Duck Duck Go Went Woke - Time For A Browser Change (1 Viewer)

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Linda

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Hat Tip - Maryann

First bit of news this morning comes from the CEO and Founder of Duck Duck Go (browser), Gabriel Weinberg. I'll let his tweet speak for itself.


Yet, his woke response might have been motivated by this beauty from the EU.

Screen Shot 2022-03-10 at 10.47.59 AM.png



So onward we go - I used the duck to search for "best private search engines" - lol. A few are based in Germany, but with this statement from the EU, I figure they are on their way to being toast. So, that narrows the field of possibilities. One of the minuses of search engines based in the US was the likelihood of data being scraped by the government via the Patriot Act and others. Looks like the EU has upped the game and poses similar threats.

The attached article does a good job of explaining the nuts and bolts of the search engine process.

Metasearch vs search: Most private search engines are technically metasearch engines. While a search engine crawls the internet and gathers its own results, a metasearch engine pulls its search results from search engines, such as Google, Bing, and Yandex.
In this review, the one exception is Mojeek, which is a true crawler-based search engine with its own index (discussed below). There are also a few search engines that fall in the middle by deploying their own crawler, but also pulling results from other search engines.

Here is one based in the UK.

Unlike some of the other private (meta)search engines, Mojeek is true search engine with its own crawler. According to the Mojeek blog, the service surpassed 4 billion pages indexed in June 2021. If you want complete search independence from the corporate data monoliths of Google and Bing, Mojeek offers an interesting proposition.
In terms of privacy, Mojeek does pretty well. It claims to be the “first ever no tracking/privacy orientated search engine” from when it first started. The Mojeek privacy policy details how user data is generally protected:
Mojeek doesn’t implement any kind of specific user tracking, whether that be at the time of visit or subsequently via standard logs, which Mojeek does keep. These logs contain the time of visit, page requested, possibly referral data, and located in a separate log browser information. IP addresses are not recorded, instead the IP address is replaced with a simple two letter code indicating the visitors country of origin. By doing this, Mojeek removes any possibility of tracking or identifying any particular user.
The BRAVE browser has some fans, and it is based in the US.

Although it is still in beta, Brave Search looks quite promising. It is brought to you by the makers of Brave, which is a secure browser with built-in privacy that runs on open-source Chromium. Unlike most of the other search engines in this guide, Brave is using its own search index, rather than relying on Bing or Google.
Here is a brief overview of the Brave Search project from their website:
Brave Search is the world’s most complete, independent, private search engine. By integrating Brave Search beta into its browser, Brave offers the first all-in-one browser / search alternative to the big tech platforms. Brave Search beta is also available in other browsers, at search.brave.com.
Given that Brave Search is relatively new, there is not a lot of information regarding the company’s policies and practices. However, there is this FAQ page that answers some questions. We are excited to see this project develop as it appears to be a strong alternative from a well-regarded organization. We’ll keep an eye on it as things progress.

Start Page once was a contender, but in 2019, majority interests were acquired by two companies making profits from data, so big flag on that one now.


I looked through a few other articles, and they had pretty much the same list of possibilities.

Another aspect of personal data security is the use of a VPN, but that is another thread.

Do you all have other search engines to add that are not based in the EU and are not the Duck??

Does anyone have experience with BRAVE or Mojeek?
 
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Pod

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I really like YANDEX It is Russian. When I search for something I get so many choices. in English.

 
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Linda

Linda

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Yandex has good reviews except for the data tracking.

Using it with a VPN would be an alternative.
 
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Angela

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I use brave and have found it to be a really decent alternative. I'm surprised it's still in beta, actually.
I've heard about qwant and had that as a possible stand by if I found myself not liking brave. But I do. Heh.
 
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Linda

Linda

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qwant got high ratings, but alas, it is based in France and now subject to the new EU edict.

So, we'll see how that goes.
 
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Lila

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My daughter today brought me a short video by DuckDuckGo (which I'd been using) about how Google spreads misinformation (video about Ukraine) and I'd just started to wonder what was up. Then I read this. Timely.
 
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μακράν

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There is a decentralised, blockchain based search engine called presearch. They claim it's censorship resistant. IMO it's just as censored and curated as google results. For an example try searching "stolen election." They uprank main stream sources so the entire first page of results is propaganda.

Maybe the technology is a step in the right direction though.

About

Try searching here
 
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μακράν

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After reading the thread about duckduckgo I wanted to suggest an idea that may help to guard against future censorship. I think even telegram will begin censoring speech soon. The nmobile messenger app might be a great backup if telegram goes down the woke path.

It's decentralised, anonymous, encrypted. There is no central server so it can't be shut down or censored. No messages are stored in the cloud. It's open source and doesn't require a google account to install the app. It supports a group chat feature.


For android users, click the apk link to download the app.

 

Snowmelt

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That cloud has a lot to answer for. I've always resisted it.
 
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