Advertise on DuckDuckGo Search(help.duckduckgo.com)
help.duckduckgo.com
Advertise on DuckDuckGo Search
https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/company/advertise-on-duckduckgo-search/
251 comments
Thanks for this clarification dang. I was confused as the title in my RSS feed was much different than when I clicked through to the thread. Thought there was an issue with my rss aggregator for a second.
Aside: If you don't mind sharing; which url and reader are you using? Either my reader or url is so slow that I only saw the amended title in my feed. My url tries to grab only the most popular posts, so that may be the largest contributor, but I'd love to know if there's a faster way.
I use my own miniflux instance on a linode/VPS.
It tends to pick stuff up fairly quickly (in most cases).
https://miniflux.app/
It tends to pick stuff up fairly quickly (in most cases).
https://miniflux.app/
Thanks!
[deleted]
I've used DDG as my main search engine for about 4 years now. Until recently I found I was still having to go to Google for specific queries, mainly answering coding problems.
But in the last 6 months or so, Google's results have gotten so bad and DDG has continued to improve to the point where I no longer bother with !g.
When I do use Google I often find myself in the strange position of not actually being able to find what I'm looking for. It's a very unsettling feeling, and not one I've experienced in a long time, possibly not since the pre-Google days of Yahoo, Lycos and AltaVista. Amazing that Google have let their core value proposition of 'we are much better at finding what you're looking for than everyone else' rot quite so much.
But in the last 6 months or so, Google's results have gotten so bad and DDG has continued to improve to the point where I no longer bother with !g.
When I do use Google I often find myself in the strange position of not actually being able to find what I'm looking for. It's a very unsettling feeling, and not one I've experienced in a long time, possibly not since the pre-Google days of Yahoo, Lycos and AltaVista. Amazing that Google have let their core value proposition of 'we are much better at finding what you're looking for than everyone else' rot quite so much.
> But in the last 6 months or so, Google's results have gotten so bad and DDG has continued to improve to the point where I no longer bother with !g.
One place that still consistently gives me trouble is Stack Overflow. More often than not, I DDG my search, get two SO links, one irrelevant and the other bad, repeat the search with "!g" and get a half-dozen SO links, 3-4 of which are relevant, and 1-2 of which are good.
One place that still consistently gives me trouble is Stack Overflow. More often than not, I DDG my search, get two SO links, one irrelevant and the other bad, repeat the search with "!g" and get a half-dozen SO links, 3-4 of which are relevant, and 1-2 of which are good.
I wonder how much this can be explained by Google having a larger sample size of outgoing clicks to measure.
Could be that, but it feels like it weights search-term-proximity higher, and/or tracks more dimensions related to word-connectedness. Like, DDG is more likely to find me a page with all the words but with them scattered about, while Google will get more hits where the words are closer to one another, which is often better specifically for technical searches. Quoting rarely seems to help much, in either case.
[EDIT] Another poster mentioned searches for "X reddit" seeming to have a very-small cap on the number of results from Reddit that it'll display, and that might be part of my problem with SO results, too: maybe their algo prefers to avoid having too many results from one source, which is bad if you expect or want most results to be from one source. That would explain why Google sometimes finds me results with the exact language of my search, that were absent from DDG's listings—maybe it found them, but they got filtered out by a max-from-one-source preference.
[EDIT] Another poster mentioned searches for "X reddit" seeming to have a very-small cap on the number of results from Reddit that it'll display, and that might be part of my problem with SO results, too: maybe their algo prefers to avoid having too many results from one source, which is bad if you expect or want most results to be from one source. That would explain why Google sometimes finds me results with the exact language of my search, that were absent from DDG's listings—maybe it found them, but they got filtered out by a max-from-one-source preference.
And Google groups the SO results, which is very handy. I find myself adding g! after I've seen the limited SO results in DDG just knowing I'll see them grouped and I can click "More from SO"
Isn't DDG a Bing front-end? So did Bing improve recently?
No, we're not. See my comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35980451
But more to answer the OP, we've been making a lot of investments to improve our results (along with other things) -- high-level updates posted quarterly at https://duckduckgo.com/updates
But more to answer the OP, we've been making a lot of investments to improve our results (along with other things) -- high-level updates posted quarterly at https://duckduckgo.com/updates
If you are not a Bing frontend, do you think it would be please possible to unblock our Fortran webpage at fortran-lang.org?
See here for details:
https://fortran-lang.discourse.group/t/fortran-lang-no-longe...
Bing decided to remove it for some reason and DDG now also removes it from search results, presumably because it uses Bing underneath. For Google it's #1 page when you search "fortran".
See here for details:
https://fortran-lang.discourse.group/t/fortran-lang-no-longe...
Bing decided to remove it for some reason and DDG now also removes it from search results, presumably because it uses Bing underneath. For Google it's #1 page when you search "fortran".
This seems incredible to me. The raw results are obviously very close. I get the same results in the same order for searching 'uefi hack':
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=uefi+hack https://www.bing.com/search?q=uefi+hack
And the exclusion filters fail identically, on "uefi hack -bootkit": https://duckduckgo.com/?q=uefi+hack+-bootkit https://www.bing.com/search?q=uefi+hack+-bootkit
And partially succeed identically: 'uefi hack "absolute computrace"': https://duckduckgo.com/?q=uefi+hack+%22absolute+computrace%2... https://www.bing.com/search?q=uefi+hack+%22absolute+computra...
The only differences seem to be the suggestions, infoboxes and similar "value adds."
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=uefi+hack https://www.bing.com/search?q=uefi+hack
And the exclusion filters fail identically, on "uefi hack -bootkit": https://duckduckgo.com/?q=uefi+hack+-bootkit https://www.bing.com/search?q=uefi+hack+-bootkit
And partially succeed identically: 'uefi hack "absolute computrace"': https://duckduckgo.com/?q=uefi+hack+%22absolute+computrace%2... https://www.bing.com/search?q=uefi+hack+%22absolute+computra...
The only differences seem to be the suggestions, infoboxes and similar "value adds."
Reading between the lines it sounds like they are only using their own crawlers and other partners for things like widgets, while all their regular search results are still just Bing.
I was going to say that if the two search engines index and rank in a similar way, you would expect the search to be similar. But, for the `uefi hack` search, the results really are pretty close to identical, and when I do the same search on Kagi and Google, I get different results. I still don't know if it proves anything, but it's a little suspicious.
Please change the search results so that when I search "X + reddit" all of the search results are reddit, not just the first two.
