• fxomt [abandoned account]@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 months ago

    Damn shame. I use DDG, but them consistently fucking up makes me want to switch. Though i don’t know of any alternatives.

    edit: thanks for the recommendations!

    • HelloRoot@lemy.lol
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      7 months ago

      Best one is probably (in my opinion) selfhosting a searxng instance. It takes results from a dozen of engines (you configure which ones) and merges them according to the configured weights and some algorithmic magic.

      If you use public instances, the owner might have tuned the results to suit themselves and it returns garbage for your usecase. And also they frequently get timeouts because a lot of people use them. So don’t get turned off by trying a couple of them.

      Since I started running my own private instance I am super happy with the search results.

        • Sonalder@lemmy.ml
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          7 months ago

          Yeah it is dependant on Google and Google can do censorship. However from personnal experience (maybe it differ in different countries) Google does less censorship than Microsoft at least regarding their search engines.

    • DrinkMonkey@lemmy.ca
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      7 months ago

      Kagi. Privacy focussed, no ads, and excellent results with options for sorting preferred sources to appear at the top, or not. Costs money but man, it’s fast and good in the way Google was back in the day. Some plans also include anonymous access to a variety of LLMs though they are older models, and if they can run them locally, they do. Really liking it.

      • smh@slrpnk.net
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        7 months ago

        I swapped to Kagi this month. It’s refreshing. I’ll probably end up on the $10/month plan. They also have a library pilot program I’m trying to get my academic library to look into.

        • DrinkMonkey@lemmy.ca
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          7 months ago

          I used it for almost a year at the lowest tier, then got the couples plan more recently and it has high spouse approval factor, even though there was some initial setup

      • troed@fedia.io
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        7 months ago

        FWIW the founder of Kagi is adamant that subscribers must accept part of the subscruption money being sent to Russia (Yandex, fully govt-controlled) and has refused all attempts at excluding it. When questions started appearing he even tried claiming Yandex isn’t even russian.

        • Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          7 months ago

          Startpage’s majority shareholder is System1 who is an adtech company. We don’t believe that to be an issue as they have a distinctly separate privacy policy. The Privacy Guides team reached out to Startpage back in 2020 to clear up any concerns with System1’s sizeable investment into the service, and we were satisfied with the answers we received.

          From privacyguides.org

        • entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org
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          7 months ago

          Yeah, they advertise using only the context of the keywords of your current search. No storing of personal data, no profiling. They’ve had third parties review that. Seems fine to me.

  • Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 months ago

    Is it a surprise? Bing is controlled by M$, and their search results are taken by Qwant and DDG. Ecosia also runs with google results so it isn’t affected.

    • Southern Wolf@pawb.social
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      7 months ago

      Brave Search also returns results for it just fine as well. Which makes sense given they run with their own indexing now (with fallbacks to Google and Bing only when requested).

    • Sonalder@lemmy.ml
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      7 months ago

      Wait Ecosia switched from Bing to Google?

      Startpage was the only commercial search engine indexing Google from my knowledge.

          • Kualdir@feddit.nl
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            7 months ago

            Wow I’ve learned something new today. From the ads I have clicked on ecosia it always used a bing redirect. Perhaps it also kinda depends on region? I assume yahoo ads aren’t as popular/good paying in the EU as bing

        • CubitOom@infosec.pub
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          7 months ago

          I mean yeah, this is a screenshot of the search results. It is weird that there is a reddit post asking to see the opposite above the desired page which just needed the TLD added. But still, the page in question is in the search results.

          Not sure why I got a downvote, but I don’t mind being unpopular.

          • eodur@piefed.social
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            7 months ago

            In context it felt like a rebuttal, but with the link clearly shown. Maybe a comment to help clarify next time?

            For the record, I deprioritize reddit so the actual link is on top for me.

              • eodur@piefed.social
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                7 months ago

                Click on the shield icon on the right, then the “down shield” icon in the resulting popup. Or you can block the site entirely!

            • lazynooblet@lazysoci.al
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              7 months ago

              This is the problem with social media, especially Lemmy and Reddit. It is the default stance to assume a neutral comment is hostile. Why do we all argue so much? I’ve been there, but I’m trying to be kinder online. I think it’s a systemic problem and I don’t know the solution.

              • Sl00k@programming.dev
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                7 months ago

                I’ve noticed over the years it ebbs and flows with the broader “societal mood”. People are much more on edge nowadays for rightful reasons, but it creates a pretty toxic environment on the internet.

  • Beacon@fedia.io
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    7 months ago

    Context is needed. What is that site? And why do you believe search results about it are being censored?

      • Engywook@lemmy.zip
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        7 months ago

        You people are annoying as fuck. Just stick with Google/Bing (USA, lol) or their surrogates (DDG, Qwant…) then, and keep complaining about not finding piracy-related results.

        • Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          7 months ago

          I haven’t ever complained about not getting piracy results because I don’t use search engines for that (there are some piracy indexes that work just as well)

          I may as well try Yandex for piracy, because USA has been as bad if not worse than Russia against Europe. This is basically choosing the lesser evil.

  • upstroke4448@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 months ago

    DDG is more of a privacy frontend for Bing then its own search engine. Typically if its not on Bing its not gonna be on DDG.

    Works on both Brave and Google via Mullvad Leta

    • Fizz@lemmy.nz
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      7 months ago

      Ddg gets its results from more than just bing as well as doing some curation on top.

      • upstroke4448@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 months ago

        This is true. Although the curation is minimal and while bing isn’t the only source its the main source.

        Feel free to compare the results of a ddg search and bing search.