Users of privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo have been unable to website search the domains of some well-known pirated media websites just lately, as reported by TorrentFreak on Friday. DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg referred to as it “completely made up,” tweeting over the weekend that that is the results of a website operator error. Weinberg insisted the corporate shouldn’t be purging any outcomes. “Anyone can verify this by searching for an outlet and see it come up in results,” Weinberg tweeted.

To observers, it appeared as if DuckDuckGo had de-indexed searches for copyright-flouting media obtain websites like The Pirate Bay and Fmovies, and even a website seek for the open-source instrument youtube-dl got here up empty. TorrentFreak later up to date its report citing an organization spokesperson blaming the difficulty on Bing search knowledge, which DuckDuckGo depends upon.

We reached out to DuckDuckGo in regards to the problem and obtained this response from senior communications supervisor Allison Goodman:

After trying into this, our information point out that YouTube-dl and The Pirate Bay had been by no means faraway from our search outcomes whenever you looked for them immediately by title or URL, which the overwhelming majority of individuals do (it’s uncommon for individuals to make use of website operators or question operators generally).

The Verge was informed the brand new conduct shouldn’t be focused to piracy-linked websites. “We are having issues with our site: operator, and not just for these sites,” wrote Goodman. “Some of the other sites routinely change domain names and have spotty availability, and so naturally come in and out of the index but should be available as of now.” The Verge was capable of observe these adjustments: a Friday seek for “site:thepiratebay.org spider-man” gave zero outcomes (together with the absence of the principle website), however at present, the search does no less than yield the thepiratebay.org web site — however not something inside.

Like Goodman, Weinberg claimed website operators are sparingly used and downplayed it as a problem:

Similarly, we aren’t “purging” YouTube-dl or The Pirate Bay and so they each have really been constantly obtainable in our outcomes should you seek for them by title (which most individuals do). Our website: operator (which hardly anybody makes use of) is having points which we’re trying into.

No matter what’s inflicting the change, that is the second latest dust-up for DuckDuckGo over its search outcomes. In March, the corporate responded to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by saying it will down-rank websites spreading Russian misinformation. Right-wing figures who had promoted it as an alternative choice to Google claimed it had abandoned principles of free speech for censorship, whereas DDG spokesperson Kamyl Bazbaz informed Recode, “This isn’t censorship. It’s just search rankings.”