Actually, now that you mention it, maybe that's my problem with SO searches I called out in another post. Maybe they've got some kind of same-source limit that becomes a major hindrance when you expect most results to be from a single source. I almost never get more than two SO links for a search on DDG, and very often neither is what I need—Google gives me a bunch more, and usually at least one is helpful. And it hadn't occurred to me, but I often end up tossing in a "!g" to reddit searches for a similar reason: not enough results are from Reddit, on DDG. (yes, I could probably do some kind of "site:reddit.com" or something, but "!g" is faster to type and gets the job done)
Have you been using the new button we put there to do that? (I realize you still have to press the button, but curious if you are liking it.)
what button? I must be blind...
This would be very useful because "x reddit" is probably my most common search
This would be very useful because "x reddit" is probably my most common search
Sorry, looks like this new feature is being re-tooled today, but should be up again within a few days!
I personally just use "X site:reddit.com". It's more verbose, but it does what you want.
EDIT: There's also a !bang that does the same thing: !ddgr
EDIT: There's also a !bang that does the same thing: !ddgr
what's wrong with site:reddit.com $search1 $search2 ?
Thank you, I'be been using ddg for last 3 years as default in my phone and pc and its been awesome, dont need google anymore.
I use ddg as my daily driver for about 3 years as well. I do find that searching things like exact error messages from programs are a bit better with !g, but almost all other searches are comparable or better.
Why did you remove the page that showed your historical traffic?
Check out Phind (https://www.phind.com/) for your coding searches. I’ve been happy with the handful of times I’ve used it. It’s nice to have options beyond Google.
The main thing I still use Google for is when I want to look up offline stuff near me. DDG uses a rough location, but even if I zoom in on their maps near me it's missing a whole lot of local stores etc.
For other searches I usually try DDG first and only fall back on !g when the results are bad, and often the Google results are also bad in those cases.
For other searches I usually try DDG first and only fall back on !g when the results are bad, and often the Google results are also bad in those cases.
I was just using Google maps yesterday to find a restaurant I knew was there. But it wasn't showing up on the map. Then I noticed it was omitting about half the restaurants in the area. The place I was looking for finally showed up when I zoomed almost all the way into it, and then clicked "search this area." I don't know why they are leaving out so many search results on maps these days.
Just a few weeks ago, I was on Capitol Hill in Seattle. Looking for a weed shop. The only ones it would show me were miles away, and I knew there were multiple near me within walking distance. It literally gave me 2 weed shops on the map across the entire city. None anywhere near by.
Their map search has started to really suck balls too.
Just a few weeks ago, I was on Capitol Hill in Seattle. Looking for a weed shop. The only ones it would show me were miles away, and I knew there were multiple near me within walking distance. It literally gave me 2 weed shops on the map across the entire city. None anywhere near by.
Their map search has started to really suck balls too.
Absolutely agree Google Maps is also awful. For transit I've completely ditched google for Citymapper (I'm in London). I think at this point Google is a reasonable fallback mostly when you expect to want someone you think would be paying Google.
Remember Goto [1]? The search engine that at the time was much maligned for letting people ... buy sponsored results and arguing it made their results better...
Goto became Overture...
Overture was bought by Yahoo.
But where Yahoo faded away, Google has largely become Goto 2.0.
There are narrow niches where that model works for users. When you're specifically searching for a shop for example, it's often ok.
But for everything else it's absolutely awful.
[1] https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/goto-forgotten-search-engine/
Remember Goto [1]? The search engine that at the time was much maligned for letting people ... buy sponsored results and arguing it made their results better...
Goto became Overture...
Overture was bought by Yahoo.
But where Yahoo faded away, Google has largely become Goto 2.0.
There are narrow niches where that model works for users. When you're specifically searching for a shop for example, it's often ok.
But for everything else it's absolutely awful.
[1] https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/goto-forgotten-search-engine/
We have precise user location that is still anonymous to us (by sending a nearish location based on the browser location). Have you tried turning that on? More info at https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/privacy/an...
Thanks. That did help a bit.
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For coding problems that DDG can't answer, I've been falling back on phind.com instead with reasonably good results.
I use chatgpt, the version with web browsing, instead of Google search some of the time and it does pretty well.
And takes 10x as long. It's good, but it's gotta get a whole lot faster (which I'm sure it will.) It would be really nice if it would in-line the source links it summarized piece of info from too.
I recently used it while traveling in rural NZ. When I had poor cell signal it was actually way faster because all of the web page loading was taking place in a datacenter, and I only needed to load a websocket response (with cited sources!).
The Bing version of ChatGPT does exactly this. It shows you the keywords on your prompts as well.
Actually so does ChatGPT with browsing.
Yeah ChatGPT is pretty good at solving coding problems - 'My apologies for the confusion, I misunderstood your requirements earlier. Let's try another approach...' is much better than 'Never mind I fixed it' on a four-year-old Stack Overflow post.
Is this available to "normal" people yet?
Normal people with $20/month to spend and maybe a few days of patience after asking for access.
Can you give some examples of queries Google is unable to find desired results for?
[deleted]
As I understand it, the problem with Google's search results is that they made SEO the primary determinative factor and didn't publish how their page ranking system worked.
However, it seems that businesses have figured out how the system works, and since there is big money in being the #1 result, people are constantly cramming every technique they can get into their sites to get to that #1 result location, even if it means that humans can no longer find what they are looking for.
Google needs to rework their search algo or they need to die.
However, it seems that businesses have figured out how the system works, and since there is big money in being the #1 result, people are constantly cramming every technique they can get into their sites to get to that #1 result location, even if it means that humans can no longer find what they are looking for.
Google needs to rework their search algo or they need to die.
I was able to convince my wife to switch for anything remotely "controversial", when, during the pandemic, we caught the relatively "real time" disappearance of several "against the grain" articles about covid [1]. By disappeared, I mean top results for the rough concept one day to not being able to find it, even with the exact title and text, the next.
I want a search engine, more than a curated guide.
[1] https://www.mobihealthnews.com/news/google-takes-covid-19-va...
edit: I think the core problem is that "misinformation" was applied too broadly, and sometimes incorrectly.
I want a search engine, more than a curated guide.
[1] https://www.mobihealthnews.com/news/google-takes-covid-19-va...
edit: I think the core problem is that "misinformation" was applied too broadly, and sometimes incorrectly.
x-posting from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35980374
(I'm the CEO & Founder of DuckDuckGo.)
It is simply not true that we have censored anything or made ourselves "the arbiters of truth." I realized I previously explained how our news rankings work very poorly on Twitter but I subsequently put out a clarification in this help page with a much clearer (and detailed) explanation of how our news rankings actually work: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/ne...
From that page: "When we apply our own ranking signals we do so in a strictly non-political manner, meaning we don’t evaluate or otherwise take into account any potential political bias or leanings of websites in our search result rankings."
(I'm the CEO & Founder of DuckDuckGo.)
It is simply not true that we have censored anything or made ourselves "the arbiters of truth." I realized I previously explained how our news rankings work very poorly on Twitter but I subsequently put out a clarification in this help page with a much clearer (and detailed) explanation of how our news rankings actually work: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/ne...
