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Twitter CEO Endorses DuckDuckGo

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Re: Twitter CEO Endorses DuckDuckGo

#201

Post by Leace »

distances wrote: post #171
pkamb wrote: post #137

I switched my iPhone to Duck Duck Go over the last few days simply because I hate hate HATE getting linked to Reddit AMP pages from Google. Reddit (and Stack Exchange) pages are what I use most to find honest discussions about some topic. Very convenient to use those results to filter through the blogspam. Reddit's AMP pages are especially bad, with multiple annoying pop-ups that don't get cookied when you dismiss th…

Another advantage of DDG: the result links are straight to the destination, unlike with Google where there's a tracking redirection in between. This is great on Android, as I can open the link straight in an app (like Wikipedia) without going to the page first and then launching the app.

Yes, not to mention when you want to share the link in DDG you share the original link directly but in Google you'd share the redirector link.

Given Google's scale they probably don't care about the long tail of technical users such as us.

Re: Twitter CEO Endorses DuckDuckGo

#202

Post by calcifer »

echelon wrote: post #153
noobquestion81 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 100% agree with the reddit experience - it takes like 4 taps just to get to the #%!* page. No I don’t want your app shoved down my throat on every load. It has completely ruined reddit for me on mobile. Just show me ads if you need to and leave me alone.

If I had the time I'd work on a Reddit clone without the new redesign and ads. Run it completely funded by Wikipedia-style donations, then turn it over to the community for governance. Reddit's money grabs piss me off. To bootstrap the thing I'd crawl Reddit and copy threads, users, subreddits, comments - everything. Users could prove account ownership or create any account that wasn't already allocated. If Reddit su…

> If I had the time I'd work on a Reddit clone without the new redesign and ads. Run it completely funded by Wikipedia-style donations

Already exists and made by one of the earlier reddit employees: https://tildes.net

Re: Twitter CEO Endorses DuckDuckGo

#203

Post by flurdy »

ojosilva wrote: post #21
LandR wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also w! for wiki. The bang commands are super useful.

That's a feature of most browsers location bar. Just assign a letter/string to any bookmark of your liking and voila! No need to depend on DDG and exclamation points for your quick searches. A few of my favorites include hn for HN's algolia, th for thesaurus, wes for Wikipedia in Spanish and d for... duck duck go.

That is true. but my first search is always duckduckgo. Only if that doesn't tell me straight away to I go for a !bang search. The location bar now is filled with a ddg url so easier to just add ! to the search box of ddg.

And as I switch machines, browsers, profiles, and privacy mode all day long the only ubuiqitous thing is that ddg is the default search engine.

I don't use the !w shortcut as usually whatever/whomever I have searched for is in the info box on ddg's right-hand column and it usually has a wikipedia link if I need to get more detail.

Re: Twitter CEO Endorses DuckDuckGo

#204

Post by vfc1 »

I've tried it and the results just aren't as good as Google. For example, it does not index Javascript-heavy pages, which means a lot of documentation websites for popular open source projects are seen as blank pages by their indexer and simply won't be ranked.

Also, the ability to identity a given user allows Google to serve personalized and therefore more relevant search results (which of course means you also get personalized ads).

Re: Twitter CEO Endorses DuckDuckGo

#205

Post by signal11 »

Leace wrote: post #201
distances wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another advantage of DDG: the result links are straight to the destination, unlike with Google where there's a tracking redirection in between. This is great on Android, as I can open the link straight in an app (like Wikipedia) without going to the page first and then launching the app.

Yes, not to mention when you want to share the link in DDG you share the original link directly but in Google you'd share the redirector link. Given Google's scale they probably don't care about the long tail of technical users such as us.

I tried this just now and this particularly seems to be a problem on Firefox.

On iOS (WebKit) and Chrome, Google’s search results can be copied just fine - there’s no redirector because Google uses hyperlink link auditing ().

Firefox does support ping but disables it by default for privacy reasons.

Which is good, I guess, because now the link tracking is more apparent, but it does still happen and leads to a worse UX for the user.

Re: Twitter CEO Endorses DuckDuckGo

#206

Post by moksly »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #182
moksly wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With reddit it’s extra annoying because once you’ve clicked through the amp, you still have to manually replace the www with old. I’m not sure how we ended up with an internet where you need to move through a search engine and two shitty mobile web apps to get to the page you wanted, but here we are.

You can set 'old' as a preference in your reddit account. It doesn’t seem to be 100% reliable, but it’s far better than all that url manipulation.

I did, but it doesn’t seem to work very well when I’m on my phone. I may be alone in this but even though old isn’t particularly mobile friendly I still prefer it to the mobile web app.

Re: Twitter CEO Endorses DuckDuckGo

#207

Post by Erwin »

echelon wrote: post #153
noobquestion81 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 100% agree with the reddit experience - it takes like 4 taps just to get to the #%!* page. No I don’t want your app shoved down my throat on every load. It has completely ruined reddit for me on mobile. Just show me ads if you need to and leave me alone.

If I had the time I'd work on a Reddit clone without the new redesign and ads. Run it completely funded by Wikipedia-style donations, then turn it over to the community for governance. Reddit's money grabs piss me off. To bootstrap the thing I'd crawl Reddit and copy threads, users, subreddits, comments - everything. Users could prove account ownership or create any account that wasn't already allocated. If Reddit su…

There is at least one established anti-reddit, Voat and there's an open source version of it.

Voat is a great place to go for people skeptical about Jews, non-whites, the overweight and transsexuals to freely share their... concerns.

So I don't think software is sufficient to compete, you need heavy community moderation.

Re: Twitter CEO Endorses DuckDuckGo

#208

Post by Kiro »

godelski wrote: post #107
unicornporn wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DDG uses Bing, Yahoo! and Yandex for non bang searches[1]. As of October 2019, Yahoo! Search is once again “powered by Bing”[2]. To me, results are as crap as Bing's. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/6uaibg/comment/... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search

"Uses" is a weird word here. Because some people are suggesting that DDG is a reskin of Bing. But if we look at what DDG says[0], they talk about it the same way they talk about Stack Overflow. No one is crazy enough to say that DDG is a reskin of SO. What they are actually saying is that they are aggregating results. Which I don't understand why that would be a bad thing. [0] https://help.duckduckgo.com/results/sour…

Money quoute right here: "We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from a variety of partners, including Verizon Media (formerly Yahoo) and Bing."

SO and the other 400 sources are only used for instant boxes and other widgets. The real organic search results are all from Bing.

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