this post was submitted on 23 May 2024
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So ddg is down, so I visit Google. It's been some years.

I just can't believe how poor it's results are, and how it's trying to suggest things it think I might also want (and failing miserably).

I just assumed ddg would be the lesser, but I use it for privacy. Turns out I'm wrong.

How long has Google been this bad?

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[–] [email protected] 167 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (68 children)

I just assumed ddg would be the lesser, but I use it for privacy. Turns out I'm wrong.

If you're using DDG for privacy, then indeed you are wrong.

It may be "less invasive" than google, but it's neither anonymous, nor private.

Here's a bunch more reasons from techrights.org, a site dedicated to digital freedom and exposing corruption.

Direct privacy abuse:

DDG was caught violating its own privacy policy by issuing tracker cookies.

DDG’s app sends every URL you visit to DDG servers. (reaction).

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)

DDG is accused of fingerprinting users’ browsers.

When clicking an ad on the DDG results page, all data available in your session is sent to the advertiser, which is why the Epic browser project refuses to set DDG as the default browser.

DDG blacklisted Framabee, a search engine for the highly respected framasoft.org consortium."

CloudFlare:

DDG promotes one of the largest privacy abusing tech giants and adversary to the Tor community: CloudFlare Inc. DDG results give high rankings to CloudFlare sites, which consequently compromises privacy, net neutrality, and anonymity.

Full article: http://techrights.org/2020/07/02/ddg-privacy-abuser-in-disguise/

ETA: The bulk of the text in my reply was lifted from a reddit comment. I tried to format my comment to reflect that it's a "quote", alas I've failed. Hence this.

Also, I don't have a card in this game. I understand anonymity and privacy - I dislike intentional deception.

[–] [email protected] 57 points 6 months ago (35 children)
[–] MrCamel999 20 points 6 months ago (3 children)

I'm currently using searx.be with good results

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Searx improved a lot since I last used it. Was really slow before

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

Its searxng now (the original searx is dead) and is quite good. Performance differs. I've seen very slow instances, but when I started hosting my own semi-private instance, I saw how fast it can be, if the server isn't a potato.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

How can I set it as default browser on Android Brave?

Not able to do it

[–] MrCamel999 0 points 6 months ago

Sorry, but I don't know how to do that. I use Cromite, not Brave.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Do you ever have moments where you type something to search into the address bar and you just get taken to the instance home page? That happens to me every now and then and I'm wondering if it's the instance I'm using

[–] MrCamel999 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I have not experienced this, no. Unsure as to what that could be, but if another instance doesn't cause that issue that would be a good sign that it is the current instance you're on.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

I've switched back to searx.be and I haven't faced the issue yet. Must've been the instance then. Strange

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