Sorry, my post was mostly satire/tongue-in-cheek.
If I were in a position of power, and I knew that DDG was more difficult to get user data from, then I'd absolutely find a way to have articles published like this. I imagine that disenfranchised people are less likely to seek alternatives and are more likely to resign themselves to being monitored. It also seems like it would be more politically acceptable as well as offering a layer for plausible deniability.
Were I in charge, and a nefarious actor, I'd be slipping stories like this into the media quite frequently. It's low cost, low risk, and probably has a good chance at success with at least some percentage of the population.
I'm not sure I have the lack of ethics required to really do such a job. I'd like to hope that I'd resign before I helped do those sorts of things.
