If you go into the settings, you'll see a list of sources from which they pick stories (you can customize the list).
I think they did this to have an extra thing attracting people to the app on top of pure search. People are likely to spend more time in the app because of it, and thus use DDG for more searches.
You can turn off the stories in the settings and use it as a pure search app, though.
My question for Gabriel & team would be: Is there an iPad version planned?
Stories are showcased from over 50 carefully selected sources that focus on different types of content. For example, TIME and BBC are there, but so are Reddit Funny and BuzzFeed. We also aggressively prevent depressing and duplicate stories from appearing in the feed.
Would you ever consider teaming up with the producers of This American Life or Radiolab to do some sort of curated story, perhaps centered around the issues of privacy in the modern age? I think you (collectively) could be in a great position to do an interesting take on the different angles of the story.
>We also aggressively prevent depressing and duplicate stories from appearing in the feed.
Huh? Duplicate I can understand, but depressing stories? Isn't that subjective? What happened to dontbubbleus[0] principles of not filtering? Did Fred want a better news reader?
And here I was hoping for a new way to experience search like giving 3rd party devs more freedom to implement plugins in search…
It's not a filter bubble because by default everyone sees the exact same content, just like our Web search results. We decided early on to filter out things like rape, dismemberment, etc. that we thought were staunchly negative. Also, this app wasn't designed to be a traditional news reader. Instead it features interesting content that's currently being shared a lot regardless of publish date.
That's... horribly pathological. I'd even claim that's bordering on being unethical. Also, it's like the facebookey "like" button, in trying to paint everything in rainbow colors.
There is an issue with media pileup and lack of respect, but sometimes just because reporting is negative doesn't mean it's not real. In fact, you've just mentioned a huge social problem (rape) that happens even in first world cultures and is relevant whether we like it or not, that you decided to filter out.
Which is the usual case with the "irrelevant" "negative" reporting that we can't "do anything about". Actually, usually we can, but it's small, won't stroke your ego, and it's easier to hide your head in the sand and pretend nothing's happening. Because paying attention to food you eat, clothes you wear and electronics you buy is hard and isn't making life more enjoyable for you or anyone you know.