From that page: "When we apply our own ranking signals we do so in a strictly non-political manner, meaning we don’t evaluate or otherwise take into account any potential political bias or leanings of websites in our search result rankings."
> Many sites may occasionally do one or more of these things, but we take action very rarely, only in the most extreme cases. To identify these rare, extreme cases, we rely on multiple non-governmental and non-political organizations that specialize in objectively assessing journalistic standards. To take any ranking action using this factor, we must see at least three of these organizations independently assess a site as having extremely low journalistic standards and also see that none of these organizations have assessed the same site as having even somewhat robust journalistic standards.
This is far too vague. Last year Bazbaz told Recode that sites like RT and Sputnik were "extreme" cases (https://www.vox.com/recode/22981115/duckduckgo-free-speech-p...). While I tend to agree, which other sites are extreme cases? This isn't published. Despite the claim that none of this is done for political reasons, I find it hard to trust that these "non-governmental and non-political organizations" act and are chosen without any bias. Your method isn't published or explained. I really think these organisations should, at minimum, be listed. So too should all the sites DDG considers to be "extreme" cases. Then we could decide if we think DDG is being politically neutral.
My confidence in DDG is shaken, and I don't think I'm alone. We live in a world where so many major software brands we love have made overt moves towards censorship on political grounds. If DDG could prove they reject this authoritarianism I think it would serve as a major USP.
This is far too vague. Last year Bazbaz told Recode that sites like RT and Sputnik were "extreme" cases (https://www.vox.com/recode/22981115/duckduckgo-free-speech-p...). While I tend to agree, which other sites are extreme cases? This isn't published. Despite the claim that none of this is done for political reasons, I find it hard to trust that these "non-governmental and non-political organizations" act and are chosen without any bias. Your method isn't published or explained. I really think these organisations should, at minimum, be listed. So too should all the sites DDG considers to be "extreme" cases. Then we could decide if we think DDG is being politically neutral.
My confidence in DDG is shaken, and I don't think I'm alone. We live in a world where so many major software brands we love have made overt moves towards censorship on political grounds. If DDG could prove they reject this authoritarianism I think it would serve as a major USP.
It was crazy to see suggestions to wear masks or claims that covid was airborne getting "fact-checked" by the media only to reverse their position months later after WHO put out new statements. In particular, the phrase "no credible evidence" was wildly thrown around without mentioning whether there were any credible high-powered studies that had even attempted to find evidence of the phenomenon.
With hindsight we can see their mistakes but isn't following the expert line the best thing to do in an uncertain situation?
I mean there was a very sizable group that saw the mistakes in real time. Not necessarily the medical mistakes but the censorship mistakes. I’m not sure how anyone can know what to do in an uncertain situation like that but being unable to question authority isn’t good for most societies.
Sure as a general rule, but that doesn't render those experts free from criticism when they make mistakes. That low confidence scientific hypotheses were treated as high confidence scientific results is a valid critique of expert interaction with the general public, as it led to search engine censorship of objectively true information.
Following the best guess of those with the knowledge and experience is definitely the best best, but I find myself, like most people, questioning their motives. It's healthy to do so but also a sad commentary.
Unfortunately, we've learned that the experts are there mainly to reinforce whatever makes businesses money. That's who gets access to the airwaves and government press conferences. So if you think there's an alternative reality that might be unprofitable, you have to figure it out for yourself. The best COVID info is and was on Twitter since 2020. Just stunning amounts of primary lit being shared with expert opinion. You have to tune your bullshit sense though, and unfortunately that might require having a science background...
This is how many people realized that COVID is airborne and that only N95 and better respirators provide real protection. People now discuss air cleaning, the impacts of Long COVID, etc. The vaccines were seized upon by the political parties as a wedge issue to force the economy open. They help with medical system capacity, but do not block transmission and Long COVID.
You can find an ongoing science based pandemic response policy at https://pandemicjustice.icu
This is how many people realized that COVID is airborne and that only N95 and better respirators provide real protection. People now discuss air cleaning, the impacts of Long COVID, etc. The vaccines were seized upon by the political parties as a wedge issue to force the economy open. They help with medical system capacity, but do not block transmission and Long COVID.
You can find an ongoing science based pandemic response policy at https://pandemicjustice.icu
Many of these things were obvious at the time if you were paying attention.
Many people were also certain of obvious beliefs that turned out to be untrue.
When experts are wrong ignore them as noise. I trust the cdc as much as I trust Jim Cramer on investments. Both are technically experts
This isn't quite correct. They eventually knew that masks worked, but delayed to help doctors get them: https://www.businessinsider.com/fauci-mask-advice-was-becaus...
"delayed"? They lied.
Trusting in appointed experts instead of critical thinking is the worst thing to do in uncertain times.
Thank you. Because what you're talking about is blind trust in someone who has been put into a position of supposed authority. I can't bring myself to do it - I don't know these people so until I'm presented with credible evidence that makes sense to me, I believe a position of extreme skepticism is warranted.
Nobody knew if covid was airborne at the time, so the most correct answer was nobody knows. Some people got lucky by making things up on the spot and guessed it was airborne. At a certain point their confirmation bias and distrust of media broke their perception of the world and they became antivax etc, still no critical thinking taking place.
Many did not know and took extra steps like wearing a mask. What the experts did was say anyone wearing masks is racist against asian people.
Their was no vaccine at this point so no one against it yet.
The critical thinking can be found in the independent minds of those who made the choice to wear a mask. Listening to an expert didn't play out well.
Their was no vaccine at this point so no one against it yet.
The critical thinking can be found in the independent minds of those who made the choice to wear a mask. Listening to an expert didn't play out well.
Your genius is only validated by the experts eventually proving that wearing a mask was a good idea.
Do you have the quote from the WHO saying the use of masks was racist?
> the phrase "no credible evidence" was wildly thrown around
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence...
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence...
Uh... are you suggesting that at some not-insignificant point into the pandemic someone credible was arguing COVID was NOT airborne?
Actually, yes. For the first half of the pandemic, much of the medical community was unsure if COVID was airborne.
Examples:
- https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/cdc-reverses-agai...
- https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7
- https://archive.is/wPD2D (Tweet from WHO)
Note that "airborne" has a specific meaning in medical literature. Everyone agreed COVID could be transmitted in the air by respiratory droplets. But to be truly "airborne" means the virus could be aerosolized and float freely, without being attached to a larger droplet.
Both droplet-based and aerosolized/"airborne" spread allows viruses to be transmitted in the air. But a truly "airborne" virus can travel much farther.
It's the difference between needing 6 feet and 20 feet of distance to prevent spread.
(To put it bluntly, it's the difference between avoiding spittle, or avoiding the equivalent of cigarette smoke. Two very different threat models.)
