I noticed this for a longer time but I just thought MSN flooded the web with its shit. It didn’t came to my mind it is actually duckduckgo trying to shove these msn links into my face…
I guess this is similar to google amp links, just stealing the content of other websites.
It annoys me big time, -msn doesn’t seem to help
As others say, it’s Microsoft AMP. There’s normally a box with an arrow next to the logo at the top that will take you to the original article. I don’t think there are enough ddg/msn users to create an ampsplosion equivalent extension, but it could be done.
Duckduckgo is absolute shit. I’m tired of seeing blogspam AI shit. I’m tired of searching for things like “Trump tariffs 2017” and seeing 50,000 articles about what Trump said yesterday. Search engines are shit. It hurts I had to use Google AI for info on “articulation in architecture” because everything else was useless.
Unless we figure out how to open source, distribute and maintain an indexer, we’re going to suck on the AI tit for the foreseeable future.
All these meta search engines are eventually doomed to be shut down is the tech companies that maintain the handful of actual indexers that exist slowly shut down streams that don’t provide them revenue.
so I get results from all the major news outlets but many have bing icons on them lolwtf
Not sure why you’re getting those. None of mine are msn icons.
Duck Duck Go uses Bing so that tracks.
This is the answer. Might be a (new?) part of their agreement
I still like DDG and recommend it. But I also recently switched to Kagi, a paid search engine, and have been quite happy.
Kagi seems kind of expensive. $5 a month is pretty high compared to the costs of other subscriptions and that doesn’t even get you unlimited searches. I am definitely interested in this idea but I can’t see the value being there at the prices offered.
If it was $1 I’d probably subscribe in a heartbeat because it’d be affordable in my country. $5 is not bad but it adds up quickly.
Search something on duckduckgo and then refresh, it will list a different order of results. Very annoying if you check multiple links to not know which ones were in what order.
That’s by design
They should do a better job of pointing it out at the least
To what end?
I’m fairly sure So you can’t just game the SEO to always be on top. This way you get more varied spurces for your search. Since people will almost always click the top or second top link.
SAME!
DDG has been hot garbage for a while since Bing jacked up their prices.
Its like Google’s amp links, it is for for the ad tracking purposes
i’ve been using Qwant when i search news
Front page is always full of sponsored crap. You learn to ignore it. Work around it.
What about searxng?
I’ve been hearing more about it and you can apparently even self host it.
Searxng is nice, but every now and again, it won’t load results until I refresh the page. I need to mess with it again, but haven’t considered needing it.
Would be nice if it had a built in calculator and unit converter, that’s a ddg feature I use a lot
Seconded! And unlike DDG (based in the US), Qwant is in the EU
I remember when they switched map links to (ew) Apple Maps. That was a huge downer.
It is probably the most polished map. I would rather use something open source, but it makes sense why they switched.
Absolutely! Especially because the map is always broken on my phone, I want to move the area and end up somewhere hundreds of kilometers away. I guess it’s time for a new search engine…
Switch to Kagi. It’s worth the money.
Do you really want your porn search results linked to your credit card + name? oO
I mean, the ad services plugged into every website have already cross referenced each other and know who you are even if you use a service like DDG that supposedly doesn’t track. Incidentally, Kagi supposedly doesn’t track either, (which they’d better not since you’re paying them), so while it doesn’t mitigate the above issue of your being traceable by pure virtue of browsing the web, it certainly isn’t “tying your porn results to credit cards and search results.”
I don’t use any services that make me identifiable to search engines, I use ublock origin, I occasionally delete all my browsing history + cookies, and of course I’d never watch porn winkwink I’d say any corporation/entity outside the ISP would at the very least have a hard time tracking my porn preferences ;)
Seconded. The only reason I use Google is if I actually want an ad served to me.
Try searxng
Ok what the fuck is happening with DuckDuckGo?
I’ve been using it since the beginning of last year, because fuck google, and it’s been steadily degrading in usefulness.
Microsoft
This is weird. The links all show other news agencies, and you see the same at the top of the page when you follow the links. Is MSN re-hosting the stories from all these agencies or are the agencies opting in for this?
Nothing like seeing an Associated Press link and having it open on msn.com!! 🤡
It’s a syndication partnership with MSN. Publishers provide their articles to MSN via RSS. It’s increasingly difficult to draw traffic to independent sites, so publishers are all seeking to diversify their traffic sources.
here when i search for something or someone ‘newsworthy’ i get links to other sites ahead of msn, those links do go to the expected sites, and the favicons (that are all msn in the posted image) are also correct. in fact, only one first page out of the five searches i tried even had an msn link at all–at #9.
Bring back Alta Vista!!
Ask Jeeves
Carrier pigeons.
I tried, but he kept saying things like, “my name is not Jeeves” and “I rented this suit for a wedding who are you”.
Things were just simpler in the past :'(
How are you guys getting all the hits from MSN exclusively? I’ve tried insistently and I get an assortment of El Confidencial, CNN, Sky News and then maybe some MSN. Heck, I’m getting Yahoo before MSN.
It seems to depend on the country, if I set US or Germany I get the MSN results, if I set Spain I set none…
In eastern US, first time using DDG on this device, it shows normal links (searched “Ukraine drone attack”)
