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

torrentfreak.com

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

#191

Post by throwaway82652 »

autoexec wrote: post #121
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.

> If Duck really collects user data, the moment this is found out, they’re dead It'd take a whistleblower for anyone to ever find out. What are the odds of that happening? I don't think we can count on someone who is being paid by a company to tell us about their actions when their livelihood/gravy train depends on it and they may be opening themselves up to legal problems for coming forward. Not may people have the…

>It'd take a whistleblower for anyone to ever find out.

No it won't. If you have a hypothesis you can just test it out. Go submit some fake personal data and then see if it shows up anywhere else. This trick is as old as using a honeypot name or email address to test if a service signs you up for junk mail.

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

#192

Post by GycDH6mb »

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…

I use DDG not for any concern over privacy, but because the developer tools and results are so nice. !bangs are also excellent and a huge timesaver

`! mdn window.postMessage` .. so easy!

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

#193

Post by swethmandava »

barnabee wrote: post #26

I don’t need these results but I don’t want to support this behaviour/trend. Can anyone recommend a decent non-Google alternative.

Check out https://you.com - lets you control your sources and is privacy focussed

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

#195

Post by bduerst »

TheWill wrote: post #185

Quit using DDG when they decided to start censoring stuff. Been using brave search ever since, it's actually pretty good.

Didn't Brave get caught inserting their own affiliate links into search results when you clicked on them?

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

#196

Post by gruez »

girvo wrote: post #145
s3p wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read about a Github issue [1] where someone reports that all websites a user clicks on to DDG servers. Reading the employee's response was eye opening. They literally do not care if it has a bad look, they just say "we don't collect your personal information." What??? They are literally admitting to collecting domains in the feed of the Github issue but then just copy and paste their manifesto and expect us to thin…

Seems understandable to me. The explanation isn’t just “copy pasting” their privacy policy, either. You are misrepresenting that thread and discussion. They’re not a perfectly secure E2E encrypted zero-trust system. They do require some measure of trust to use. This has always been true. Don’t use them if you don’t trust that they won’t misuse your data.

>Seems understandable to me.

The explanation seems superficially plausible, until you realize many (all?) other browser seem to work fine without a remote server to fetch favicons.

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

#197

Post by bduerst »

syshum wrote: post #154
dirtyv wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely do not trust Brave. I tried their browser on my iPhone for a few months. Always chose the most private settings, don't save history, etc, so whenever I opened the app there was no evidence it had even been used before. After one particular update, I started the app and it opened up literally dozens of tabs. Going through them I realized each tab was a site I had visited in the past. Left a nasty review o…

Brave was started by one of the Founders of Mozilla.

Proud Boys was started by one of the founders of Vice media too.

That doesn't make them any less of a hate group or less shady.

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

#198

Post by prmoustache »

seanw444 wrote: post #142
qiskit wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same people now hating on them. It seems like those people are still here defending ddg. They are even attacking the blog. Weird. I use ddg as my default search and hope they are "privacy-first" as they claim ( thought I have my doubts ). At this point what other option is there? DDG search is noticably censored since they rely on bing. It's obvious to anyone who uses ddg regular…

Searx. Use Searx. Does your search engine of choice fail to get results that the others pick up? Searx grabs all of them and compiles them together. Don't miss another search result! Also, proxying increases privacy. Also, it's open source and self-hostable.

Being open source doesn't mean the people running the public searx instances aren't tracking you.

Self-hosting makes you lose all the benefits of proxying.

In the end be it ddg or searx you can only rely on some third-party trust.

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

#199

Post by diputsmonro »

autoexec wrote: post #139
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…

Here's my take: Duckduckgo could easily be fully owned and operated by some three letter agency. The NSA is already able to go onsite and tap into the data that passes through corporations and they've been doing exactly that for decades (see Room 641A) and they can force corporations to keep silent about it using national security letters. You should already assume that every US based company is sending every scrap o…

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Panopticon

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

#200

Post by bduerst »

s3p wrote: post #127
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…

I read about a Github issue [1] where someone reports that all websites a user clicks on to DDG servers. Reading the employee's response was eye opening. They literally do not care if it has a bad look, they just say "we don't collect your personal information." What??? They are literally admitting to collecting domains in the feed of the Github issue but then just copy and paste their manifesto and expect us to thin…

I think most DDG fans would be thoroughly surprised DDG ever popped the hood or tried to verify their privacy claims, which is why I don't think DDG ever will.

Better to elude to a nebulous definition of privacy rather than give specifics. Even as a privately traded, for-profit company based in the U.S. with zero accountability for its claims, DDG doesn't even have that much IP to lose (as a Bing reskin) should it ever fold under a class action lawsuit.

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