this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2021
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Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo grew by 62% in 2020 (www.bleepingcomputer.com)
submitted 4 years ago by Rumblestiltskin to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 years ago* (last edited 4 years ago) (1 children)

We can do better than DuckDuckGo

It’s not open source:

Almost all of DDG’s software is proprietary, and they’ve demonstrated gross incompetence in privacy in what little software they have made open source. Who knows what else is going on in the proprietary code?

DuckDuckGo is not a search engine:

It’s more aptly described as a search engine frontend. They do handle features like bangs and instant answers internally, but their actual search results come from third-parties like Bing. They don’t operate a crawler for their search results, and are not independent.

...

Also, if you are using ddg, consider using their html version ddg/html to avoid this:

DDG is currently collecting users’ operating systems and everything they highlight in the search results. (to verify this, simply hit F12 in your browser and select the “network” tab. Do a search with javascript enabled. Highlight some text on the screen. Mouseover the traffic rows and see that your highlighted text, operating system, and other details relating to geolocation are sent to DDG. Then change the query and submit. Notice that the previous query is being transmitted with the new query to link the queries together)

from https://lemmy.ml/post/31321

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 years ago (2 children)

Yes, we can do better than DDG, but for now there's not really anything better. Maybe Qwant can be great, though it mainly uses Bing's results (and it's french, which is a quite better than the US in terms of privacy), though there have been some controversies surrounding it recently and it has been strongly supported by the french government.

Maybe mojeek will grow to become something usable.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 years ago* (last edited 4 years ago)

That may be true, but there is a mindset in many that they are some valiant knight.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 years ago (1 children)

Mojeek is proprietary, even if it becomes usable that doesn't mean they will protect your privacy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 years ago (1 children)

That's true, but I still prefer having the choice between many proprietary services than having the choice between just 2 proprietary services.

A FLOSS one would be great. There's Gigablast, but it seems like it's not really evolving much. Though its index is quite up to date.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 years ago (1 children)

What do you mean by "not evolving"?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 years ago (1 children)

They have had roughly 1 commit per year in the last few years on GitHub, and their UI seems to be stuck in the 90s

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 years ago (1 children)

their UI seems to be stuck in the 90s

Great! That means it's minimal and works well in text based web browsers. Loading tons of JavaScript, having flashy colors and adding tons of features most people will never use isn't good design, there was nothing wrong with the old way of doing things.

They have had roughly 1 commit per year in the last few years on GitHub

It could be because there is nothing to add? It's a search engine, it's supposed to search stuff. As long as index is up date everything should be fine.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 years ago (1 children)

having flashy colors and adding tons of features most people will never use isn’t good design

Their UI is full of flashy colors!

Having no JS doesn't mean that the website needs to look like shit. If you want normal people to use your website, you need to have a design that appeals to the majority (and it is possible without JS). For example, Gitea works fine with JS disabled while still having a fantastic looking clean UI.

It could be because there is nothing to add? It’s a search engine, it’s supposed to search stuff. As long as index is up date everything should be fine.

Yes and no, if it doesn't evolve anymore, it means that the search results will never become as relevant as they are in other search engines. This means that it can never appeal to a larger crowd.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 years ago* (last edited 4 years ago) (1 children)

In my opinion the colors they use are fairly flat and ui in general looks good. Results are decent, I might switch to this thank you for the suggestion. Also this will never appeal to the larger crowd, not without tons of marketing. They simply don't have the resources for it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 years ago* (last edited 4 years ago) (1 children)

It is possible to appeal to the larger crowd without a ton of marketing, see Signal recently for example!

And it's not like they're not capable of doing stuff, on their front-page they advertise the service private.sh, in partnership with Private Internet Access.

Results are decent

I don't believe that you actually think that.

Edit: I quoted the wrong part, I meant I didn't beleive you when you said "ui in general looks good"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 years ago (1 children)

Signal was just lucky, one tweet brought it glory. I didn't use it much yet but from what I can tell yes results decent for an independent search engine.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 years ago (1 children)

Signal was already being used by non tech-savvy people, and it was able to gain that much popularity because its UX is decent enough.

I quoted the wrong part, I meant:

ui in general looks good

I don't believe you actually think that.

The results themselves are somewhat decent.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 years ago

Yes I really do like the UI. It screams Web 1.0 and it's beautiful, I love classic web UIs. I just really like how they look, I really don't like the generic and bland look of modern UIs of the web services of today, with some exceptions.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 years ago (1 children)

This is real bad, DuckDuckGo has a shady history. Marketing wins once again :(

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 years ago (1 children)

Still better than Google and I actually don't know any good alternative to it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 years ago (1 children)

Google doesn't set a high bar. Searx is excellent.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 years ago (1 children)

But SearX just uses Google and Bing's results, so it's barely any better.

I think we need to support efforts to build fully independent indexes and search engines like Mojeek and Gigablast, and push meta search engines to build their own index (For example, Qwant heavily relies on Bing, but is building it's own index).

