Marketing idea: Free Speech search engine

I will keep this short, just a random idea that popped up and thought it was worth sharing it with you folks. I think to a certain degree, Mojeek is actually a “free speech” search engine already, we already market it as an “un-biased” search engine that is independent from Big Tech.

I was wondering, what if we actually add the word “free speech”, in our marketing for Mojeek?

Here is couple of events that have been recently happening in the tech world;

DuckDuckGo Down ranks russian search results

I am sure many are aware of what happened at DuckDuckGo regarding this a while ago, one of the core values of their search engine was to provide unbiased search results apart from privacy, or is it? Doesn’t matter if they cared about being un-biased apart or just being privacy friendly, I think a lot of users from the right wing still jumped to DuckDuckGo for unbiased, better results than search products from corporations like Google and Microsoft, but after this news about them down ranking Russian results, it was a huge backlash and certainly pushed a lot of people to check out other search engines, moving away from DuckDuckGo (keep in mind, I am especially talking about those from the right wing, a term we often use in America).

After seeing what happened here, while I am not somebody who is much into politics, I do have some basic knowledge and I do believe advertising ourselves as a search engine that; “respects free speech by providing un-biased search results” would attract a lot of new users.

Elon musk on making Twitter a free speech platform, if he manages to buy it

This is probably an even more popular topic than what we discussed previously with DuckDuckGo, but not really connected to Mojeek directly as Twitter is not a search engine, it’s a social platform.

But I think, free speech is being more and more valued nowadays on the internet, I also think free speech is somewhat connected to the term “privacy”, in the sense that you won’t be tracked, and the service will provide you unbiased search results, giving you control over the search engine.

Even our quote bellow, from the about page is basically what free speech is;

The alternative search engine that puts the people who use it first.

I have a feeling, we are a free speech search engine, that just doesn’t say it’s free speech, and from growth and marketing point of view, if we make that word “free speech” more obvious, it would absolutely help Mojeek grow in the long term, and give more users to use it. I have always heard of people saying mainly that Mojeek is one of the very least search engine that is independent from Big Tech, but the fact that these independent search results are unbiased, which in turn makes it a free speech respecting search engine is never mentioned.

I might have misunderstood the values Mojeek has, but after going through the about page and the vision you folks share, this is the idea that came to my mind with what is already here assuming I understand the core values of Mojeek.

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Good points. I do feel, and you are free to disagree, that the words “free speech” carry a certain political weight now. It is unfortunate, because thinking of an equivalent term can be tricky. Other search engines have latched onto different words for their marketing, like “ethical”, for example, limiting the options for Mojeek or anyone else.

If I were to see anything marketed as the “Free Speech X” I would be skeptical and write it off as a tool for conspiracy theorists and biased search results. Also, searching for a synonym of “free speech” returns “first amendment”, and that would imply it is related to American politics.

I may be wrong. I haven’t had my regular number of coffees, so keep that in mind :man_shrugging:

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in my personal opinion, i think any negative connotations attached to ‘free speech’ should be disregarded - if there was ever a time to stand up and support our inherent right to free speech regardless of any and all consequences, it is certainly now

that said, i’m not sure how well the phrase ‘free speech’ dovetails with a search engine

just an fyi…

Musk has apparently agreed to censor speech on Twitter according to EU regulations - i have not confirmed this however

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I don’t see it as negative, it simply feels like a key word used in political marketing campaigns.

RE: Musk, so off topic maybe...

Our EU digital services act isn’t really censorship of free speech, it is about online harassment, the sale of counterfeit products, child pornography, or calls for acts of terrorism. Nothing new here, and being from North America, but living in Europe, I am of the opinion that freedom of speech is taken more seriously here. Again, just observations, not my field of study, never really one to dig deeper than reading the official statements.

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I had some fun with that recently: https://twitter.com/ColinHayhurst/status/1514588293207318540

Screenshot 2022-05-17 at 13.11.12
Screenshot 2022-05-17 at 13.24.10

More seriously, we have a blog post about this very topic in the works.

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very nice!