DuckDuckGone

Submitted by Battle of Blair... on Thu, 03/10/2022 - 6:42pm

Wednesday, DuckDuckGo CEO and founder Gabriel Weinberg announced on Twitter:

The company that created its entire brand on the idea they weren't invasive like Google, just decided to be invasive like Google. Responses were overwhelmingly negative. Those defending the decision were ratio'd into oblivion.

This doesn't come as a complete surprise to me. As a dedicated user of DDG, I've noticed in the past year or so that the search results have been biased. Finding indy media results gets harder and harder. DDG has been less and less useful. I've even noticed that search terms I used in the past for research no longer call up the pertinent sources now that they turned up years ago, despite the sites still being in operation.

This coincides with DDG going on the radio and doing a massive advertising campaign.

So what happened a year or two ago that allowed for this massive advertising campaign? $100 million infusion of capital from OmerVentures, a venture capitalist, GP Bullhound (who annually award the "Oscars of the tech industry"),

Its blog post name-checks Omers Ventures, Thrive, GP Bullhound, Impact America Fund and WhatsApp founder Brian Acton; inventor of the world wide web Tim Berners-Lee; VC and diversity activist Freada Kapor Klein; and entrepreneur Mitch Kapor as being among the participating investors. So quite the line up.

This all smacks of how TYT's got paid and suddenly they were sellouts. Now DDG is a sellout. The big difference is that the customer base at DDG is very vocal about their displeasure and they will leave. No doubt, they've left already.

I suggest all of you dump DDG immediately, as in from this moment on.

DuckDuckGone.

EDIT: Here are some alternate search engines you can try out and see which ones suit you. I only list those that claim they are unbiased and don't track you.

https://www.mojeek.com/
www.okeano.com

I just found www.Gibiru.com

Launched in 2009, Gibiru is another private service similar to DuckDuckGo, but it distinguishes itself with its use of 256-bit AES encryption to obtain search results. Gibiru collects no cookies, IP addresses or search query history from its users, and therefore cannot sell user data to third parties or identify individual users.

Its results are sorted into two columns: “all results” and “censored content.” The former is Gibiru’s complete index and the latter are all of the links that are excluded from the curated feeds of major services like Google Search.

I did a quick search. Somewhat timely, but a little behind. Clicking Censored content is so worth it however. Stuff I had not seen.

Okeano seems much better than Mojeek. I can't really recommend Mojeek.

Tags:

disinformation

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Comments

Submitted by QMS on Thu, 03/10/2022 - 6:57pm

Qwant is just a google look-alike

Are there any better alternatives?

—

question everything

Submitted by Battle of Blair... on Thu, 03/10/2022 - 7:25pm

I did get this from a search about Mojeek

https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2019/03/05/mojeek-alternative-to-google/

Mojeek's elevator pitch: "Independent and unbiased search results with no user tracking."

for Marc and Finn, bias is a lot more than simply eliminating the echo chamber, as the AMA reflects, “It means we would never intentionally manipulate our results to show any particular point of view. We don‘t believe a search engine should have an agenda, whether political or otherwise and returning as relevant but opposing views should be a goal.”

So, Mojeek is fundamentally opposed to censorship or filtering results in the SERPs on political grounds. We can also infer that they would not give preferential visibility to advertisers nor to their own products/affiliates (as we might assume from an engine with a more capitalist agenda).

Submitted by Pricknick on Thu, 03/10/2022 - 7:42pm

Last I looked

I was in my sixties and not needing someone to tell me what I can and can not read.
I long ago learned to dig in deep on search results to find pertinent information.
Only fools look at the most prominent sites the search engines give you.
Pay to play baby.

—

Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

Submitted by snoopydawg on Thu, 03/10/2022 - 11:40pm

Welcome back to 1984

Thread

This interpretation goes much further than many had thought on reading the regulation itself, and disapplies the E-Commerce Directive ban on general monitoring. If correct, this raises significant proportionality issues and freedom of expression issues. 2/

— TJ McIntyre (@tjmcintyre) March 9, 2022

Presumably these issues will be ventilated in the RT challenge to the ban before the General Court, details here: https://t.co/DFuNdvQ6fG 4/

— TJ McIntyre (@tjmcintyre) March 9, 2022

South Front is another Russian media that was censored by Germany till they moved their servers to Russia. I don’t know…if you have to censor the news about war then I question every damn thing I’m told. I just can’t believe how many people are okay with it. I’d love to know what happened to people critical thinking skills that have disappeared just because Trump got elected over HerHeinous. She just thought she would be coronated without having to work for it. Calling half the country deplorable and telling the other half that they would never get single payer seems pretty boneheaded to me. But sure blame it on everything else besides that.

—

Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.

Submitted by lotlizard on Fri, 03/11/2022 - 12:56am

Well, that’s a good example of why I’ve turned against the E.U.

@snoopydawg
and, for want of better alternatives, now include right-wing populist sources like the German Compact magazine in my information gathering.

https://www.compact-online.de/

The Davos elite and their technocrat servants pushing the EU to become a centralized superstate like the U.S. MICIMATT (Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank) complex are literally 1984-style Inner Party totalitarians.

Submitted by Creosote. on Fri, 03/11/2022 - 6:53am

Now I understand Corbyn's position on the EU.

