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.
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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)
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.
That may be true, but there is a mindset in many that they are some valiant knight.
Mojeek is proprietary, even if it becomes usable that doesn’t mean they will protect your privacy.
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.
What do you mean by “not evolving”?
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
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.
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.
This is real bad, DuckDuckGo has a shady history. Marketing wins once again :(
Still better than Google and I actually don’t know any good alternative to it.
Google doesn’t set a high bar. Searx is excellent.
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).
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 :)
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.
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?
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.
Love to see it