Examples:
- https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/cdc-reverses-agai...
- https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7
- https://archive.is/wPD2D (Tweet from WHO)
Note that "airborne" has a specific meaning in medical literature. Everyone agreed COVID could be transmitted in the air by respiratory droplets. But to be truly "airborne" means the virus could be aerosolized and float freely, without being attached to a larger droplet.
Both droplet-based and aerosolized/"airborne" spread allows viruses to be transmitted in the air. But a truly "airborne" virus can travel much farther.
It's the difference between needing 6 feet and 20 feet of distance to prevent spread.
(To put it bluntly, it's the difference between avoiding spittle, or avoiding the equivalent of cigarette smoke. Two very different threat models.)
This is the excuse hospitals used to send nurses into covid units with no or insufficient PPE when they got caught flat-footed having no stored supply. (and it was BS)
Early in the pandemic there was a very aggressive "you don't need masks and please don't buy them because hospitals need them"
Ex: "US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams not only wants people to stop buying facemasks to prevent the novel coronavirus, but warns that you actually might increase your risk of infection if facemasks are not worn properly. [...] On Sunday, Adams posted on Twitter that people should stop buying masks. Rather, he tweeted that to keep yourself and those around you healthy, wash your hands often, avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth with unwashed hands and disinfect surfaces."
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/02/health/surgeon-general-corona...
Ex: "US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams not only wants people to stop buying facemasks to prevent the novel coronavirus, but warns that you actually might increase your risk of infection if facemasks are not worn properly. [...] On Sunday, Adams posted on Twitter that people should stop buying masks. Rather, he tweeted that to keep yourself and those around you healthy, wash your hands often, avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth with unwashed hands and disinfect surfaces."
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/02/health/surgeon-general-corona...
Yes, in the early days of the pandemic there was a lot of official resistance to acknowledging this, mostly because doing so would have meant accepting that COVID was effectively unstoppable.
The consensus and official line amongst epidemiologists (and the health organizations and media that relayed this official line to the public) was that COVID was only transmitted by droplet transmission i.e. droplets that fall to the ground within several feet (hence the 6 feet / 2 meters social distancing rule) and don't float around in the air. This was despite obvious evidence of outbreaks that could have only occurred via ventilation systems or the virus floating around in the air in an elevator.
Here's an article going over the issue and what convinced them to change their mind: https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwu...
It turned out they were wrong not just about COVID, but a whole host of other diseases, based on erroneous criteria about what sized droplets could float in the air. Ironically, doctors from centuries ago with their theories of "miasma" / bad air would have been closer to the truth.
Here's an article going over the issue and what convinced them to change their mind: https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwu...
It turned out they were wrong not just about COVID, but a whole host of other diseases, based on erroneous criteria about what sized droplets could float in the air. Ironically, doctors from centuries ago with their theories of "miasma" / bad air would have been closer to the truth.
You don't remember health authorities telling people masks don't work, and to wipe your groceries down? I do.
I remember Pelosi telling people to go dance around the streets of Chinatown and celebrate the new year or they're racist.
Yes I believe it was the WHO or US government (the only sources I was following at the time) that explicitly stated they "did not have evidence" covid was airborne.
The entirety of first half was "Nurses and Doctors need the mask, please don't buy them."
I don’t know your definition of credible.
But the Swedish institute of health (my translation) still has articles of it being spread by droplets.
https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/smittskydd-beredskap/utb...
The WHO has a lot of blame itself for misinformation. And, I personally believe, a lot of conspiracy theories definitely caught fire from their mistakes.
https://twitter.com/who/status/1243972193169616898?lang=en
Also, as you can see in the replies, a lot of people called BS at the time, but who were they to question the official WHO line? Yes, the WHO later came around and came up with 6 feet instead of 1 meter, but those who called BS on the WHO's statement may have saved their lives.
https://twitter.com/who/status/1243972193169616898?lang=en
Also, as you can see in the replies, a lot of people called BS at the time, but who were they to question the official WHO line? Yes, the WHO later came around and came up with 6 feet instead of 1 meter, but those who called BS on the WHO's statement may have saved their lives.
DDG may not be the best if you want to avoid political meddling. I switched to Brave after https://web.archive.org/web/20220831110219/https://twitter.c...
I get so tired of seeing yegg raked over the coals for this one.
A search engine by definition takes an editorial stance on things. They take in all of the internet and decide what to present to users. For a search engine to take no editorial position is to yield the floor to whoever can best game the system, and a propaganda machine like Russia's is absolutely capable of exploiting a search engine that doesn't proactively take measures to avoid being exploited.
That DDG wanted to avoid spreading Russian propaganda that argues against the very existence of the Ukrainian people isn't DDG meddling in politics, it's them steering clear of enabling genocide.
A search engine by definition takes an editorial stance on things. They take in all of the internet and decide what to present to users. For a search engine to take no editorial position is to yield the floor to whoever can best game the system, and a propaganda machine like Russia's is absolutely capable of exploiting a search engine that doesn't proactively take measures to avoid being exploited.
That DDG wanted to avoid spreading Russian propaganda that argues against the very existence of the Ukrainian people isn't DDG meddling in politics, it's them steering clear of enabling genocide.
it is not a search engine's job to filter their results based on acceptable politics. the only explicit filtering out they should be doing is filtering out manipulation, explicitly illegal content, spam, fraudulent content and stuff like that. aside from that the filtering algorithm should be largely neutral and unbiased. it's not a search engine's job to refuse to answer search results because the owner finds it distasteful.
How do you think search engines detect manipulation, down, fraudulent content, etc, if not by judging the content? Content is all a search engine sees.
An article about a Nigerian prince who needs money is likely to be a scam. An article about how Ukraine is really just a rebellious Russian province is likely to be state-sponsored propaganda.
An article about a Nigerian prince who needs money is likely to be a scam. An article about how Ukraine is really just a rebellious Russian province is likely to be state-sponsored propaganda.
>manipulation
This seems to be the case being argued here
>explicitly illegal content
Illegal according to who?
>fraudulent content
Fraudulent according to who?
These things you name are an editorial decision and are not unbiased
This seems to be the case being argued here
>explicitly illegal content
Illegal according to who?
>fraudulent content
Fraudulent according to who?
These things you name are an editorial decision and are not unbiased
Does bad-faith propaganda not qualify as fraudulent content?
yes they should obviously be filtering out or downranking manipulated and fraudulent propaganda content. these policies would have existed before the invasion happened so there would be no reason to say that you are going to be downranking russian information unless you are planning on adding additional filtering and manipulation to the ranking on top of what you would normally do to content. they should be filtering all content neutrally and equally, not filtering russian content more because the owner wants to inject politics into their algorithm.
So no more NYT?
> A search engine by definition takes an editorial stance on things.