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 years ago (1 children)

Searx can pull results from tons of search engines not just Google and Bing. Also DuckDuckGo gets it's results from bing as well. Mojeek is proprietary, their privacy statements can be just corporate BS. It seems like Gigablast is libre so I'll definitely check it out, thanks :)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 years ago (1 children)

re: Gigablast, I'd question the ethics of a site that promotes removedute on its front page

in case anyone doesn't know about removedute:

removedute is a video hosting service known for accommodating far-right individuals and conspiracy theorists, and for hosting hateful material. The platform was created in 2017 to allow video uploaders to avoid content rules enforcement on YouTube, and some creators who have been banned from YouTube or had their channels barred from receiving advertising revenue ("demonetized") have migrated to removedute.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 years ago (1 children)

This alt-right "conspiracy" bs always existed on the internet. This has nothing to do with removedute, issue with removedute is that it's not a real solution to the problems YouTubers face. And I'm sure gigablast promotes removedute because they don't know any better. Also who the F cares? Why do you have to look at people or services through a binary perspective? "They do this one thing that's bad so they are 100% evil!" NO! Every choice you make has a profit and loss balance. In this case we have a sesrch engine that doesn't track users, has a good classic UI that appears to be terminal friendly, fast, free software, independent and provides good results. But also it promotes removedute (and it clearly states that's because they didn't let them index YouTube or Facebook). Hmm 🤔 I don't know mate but here it seems like there is more to gain than lose, what do you think?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 years ago (1 children)

I think that we have a pretty bad PR problem when it comes to free and privacy-focused software and services. So often when this category of things gets attention, it's because it's being used to harbor fascists and other pieces of shit. I believe Minds also heavily favors the far right. There's no real reason to promote these platforms over others. Friendica and PeerTube are infinitely more capable and also better both in terms of freedom and the ability to be used responsibly.

If you look over at the Mastodon side of things, you'll see where things can go when the social gains of these alternatives are the biggest part of the message. Tons of people use that not because they know it's free software, not because they know it's federated, but because "it's Twitter but queerer and without the fascists!" There's real tangible power in that appeal that needs to be at the front of the conversation.

I'm not being black-and-white with it, and I don't think you're bad if you choose to use it (at least with what I know about it right now). Instead, even despite its appealing features and presentation, I would urge others to choose other options because especially now while every decent-to-good option is relatively obscure, it is best for privacy and freedom in the long term to make sure that the software and services that we promote are liberatory not only in technical terms, but in practical social ones. These tools need to support oppressed people and are uniquely suited to do so...we have a responsibility to play a social and PR game as much as we do a technical one.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 years ago (1 children)

If you look over at the Mastodon side of things, you’ll see where things can go when the social gains of these alternatives are the biggest part of the message. Tons of people use that not because they know it’s free software, not because they know it’s federated, but because “it’s Twitter but queerer and without the fascists!” There’s real tangible power in that appeal that needs to be at the front of the conversation.

As someone who recently set up a Mastodon Instance and supports people, philosophies, and movements like LGBTQ+, and Black Lives Matters, I know for me personally the anti free speech rhetoric that is oh so common on Mastodon is the most off putting part by far. What happened to using local moderation tools available to you to silence opinions you do not agree with?

My friends and I are meme shitposters, and we are constantly getting zucked and many of us have been fleeing FB and YouTube because they censor freedom of information and expression, so to find out about things like fediblock and the fact it isn't just instances that abuse and harass the network, but any network that promotes free speech and doesn't censor the "right" content is automatically added to this list and defederated(e.x. https://fediblock.org/blocklist/#libre.video). It is extremely disconcerting, and my willingness to praise it as a viable alternative is directly related.

I think the Political Correct/Coddle culture is one of the most toxic things to the idea of freedom of information, as giving anyone the power to say, "I don't agree with your view, so I will silence you, and make sure others do as well, or else" is almost even worse than Facebook. At some point creating or perpetuating this divisiveness is perpetuating hate, empowering idiots to think they are special, ultimately congregating them into and promoting echo chambers...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 years ago

That's one of the consequences of freedom of association and perhaps its biggest strength. Fediverse blocklists are what keeps it usable and not filled with absolute garbage, letting people join communities that interact with others based on a set of principles that they support. Moderation is good and necessary and drastically under-applied on the internet at large.

Whatever, should've have replied to someone honestly complaining about "coddle culture" in the absolute hellscape that is the internet. Go fling shit at other shit flingers...the magic of the fediverse is that the rest of us don't have to deal with them. It's a haven for queer people specifically because you can curate your experience just like you can in real life. It's so fucking weird that people think that everyone having to deal with everyone at all times online is normal and the default and that anything restricting that is just being coddled. Outside of have-tos like work, I can avoid shitheads and have shithead-free spaces in my day to day life. I choose the people I hang around. The fediverse and the blocklists that are so pervasive within it are a natural extension of this right to a digital space.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 years ago

Love to see it