DuckDuckGo Removes Pirate Sites and YouTube-DL from Its Search Results

Post by SapporoChris » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 10:46 PM UTC

belter wrote: post #132

zagrebian wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Duck really collects user data, the moment this is found out, they’re dead, so for that reason alone, they probably don’t do it. The alternative is that they’re betting everything on nobody ever finding out which sounds crazy.

Lately, almost every conspiracy theory has been proven true. Or a more outrageous conspiracy theory is based on somewhat less aggravating true facts, that are then misconstrued as a more far fetched conspiracy:-)

Post by moffkalast » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 10:46 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #176

derevaunseraun wrote: post #73

Question: does anyone actually know what DDG does with user data? Like they market themselves as a "privacy respecting" search engine, but how much of this is truth? I'd imagine there's good money in convincing people they have privacy because then they'll provide more interesting data. Has the company ever been audited? Why should they be trusted to not compromise user privacy? Imo at least Google is honest: you kno…

You're right to be skeptical. They are essentially a client state of Microsoft. Their results come from Bing and they are hosted at Azure. Their privacy policy is just vague enough to not rule out the possibility that Microsoft collects all the stuff that DDG says they don't collect.

Post by TheWill » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 10:49 PM UTC

Post by omgmajk » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 10:50 PM UTC

gigglesupstairs wrote: post #72

miloignis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The YouTube-DL website notably does not come up in those search results, it's their GitHub page that does. The website does appear in the sidebar, because it pulls the sidebar data from Wikipedia, and YouTube-DL's Wikipedia page does come up. Note that if you do a google search ( https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube-dl ) their website is the first result.

Both the website and the GitHub are top two results at my end, in India.

Post by wand3r » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 10:53 PM UTC

californical wrote: post #128

brewdad wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So where does one from here for everyday search? Google is out. Bing has many of the same problems as Google. Startpage blocks my VPN. Brave has always felt just a little "off" to me, but maybe they're worth a try. Any others I've missed that are worth looking into?

I found Kagi[0] from somewhere on HN -- they make pretty strong privacy claims, and are in a closed Beta stage right now (you can give them your email, and they'll send you a signup link within a week or two). They're planning to charge a fixed rate for their search engine once they're out of beta later this year. So far, it seems to be working really well for me! Results are pretty excellent, and they support the DD…