That editorial stance should be "show the user what they are looking for and want to see". The customer is always right, otherwise the real customer is someone else.
> For a search engine to take no editorial position is to yield the floor to whoever can best game the system
I am not against search engines having heuristics against state-sponsored propaganda, but there is no need for those heuristics to single out a particular state. Russian state-sponsored content shouldn't be treated differently than American, Chinese, Ukrainian, or any other state's propaganda.
That editorial stance should be "show the user what they are looking for and want to see". The customer is always right, otherwise the real customer is someone else.
> For a search engine to take no editorial position is to yield the floor to whoever can best game the system
I am not against search engines having heuristics against state-sponsored propaganda, but there is no need for those heuristics to single out a particular state. Russian state-sponsored content shouldn't be treated differently than American, Chinese, Ukrainian, or any other state's propaganda.
> The customer is always right, otherwise the real customer is someone else.
Sometimes a company takes an ethical stance for the sake of being ethical. Shocking, I know, but it occasionally happens.
Sometimes a company takes an ethical stance for the sake of being ethical. Shocking, I know, but it occasionally happens.
They could simply add a “propaganda” tag and give an option to filter out the search results marked with that tag. If anything I can specifically search for Russian propaganda, for whatever reason.
Yes, you can, and downranking propaganda wouldn't stop it from turning up if you go looking.
But when my naive sister-in-law hears something about how Ukraine isn't a real country, I don't want the first page of results for "history of Ukraine" to turn up Russian propaganda.
I live in a red state, and there are astonishing numbers of people here who already buy Putin's story. I'm fully behind DDG deciding they didn't want to play a role in spreading his message even further.
But when my naive sister-in-law hears something about how Ukraine isn't a real country, I don't want the first page of results for "history of Ukraine" to turn up Russian propaganda.
I live in a red state, and there are astonishing numbers of people here who already buy Putin's story. I'm fully behind DDG deciding they didn't want to play a role in spreading his message even further.
> wouldn't stop it from turning up if you go looking.
Yeah, same goes for your naïve sister-in-law. So why don’t they add the “propaganda” tag, so that your relatives could clearly see it and I could search for it (for whatever reason)? They could even add some links to some better sources, as an option. And use some disclaimer when you click on these results, like “Hey, this is a propaganda resource, be careful. Here’s the links where you can read up on the topic if you need unbiased information”. That would probably have at least some educational value, unlike removing and/or downranking the results.
Yeah, same goes for your naïve sister-in-law. So why don’t they add the “propaganda” tag, so that your relatives could clearly see it and I could search for it (for whatever reason)? They could even add some links to some better sources, as an option. And use some disclaimer when you click on these results, like “Hey, this is a propaganda resource, be careful. Here’s the links where you can read up on the topic if you need unbiased information”. That would probably have at least some educational value, unlike removing and/or downranking the results.
I'm not sure I would consider downplaying misinformation websites as "political meddling". In fact, I think I like DDG more for it.
Do we really need a search engine that censors incorrectly when we really need facts?
Similarly, some people can't handle the truth, but that is not the search engine's job to correct, is it?
Yeah. Like downranking Iraqi websites in a hypothetical 2003 when they said "We dont have WMDs". So much better.
Same here. I can't debate what the "other side" is thinking if I don't know what it is.
If they want to add a side link to more authoritative sources (like what Spotify does for podcasts discussing Covid), then fine, but don't censor me if I'm actively looking for "disinformation."
If they want to add a side link to more authoritative sources (like what Spotify does for podcasts discussing Covid), then fine, but don't censor me if I'm actively looking for "disinformation."
Oh, DuckDuckGo just does that sometimes. Pretty often I'll pick a result then back out to the search results, and the one I had in mind to click next just isn't there anymore. However annoying, I wouldn't immediately jump to a political motivation.
Do you put "everything" in "quotations" all the "time"?
I used it to convey some external concept, rather than my own thoughts.
"controversial": Others called it controversial. I did/would not.
"against the grain": Others thought that there was a grain. I did/would not.
"real time": Not literal.
Maybe this is a regional/age thing?
edit: actually, asking ChatGPT why they're in quotes gives the similar answers as mine, so I guess it's not too odd. New session prompt with 4.0: "Why are some of these words in quotes?"
Fluff removed, same order as my answers:
> ... In this case, "controversial" could imply that the speaker doesn't personally find the topics controversial, but acknowledges that others may perceive them as such.
> ... indicating that it's being used in its typical idiomatic sense.
> ... Here, the quotation marks might be used to stress that the term isn't being used in its strictest sense.
"controversial": Others called it controversial. I did/would not.
"against the grain": Others thought that there was a grain. I did/would not.
"real time": Not literal.
Maybe this is a regional/age thing?
edit: actually, asking ChatGPT why they're in quotes gives the similar answers as mine, so I guess it's not too odd. New session prompt with 4.0: "Why are some of these words in quotes?"
Fluff removed, same order as my answers:
> ... In this case, "controversial" could imply that the speaker doesn't personally find the topics controversial, but acknowledges that others may perceive them as such.
> ... indicating that it's being used in its typical idiomatic sense.
> ... Here, the quotation marks might be used to stress that the term isn't being used in its strictest sense.
[deleted]
VWWHFSfQ(12)
The sole benefit of DDG is their claim that they don't track.
One problem with this narrow focus is that many people mistakenly carry this statement over to an assumption that DDG doesn't censor their search results. I suspect that DDG both knows and counts on this as an aspect of an undeserved reputation.
DDG's search results aren't acceptable for anything even mildly controversial. I'll use them for image searches, but there are better search engines for internet access and that give equivalent or better privacy.
Also in my opinion, DDG's penchant for censorship harms the credibility of their assertion that they do not track.
One problem with this narrow focus is that many people mistakenly carry this statement over to an assumption that DDG doesn't censor their search results. I suspect that DDG both knows and counts on this as an aspect of an undeserved reputation.
DDG's search results aren't acceptable for anything even mildly controversial. I'll use them for image searches, but there are better search engines for internet access and that give equivalent or better privacy.
Also in my opinion, DDG's penchant for censorship harms the credibility of their assertion that they do not track.
(I'm the CEO & Founder of DuckDuckGo.)
It is simply not true that we have censored anything or made ourselves "the arbiters of truth." I realized I previously explained how our news rankings work very poorly on Twitter but I subsequently put out a clarification in this help page with a much clearer (and detailed) explanation of how our news rankings actually work: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/ne...
From that page: "When we apply our own ranking signals we do so in a strictly non-political manner, meaning we don’t evaluate or otherwise take into account any potential political bias or leanings of websites in our search result rankings."
It is simply not true that we have censored anything or made ourselves "the arbiters of truth." I realized I previously explained how our news rankings work very poorly on Twitter but I subsequently put out a clarification in this help page with a much clearer (and detailed) explanation of how our news rankings actually work: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/ne...
