USA makes it look like there's no propaganda, because of the plurality of opinions, media and propaganda. And the Soviet has no conception of what that is - in his fantasy the US state, and all the "satellites" are controlled by one single narrative thread like in the USSR. I think that's the actual punchline: he doesn't know what free speech is, so he thinks he's the one with the insight over the American. The sad thing is that still echoes today in Russia, they tolerate a corrupt regime and cope saying "the others are also corrupt and filled with propaganda, so this is ok, at least we know, but they don't" not realizing there's no free speech.

tryauuum 5d ago

I wish yandex worked well, but the enshittification wave reached it too. It used to have such a great reverse image search, now it's useless