I’ve recently learned that DDG does not follow its own guidelines for privacy. I’m curious what search engines people here would recommend. I would prefer a search engine that not only respects my privacy but also doesn’t hide or shadow ban content it doesn’t like. Any recommendations?
I suspect that maybe you were exposed to a certain post over on lemmy.ml @ local link: https://lemmy.one/post/657560
I’d invite you to read through my comment deconstructing the silliness of that entire post…the accusations and links are highly flimsy and poorly support the assertions being made. https://lemmy.one/comment/708741
I won’t deny that it’s likely that DDG isn’t as privacy focused today as it may have been when it was initially founded; but I haven’t seen anything on the fediverse compile enough reasons today that would support the panic I’m seeing over it if you just look into what few sources are quoted and being used and assess critically what might be going on.
That being said…
I do recommend SearXNG. Highly.
The metasearch engine that SearXNG offers usually works well and allows you to pick, choose, and sift through the various search engines and even define and create new ones you can use for yourself so that you can easily search whatever you need.
Searx instances in general are kinda like email providers too; just find a good one for yourself and start using it; no real account is required…just find one that works for you and set up your preferences and all.
I do not recommend Kagi! Kagi is a paid search engine. In general I do not consider their paid service to be better than Searx and would not recommend using them. Usage of a paid service requires creating an account…and we all know where that garden path lies.
THat is correct. I appreciate the clarity :).
As for SearXNG, you need a means to host an instance of that as well as a domain yeah?
You can find many public hosted instances here but some of them use Cloudflare because they fear DDoS attacks. So keep that in mind when choosing your instance. Best is to host your own instance.
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I use SearXNG.
You can pick an instance from here:
I use https://searx.namejeff.xyz/ myself because it’s based out of Switzerland and gets good grades.
You can use LibRedirect extension which switches you instance of searxng on every search, this maximizes your privacy.
SearXNG, there’s nothing much else to say.
If it is software how do you know who has implemented it and whether the instance respects privacy?
Self-host yourself is the safest option, I do.
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Startpage (basically a proxy for Google afaik), Murena Spot, SearX, Qwant, SwissCows
I use Qwant and Startpage for most things, but tend towards Qwant due to speed.
I primarily use Startpage for image search, though, because you can specify exact resolutions.
In my phone Murena Spot was always the default search engine and it’s fine. I switch between it and Qwant Lite.
When I want someone to search more privately without getting different results, I always recommend Startpage.
SwissCows is odd, if you can not search “brown sugar”, it is better to avoid it.
Can you elaborate?
There is censorship, there is discrimination and then there is swisscows, it has all.
Who in their right mind would block random innocent searches for no reason?
depends on your usecase, some people actually prefer the extreme filters it has to make content family friendly