From that page: "When we apply our own ranking signals we do so in a strictly non-political manner, meaning we don’t evaluate or otherwise take into account any potential political bias or leanings of websites in our search result rankings."
> It is simply not true that we have censored anything or made ourselves "the arbiters of truth."
> When we apply our own ranking signals we do so in a strictly non-political manner, meaning we don’t evaluate or otherwise take into account any potential political bias or leanings of websites in our search result rankings.
Yeah? What about that?
https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivacyGuides/comments/tb6cj8/duckd...
> When we apply our own ranking signals we do so in a strictly non-political manner, meaning we don’t evaluate or otherwise take into account any potential political bias or leanings of websites in our search result rankings.
Yeah? What about that?
https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivacyGuides/comments/tb6cj8/duckd...
A huge benefit of DDG for me is that I can use it in a private browser window and it just works without stupid popups getting in the way. In contrast Google is far less useable for a quick search. This alone is why I have DDG as default and I only drop back to Google when I'm struggling to find what I want. Most of the time DDG is fine for me.
Recently so many unrelated sites pop up a tiny Google login window somewhere on the page, obstructing what I want to see, like as if Google was super desperate for more tracking and engagement. Like why would I like to login to Google while viewing a forum about skyscrapers if I just wanted to read about the progress of some construction? Passive-aggressive at its core.
That's the sites itself enabling that, most likely their auth provider has SSO with groogle
https://developers.google.com/identity/gsi/web/guides/offeri...
Also, you can kinda-disable this per browser
https://myaccount.google.com/security -> "Signing in to other sites"
https://developers.google.com/identity/gsi/web/guides/offeri...
Also, you can kinda-disable this per browser
https://myaccount.google.com/security -> "Signing in to other sites"
Note that we added support to remove those Google login pop-ups on third-party sites within our apps/extensions. See https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/privacy/we... for details and https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/privacy/we... for the full list of other protections.
Add the following line to your uBlock Origin filters to block these:
accounts.google.com$domain=~google.*|~youtube.com|~gmail.comAnother benefit is that it keeps getting increasingly better compared to Google – not because DDG is doing anything particularly innovative, but because Google search keeps getting worse and worse.
> DDG's penchant for censorship harms the credibility of their assertion that they do not track.
DDG is limited to Bing now that Yandex was cancelled. All the censorship comes from Microsoft not DDG.
DDG is limited to Bing now that Yandex was cancelled. All the censorship comes from Microsoft not DDG.
The reason I started using DDG a decade ago is because they "censor" their search results
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2181585
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2181585
what are some ther services that are less restricting? i use searx
For anyone curious, the best search market share data is from Cloudflare. Here is the latest report: https://radar.cloudflare.com/reports/searchengines-2023-q1. And here is our reasoning of why it is the best: https://spreadprivacy.com/search-engine-market-share-data-tw...
first link’s page is broken on mobile safari.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/511358/market-share-mobi...
Better link - DDG is in #2 with a behemoth 1.8% market share, closely followed by yahoo and and bing at 1.6% and 1.3%.
Better link - DDG is in #2 with a behemoth 1.8% market share, closely followed by yahoo and and bing at 1.6% and 1.3%.
They're actually reasonably good. I often find that they do weird things like linking to non-US versions of websites instead of a US version. So I end up on the British or Dutch version of a website, with prices quoted in GBP or EUR.
I find myself using the "!g" shortcut (which takes me to Google) more often than I'd have liked to.
Thankfully, Apple offers this as one of their search engine options (despite being paid "tres comas" every year from Google to be the default search engine).
I find myself using the "!g" shortcut (which takes me to Google) more often than I'd have liked to.
Thankfully, Apple offers this as one of their search engine options (despite being paid "tres comas" every year from Google to be the default search engine).
I cant give up DDG cause those shortcuts are just too damn good. !m and !ud
Annoyingly, !g is right next to !h on most keyboards, and I often find myself searching through Haskell documentation instead of searching Google.
ddg has served my search needs just fine for years now, but I still go to google for image search and maps.
One thing has really bothered me with the state of the web in general though, which has directly affected the quality of results for all search engines:
Tons of communications have moved into undiscoverable forms/walled gardens. What used to happen in public, crawled, textual mailing list discussions, particularly in the FOSS/IT space, is now happening in Discord/Slack/video meetings. Even upstream systemd devs have been using Telegram of all things for discussing development topics as opposed to systemd-devel. It's an absolute disaster.
I sorely miss the days of https://google.com/linux where I'd find pages and pages of relevant, high-quality mailing list discussions for everything I searched for.
One thing has really bothered me with the state of the web in general though, which has directly affected the quality of results for all search engines:
Tons of communications have moved into undiscoverable forms/walled gardens. What used to happen in public, crawled, textual mailing list discussions, particularly in the FOSS/IT space, is now happening in Discord/Slack/video meetings. Even upstream systemd devs have been using Telegram of all things for discussing development topics as opposed to systemd-devel. It's an absolute disaster.
I sorely miss the days of https://google.com/linux where I'd find pages and pages of relevant, high-quality mailing list discussions for everything I searched for.
Note that you can turn off advertisements in DDG. Not sure how long that business model will continue to last, but I would _happily_ pay money to not see ads and blog spam on my serps. You need to trust your search engine before you can trust just about anything else you find on the internet, and I truly feel like Google is no longer a trustworthy company.
Take a look at Kagi Search [1] where you pay with money instead of your data. Have been using it for over a year now and must say that the search engine is surprisingly good. The only time I ever use !g bangs is when I want live updates of sports events or so.
[1] https://kagi.com/
[1] https://kagi.com/
The bugs around Exact match and text/content (not site!) exclusion operators not working at all are what keeps me from using it as an actual substitute for Google or Bing. I hope that getting that stuff fixed is a high priority.
DDG is the default in a lot of privacy-oriented browsers and forks, but it gives users a really bad first impression when their first search just doesn't work.
But I suppose that the average mobile search engine user these days doesn't use most search modifiers or operators so maybe they aren't the things to prioritize.
DDG is the default in a lot of privacy-oriented browsers and forks, but it gives users a really bad first impression when their first search just doesn't work.
But I suppose that the average mobile search engine user these days doesn't use most search modifiers or operators so maybe they aren't the things to prioritize.
The bugs around Exact match and exclusion operators not working at all are what keeps me from using it as an actual substitute for Google or Bing.
Duck used to be great for only searching for what you asked for. But in the last few months, it's fallen into the Google trap of showing me things it thinks I want, and not what I asked for. And no method of punctuation seems to get around that.
At this point, the only reason I still use Duck is because the other option is Google.
Duck used to be great for only searching for what you asked for. But in the last few months, it's fallen into the Google trap of showing me things it thinks I want, and not what I asked for. And no method of punctuation seems to get around that.