@lotlizard
and why he was so viified.
What you are doing is invaluable here.

Submitted by MrWebster on Fri, 03/11/2022 - 4:37pm

Down ranking vs. complete delisting

@snoopydawg So the EU is basically deleting any search result and any link to Russian sources. As if the country did not exist. But DuckDuck will simply put any found results so far down the list you will never get to it. I know there are extensions to google that let you customize searches but if the hit never appears no help there to even find clever ways to find something obscure.

This is 1984 Ministry of Truth terrain.

Submitted by snoopydawg on Fri, 03/11/2022 - 5:00pm

Yes it is

@MrWebster

I’m seeing lots of people saying that they feel that they are living in Orwell's nightmare. He did try to warn us didn’t he?

Were you the one who asked about the media all being on the same page? If so you are right about it. The AP generates most of the news and others just parrot what they write. A few of us have posted a chart that shows how it works but I don’t know how to find it again. Wendy posted it in one of her essays maybe last year if you’re interested in searching for it.

—

Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.

Submitted by eyo on Fri, 03/11/2022 - 2:36pm

Alternatives to DDG

This is copy pasta from same topic on hackernews comments this morning, for information. It would be interesting to see what each engine returns from the same query, if I had one. Have fun.
---
Okeano [0] is a free speech absolutist and privacy friendly search engine. [1]
[0] https://okeano.com
[1] https://twitter.com/OkeanoSearch/status/1502077779243847686
---
Searx is interesting for replacing DDG. Edit: to add linky.
https://searx.me/
“a privacy-respecting, hackable metasearch engine”
---
Search as a paid service:
https://kagi.com/ which at this time seems at least as good if not better than DDG
They also make a (as they claim) zero telemetry browser called Orion (https://browser.kagi.com).
---
neeva.com is a subscription search engine. I think privacy counts as a premium service now. Although, I wouldn’t expect anyone to not work with the police, even if you pay.
---

Submitted by Battle of Blair... on Fri, 03/11/2022 - 5:31pm

@eyo I ran some searches.

@eyo I ran some searches. DDGone and Okeano are clone results with one very funny exception: When I used the terms Okeano Search Engine on both sites, everything was identical except Okeano returned these three results which DDGone did not:

DuckDuckGo starts censoring Russia, here are some alternatives.

DuckDuckGo is officially CANCELLED

Alternatives to DuckDuckGo?

Not very unbiased of DDGone to omit those search results.

Submitted by eyo on Fri, 03/11/2022 - 3:11pm

Wine Cave search results

This is the top article returned by okeano, which is precisely what I was looking for. DDG, not so much. On DDGone it is down below the map of images, though still on first page. shrug The search term I used was "russian river rename healdsburg" trying to recall the local two minutes of hate, er I mean symbolic acts. Thank gawd that's over. Why did I bother looking it up? LOL

No more ‘Russian River’? Symbolic acts of Ukrainian solidarity abound in Sonoma County

And now for some good news. Finally!

The French Laundry original chef/owner Sally Schmitt dies at age 90

Huh, okeano seems good. Now have to search out what is wrong with it under the surface. Ha ha! good day

Submitted by snoopydawg on Fri, 03/11/2022 - 4:14pm

Just shaking my head

@eyo

I saw the Russian river lighted with yellow and blue lights and now this stupidity. This crap is getting out of hand and I’m both disgusted and sad by the people who are taking part in it. The world leaders doing this crap know damn well that America has done worse things then Russia is doing now and they helped do it. Shock and awe killed hundreds of thousands Iraqis and we went on to kill millions more. Right now we are starving women and children in Afghanistan, Yemen and so many other countries but those leaders aren’t saying a damn word.

Their sanctions are hurting ordinary people and they know it. I paid a dollar less for gas just 2 weeks ago and the only reason we are paying more now is because the oil companies want us to. I also paid a dollar more for bird food. Is it being sanctioned from Russia too? Gee maybe if we made some of our own stuff this shit wouldn’t be happening. It’s insane that people can’t see that.

—

Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.

Submitted by Creosote. on Sat, 03/12/2022 - 7:08am

Birdseed costs

@snoopydawg
affect Audubon too, and the seed literally looks different -- far smaller. Shelled seeds are almost as small as large cornmeal. Cost of a 20-pound bag in the shell was already $10 higher "before the war." Climate change comes home.

Submitted by shaharazade on Sun, 03/13/2022 - 8:34pm

I knew they we're another

goner when I started hearing them being touted on NPR (National Propaganda Radio). I listen to NPR sometimes when I cook. Know your enemy research.So sad I've used them and Firefox since I got online. Now what? Seems there is no place to go on the net that isn't gobbled up by bigger fishes. Anyone have a suggestion for a replacement? Dag it just keeps getting more and more hard to find anything online that is not corporate/military propaganda.

I read The Guardian for years. It was great. Then it too went corporate and is now so full of 'misinformation' and propaganda it makes me lol. Thanks caucus 99% you seem to be the last site I trust. Been getting my news from Substack writers I subscribe to. Well worth the 5.00 a pop to read decent writers.

Submitted by shaharazade on Sun, 03/13/2022 - 9:03pm