Twitter CEO Endorses DuckDuckGo • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter CEO Endorses DuckDuckGo

#241

Post by mcv » Fri, Nov 29, 2019, 9:34 AM UTC

noobquestion81 wrote: post #231

mcv wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression is that Reddit, Twitter and Quora are completely broken on mobile. My only possible conclusion is that these companies don't care about mobile users. Or at least not about casual mobile users who don't have the app installed. (I'm certainly not going to install a separate app for every website I visit; I already have a browser for that.)

I find twitter to be quite usable in mobile safari. I have the app too, but usually find myself still browsing in safari. Quora is just a broken site right now, mobile or not. reddit OTOH still seems to work okay on desktop. For a plaintext discussion forum that I prefer to read anonymously, theyve reaaaally screwed the pooch on mobile. I aboid reddit links whenever possible now, which is... sad.

Quora is now working fine for me on mobile Firefox, but it was completely broken a week ago. Twitter refuses to show any content at all half of the time.

Some of this could of course be related to privacy settings in Firefox.

Re: Twitter CEO Endorses DuckDuckGo

#242

Post by pferde » Fri, Nov 29, 2019, 9:35 AM UTC

on_and_off wrote: post #223

pferde wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, to be able to work with them locally, within your browser.

what prevents the extension from sending that data ?

Nothing, but you can check if it does that in its source code. Did you, or did you simply assume that it does?

Re: Twitter CEO Endorses DuckDuckGo

#243

Post by on_and_off » Fri, Nov 29, 2019, 5:11 PM UTC

pferde wrote: post #242

on_and_off wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what prevents the extension from sending that data ?

Nothing, but you can check if it does that in its source code. Did you, or did you simply assume that it does?

Since I don't believe I can block extension from updating, that's not going to be helpful.

Re: Twitter CEO Endorses DuckDuckGo

#244

Post by notduncansmith » Fri, Nov 29, 2019, 7:02 PM UTC

unicornporn wrote: post #81

Honest question: how do you people even cope with the crap results? I'm a StartPage user, but decided to try DDG for some time after the System1 debacle [1]. The Swedish localized search results are downright unusable compared to StartPage/Google. I'm really trying to give it a chance, but I keep reaching for SP in every other search. [1] https://reclaimthenet.org/startpage-buyout-ad-tech-company/

Maybe it's just my searches, but I'm able to pretty consistently find what I'm looking for with DDG, and the number of times that Google has helped in those situations is basically nil. I think it's a really subjective thing, and it may take a while for DDG to work as well for all users as it currently does for some.

Re: Twitter CEO Endorses DuckDuckGo

#245

Post by sprite-1 » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 2:08 PM UTC

AdamSC1 wrote: post #134

sprite-1 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DDG app is honestly pretty bad... the last time I tried it, there wasn't even support for tabs so you're stuck with one page view at a time. Honestly, IDK why anyone would not just use Firefox Mobile. It's got addons support too

Not sure when you last tried the app but it does indeed support tabs!

I believe I tried it a week or so after it launched. Although, I still stand by my point that Firefox Mobile offers the privacy-oriented approach of the DDG app and so much more via addons that it's pretty hard to justify using the DDG app unless the phone is really low-end enough that Firefox chugs on it

Re: Twitter CEO Endorses DuckDuckGo

#246

Post by on_and_off » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

mackrevinack wrote: post #213

on_and_off wrote: post #177

I felt that it was time to try to switch to DDG, so I just went to the duckduckgo website, and it proposes to "add it to chrome". It leads to a chrome extension page asking me to give complete read access to what pages I visit to the DDG extension. Naive question : how can I know what DDG will do with that data ? (And yes I realize that this question applies to any search engine or extension)

you don't really need that. just add ddg in your browser settings. the extension shows you a rating for each site and blocks some stuff but if you are using other extensions like ublock origin, https everywhere etc then you don't really need it

Just did that. I am confused as of why they would push the extension everywhere instead of just asking people to add ddg as the search engine ?

Just from a privacy stand point, extensions with complete access freak me out.

Re: Twitter CEO Endorses DuckDuckGo

#247

Post by sudosysgen » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 9:56 PM UTC

MrP wrote: post #214

distances wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried using some third-party app for Reddit? "Reddit is fun" works pretty great for me, no nonsense and good usability.

Apps are too risky. The risk that any app will, now or in the future, be hacked, sold or just changed to suck all the data from your phone and send it somewhere you don't want it sent is too high for my taste.

There are good FOSS reddit clients for android. Build one then install it.

Re: Twitter CEO Endorses DuckDuckGo

#248

Post by JaRail » Sun, Dec 01, 2019, 8:54 PM UTC

Yizahi wrote: post #215

__ka wrote: post #36

I have mixed feelings about this. If you recommend DuckDuckGo, Qwant, Ecosia you're essentially recommending Bing. Each of them have to show bing ads, forward the users' IPs as per Bing's terms of service (to fight ad fraud etc). Similarly, if you recommend StartPage, you're recommending Google. Same drill with ads. I like DuckDuckGo. But unless they build their own search - I think the fundamental problem has not be…

There are basically 4 search engines left in the whole world - Baidu (China), Yandex (Russia, recently officially with KGB management), Google and Bing. That is all, full stop. Everyone else is a fancy GUI for on them. Google has more than 90% market share and each of the rest has like 1-3%. Building new engine is prohibitively costly and hard. So the lesser evil is Bing, by simple elimination.

You can't include Baidu in the list and say Google has 90% market share. Saying Baidu has 1-3% without specifying "in the USA" is misleading. They've got a billion users in China.