At this point, the only reason I still use Duck is because the other option is Google.
I think in this case, the functionality outright broke - that is, this is a bug - due to how their indexing works. The CEO (HN user yegg) talked about it a bit in another post - they modified their READMEs to remove mention of some operators because they're malfunctioning.
So they still get the benefit of the doubt (as you say, the other choices are just Google) but the real test will be in how they communicate about this going forward and whether they fix it.
So they still get the benefit of the doubt (as you say, the other choices are just Google) but the real test will be in how they communicate about this going forward and whether they fix it.
We are working on it. We also updated the README again to reflect that.
Oh, I hadn't looked at the page since then. That is great to hear. Thank you!
I strongly second this. Respecting exact terms was the main factor that got me to switch from Google search. The functionality has been declining for a while now and seems particularly bad lately.
Ah, I've hit this several times in the past few years, with quotes and minus not working as expected, I wasn't aware that was a bug, thanks for pointing this out.
I love DDG and use it daily on all my devices, but I would take such marketing statement with some scepticism:
Previously, DDG used to have a page [0] with usage stats, but it was deactivated somewhere around this time last year. Instead of a very clear data that was clearly showing the state of things (which had a rather concerning slowing of growth), we now have vague statents about #2 position in mobile market in the US.
[0]: https://duckduckgo.com/traffic
Previously, DDG used to have a page [0] with usage stats, but it was deactivated somewhere around this time last year. Instead of a very clear data that was clearly showing the state of things (which had a rather concerning slowing of growth), we now have vague statents about #2 position in mobile market in the US.
[0]: https://duckduckgo.com/traffic
The last copy I can find of it: https://web.archive.org/web/20221118045948/https://duckduckg...
Looks like number of searches was down from the previous year.
Looks like number of searches was down from the previous year.
Might as well ask here: Why does DDG change my search results when I use the Back button, and how can I get it to stop.
When I use DDG if I do a search, click on a link to open it in the same tab, then click back to the search results I notice the results are in a different order. This drives me crazy.
When I use DDG if I do a search, click on a link to open it in the same tab, then click back to the search results I notice the results are in a different order. This drives me crazy.
is there even a way to ignore words from a search any more on DDG? using "-" in front of a word doesnt prevent the word from showing up in results.
I originally switched just for the hell of it. But nowadays I get annoyed when I use Google since it doesn't have keyboard/arrow key shortcuts. ⬇, ⬇, Ctrl+Enter (open in new tab) or "/" to edit the search box is a great DDG feature.
Duck Duck Go and Bing have both indexed my blog but Google has yet to. I've been increasingly disappointed with Google's search results the past couple of years. Might have to give DDG a try!
Duckduckgo search results are spotty at best. I can live with the mild censorship (yes yes I know, they censor the side that you don't like so it's totally not censorship and just blocking evil propaganda, they're the good guys etc etc).
Their web browsers are great however and I've been using them on android for years and on desktop for months! I wish I could use them with a better search engine, though (Typing !g in all queries is now a reflex for me).
Their web browsers are great however and I've been using them on android for years and on desktop for months! I wish I could use them with a better search engine, though (Typing !g in all queries is now a reflex for me).
No idea about general numbers (our no-js server side logging has FF barely behind chrome) , but while 2 orders of magnitude behind Google, DDG is actually 2nd for us as well (German photography site).
I was pretty happy with DDG for years (switched to Kagi last year), and I think they are great for general usage (I often read about issues with local search, their search for Germany (!ddgde) was always topnotch).
I was pretty happy with DDG for years (switched to Kagi last year), and I think they are great for general usage (I often read about issues with local search, their search for Germany (!ddgde) was always topnotch).
I stopped using DDG when they admitted they are censoring political content (https://www.vox.com/recode/22981115/duckduckgo-free-speech-p...). I'm really tired of companies telling me what I may and may not view.
DDG honestly have better results for me. Google usually have worse results when i cannot find what i want on DDG and use the !g command.
DDG is my default search engine for a year, and I am not being idealistic, I feel that I am getting better more interesting results.
To make it short (my humble conclusion): Google is using too much UI space to fill with ads and too many websites hacked the SEO algorithm, creating bad quality information pages getting in the top results.
To make it short (my humble conclusion): Google is using too much UI space to fill with ads and too many websites hacked the SEO algorithm, creating bad quality information pages getting in the top results.
I was using DDG exclusively for over a year. It gives way better results than Google. Recently I switched to Kagi, for its ability to prioritize my favorite sites, and block others. I'm paying $5 a month for it, and I've honestly not been this confident in the search results I'm getting for a long long time.
Same. Kagi has better results than Google in general. Even programming ones. I don't mind paying for better
Love that it can do groupings, especially when you're searching for something that will also turn up seo garbage, like products for your home. So you can see the cluster of "review sites" and then actual product companies
Love that it can do groupings, especially when you're searching for something that will also turn up seo garbage, like products for your home. So you can see the cluster of "review sites" and then actual product companies
I use the widget and it's freeing to do silly searches without having them tied to my Google account.
The problem is that you can't remove the Google equivalent on a Pixel phone, so it's really wasted screen space and feel like anti-competitive. Until someone in the EU commission notices it and regulates it I guess...
The problem is that you can't remove the Google equivalent on a Pixel phone, so it's really wasted screen space and feel like anti-competitive. Until someone in the EU commission notices it and regulates it I guess...
You can remove the Google search bar from a Pixel phone or any other Android phone by replacing the launcher.
I recommend Neo Launcher, which is free and open source: https://github.com/NeoApplications/Neo-Launcher
I recommend Neo Launcher, which is free and open source: https://github.com/NeoApplications/Neo-Launcher
On the other side of this... I've recently been working on a new project that is more or less utilizing a 'long-tail first' SEO strategy (ugh, I know) and I've seen very surprising numbers from DDG... responsible for effectively 1/3 of my search referred traffic (google representing 50%).
Been mostly using DDg for the last 3 years, but in the last two months the experience has really gone down. First off the results take upwards to 6 second to load and the quality seems to have been hit as well.
I have been wondering if thisnis due to some changes with Bing (which is the underlying engine as far as I know).
I have been wondering if thisnis due to some changes with Bing (which is the underlying engine as far as I know).
I've personally switched to a selfhosted instance of SearX-ng and I can't be happier. Yes, it still queries other engines, but that's fine. I'd rather "average" it out than trust any single search provider, DDG included.
I switch to DDG from brave when I want to do an image search. Brave forwards image searches to either Google or Bing based on your choice. Even if DDG is getting their images from those sources, I still prefer the DDG image search UI.
[deleted]
From that page: "To advertise on DuckDuckGo, visit Microsoft Advertising." Is DDG the #2 position or Microsoft? Kind of a notable difference there... if DDG is just an arm of Microsoft it rings a different tune.
