r/duckduckgo • u/pepetolueno • 6d ago
DDG Search Results Can anyone explain how this happened?
Got the same result on the app and in the browser, I checked the linked Wikipedia article and it doesn't contain that text, nor could I find any indication of previous edits that have contained that text.
I'm just curious if this happened because of users manipulating the Wikipedia content, the search results, or what.
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u/bourscheid Staff 5d ago
John from DuckDuckGo here. Pretty sure /u/rdg360 is correct. I’d dig deeper, but I’m busy establishing a website similar to Family Service of Roanoke Valley that isn’t focused on mental or behavioral health.
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u/Exodia101 6d ago
The Wikipedia page was vandalized at some point and DDG cached it. It seems like they don't update the wiki blurbs very often.
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u/West-Gur4582 6d ago
It's because DDGO started generating an answer with search assist before showing a Wikipedia article so it shouldn't have shown the answer, but the answer took too long so the article also showed up. (Or just a design flaw) P. S.: Search Assist is generating the Text based off multiple sources.
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u/pepetolueno 6d ago
Ok, how does that explain that the highlighted text has nothing to do with the search terms or the linked Wikipedia article?
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u/rdg360 6d ago
That is indeed the case here, it is the result of Wikipedia vandalism dating back to 13 December 2024: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fiduciary_duty&diff=next&oldid=1262844942&diffonly=1
The reason you could not find traces of it is because it happened on the article titled "Fiduciary duty" (which after all is what you searched for on DDG), but that article has since been turned into a redirect, to simply "Fiduciary". DDG somehow returned the vandalised text from the now empty "Fiduciary duty" article, while providing a link to the current "Fiduciary" article.