DDG grew up being a whitelabeled version of Bing. As far as I understand, DDG has since started implementing more of their own search patterns and results, but has not completely removed themselves from Bing
We actually always had a bunch of our own stuff, and still do, as well as work with other partners. For example, the number one module on mobile is local, and we don't get any local stuff from Bing at all. Similarly, the number one module desktop is knowledge graph, and we don't get that from Bing at all either.
Hi Gabriel, would you be potentially available to write a technical blog post about how DDG plugins are federated for The Informer, the blog of the British Computing Society's Information Retrieval specialist group (BCS IRSG)? (Is Kamyl Bazbaz the best person to discuss such requests, or how can you be reached? Thanks!)
Yes, he is the best person to discuss such requests.
Sorry to piggyback on this. I applied for a Director role at DDG about a month ago. Had the autoreply which said DDG would follow up whether it was a yes, let's talk! or a nope, sorry. But nothing at all which was a bit disappointing. The role has been taken down for a few weeks now. I wasn't looking for a new position at all but the description strongly appealed and it was DDG, a company I'd admired for years (and fully remote!).
Sorry to hear that. Our process is to follow-up with everyone, so I'm not sure what happened. If you want to DM me on Twitter I can look into it.
All regular search results are still just Bing. Their own crawlers are only used for widgets and instant answers.
They used to share traffic data at duckduckgo.com/traffic.
The website is unavailable anymore (wonder why?), but before switching to Brave search (way better than DDG imo) it was noticable, that the number of queries had stalled.
The website is unavailable anymore (wonder why?), but before switching to Brave search (way better than DDG imo) it was noticable, that the number of queries had stalled.
I am not really surpsrised.
If you don't care about privacy, you use Google because it is the best.
If you care about privacy, you use DDG because it is the best that offers improved privacy.
If you don't care about privacy, you use Google because it is the best.
If you care about privacy, you use DDG because it is the best that offers improved privacy.
These companies are solely built around the concept of trust. Your average person just doesn't care that Google is tracking them, and will therefore not take the obvious productivity hit by using a service with lower quality results (anything not Google).
I feel like DuckDuckGo has had enough controversy in the trust department that it's entirely worthless as a company and as a service. Anything I do need to actually search these days, I just use Google, as I don't care about Google knowing I needed help with a Golang compiler error. It's not a worthwhile tradeoff for me.
I feel like DuckDuckGo has had enough controversy in the trust department that it's entirely worthless as a company and as a service. Anything I do need to actually search these days, I just use Google, as I don't care about Google knowing I needed help with a Golang compiler error. It's not a worthwhile tradeoff for me.
> Anything I do need to actually search these days, I just use Google, as I don't care about Google knowing I needed help with a Golang compiler error. It's not a worthwhile tradeoff for me.
The problem is when you need to research or learn about something that is verboten.
Even something as simple as "x worker strike" or "x protest" won't necessarily break any laws but will be of interest to certain automations, agencies and systems that may then endeavor to make your life hard without necessarily stepping over the legal line.
Not for being an undesirable to a ruling authority, but for looking up information related to them. And of course, this will evolve in more dystopic ways when it is all inevitably factored in to (financial|social) credit scores, insurance, access to services, etc. in the future. Either directly or laundered through AI or other systems.
That is less an argument in favor of DDG and more of a statement of why search engine privacy will become more and more important in the mid term.
The problem is when you need to research or learn about something that is verboten.
Even something as simple as "x worker strike" or "x protest" won't necessarily break any laws but will be of interest to certain automations, agencies and systems that may then endeavor to make your life hard without necessarily stepping over the legal line.
Not for being an undesirable to a ruling authority, but for looking up information related to them. And of course, this will evolve in more dystopic ways when it is all inevitably factored in to (financial|social) credit scores, insurance, access to services, etc. in the future. Either directly or laundered through AI or other systems.
That is less an argument in favor of DDG and more of a statement of why search engine privacy will become more and more important in the mid term.
btw it is literally just bing. The only reason they can afford it is bing gives them free API access. Would be impossible for DDG to afford the usual API fees without something like a $5/month subscription for normal usage. If they didn't give it away for free to DDG, bing itself would lose double digit usage numbers, since they report DDG usage as their own usage. Source: worked for a competitor.
I use DDG for almost everything except local results. It works but I would feel better if they reduced their dependency on Bing.
I hope DuckDuckGo has something similar to Search Console or Webmaster Tools.
I use ddg solely to have bang search like in chrome without using chrome
Remember, DDG is still an advertising company.
and without IPv6 support
What impact does that have?
not sure, but the impact is all on IPv4 apparently
What does that mean?
can’t believe they’d censor ipv6 like that smh
I loved DDG before it started engaging in heavy censorship.
I mean, I get it, it's a public-facing service, some guard-rails should be present. But political censorship on a search-engine that poses itself as a "good guy" privacy focused search engine? On a search engine that is used by default in a Tor browser? That is just an unacceptable abuse and misrepresentation.
And judging by their press releases, DDG seems to be quite proud of themselves fighting "misinformation". I mean, even if it came from the good intentions, it had essentially broken the core search functionality to the point it where works far worse than google or any other search engine. And if that's the case, what is even the point?
If you are researching some political topic, don't ever use DDG, they will 1984 your search results and act like they did good. It's like their target userbase aren't even educated engineers, but silly gullible grans who need curated experience.
P.S. If you search "duckduckgo censorship" in different search engines, DDG's first result labels anyone complaining as "far right", ironic. Seems like every other search engine is "far right" these days, judging by sheer brokennes of DDG compared to others.
I mean, I get it, it's a public-facing service, some guard-rails should be present. But political censorship on a search-engine that poses itself as a "good guy" privacy focused search engine? On a search engine that is used by default in a Tor browser? That is just an unacceptable abuse and misrepresentation.
And judging by their press releases, DDG seems to be quite proud of themselves fighting "misinformation". I mean, even if it came from the good intentions, it had essentially broken the core search functionality to the point it where works far worse than google or any other search engine. And if that's the case, what is even the point?
If you are researching some political topic, don't ever use DDG, they will 1984 your search results and act like they did good. It's like their target userbase aren't even educated engineers, but silly gullible grans who need curated experience.
P.S. If you search "duckduckgo censorship" in different search engines, DDG's first result labels anyone complaining as "far right", ironic. Seems like every other search engine is "far right" these days, judging by sheer brokennes of DDG compared to others.
The link is broken
one of the contributing factors is because iOS offers native search support for DDG and they don't any other providers (eg. Brave)
Google's search results have become pure garbage by now, so anything not-Google should be #1.
[deleted]
(Submitted title was "DuckDuckGo owns the #2 position in mobile market share in the US".)
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