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Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG

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Re: Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG

#111

Post by blibble »

DannyBee wrote: post #106
candiddevmike wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a Chromium bug, not a Debian bug--it's an insidious way to keep Google search as the default.

Uh, no? This is managed policy, and this is a 100% good way of letting the user know that someone else has control of their settings Just because Debian thinks that they are doing the right thing, they are in fact, controlling the user's settings through a policy It's just telling you that, as it should. The notion that it has anything to do with keeping search the default or not is like, such a silly assumption i do…

> a 100% good way of letting the user know that someone else has control of their settings

ah, so it should also be displayed if it's set to Google's preferences

they're "someone else" as equally as Debian

Re: Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG

#112

Post by lohfu »

babypuncher wrote: post #87
fbhabbed wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They still do it

I'm on a fresh install of Fedora 36 (KDE Spin) and my Firefox UA is currently showing as "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:103.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/103.0".

cool, so don't switch to chromium. then the internet will know you run fedora.

Re: Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG

#113

Post by jader201 »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #100
unknownaccount wrote: post #92

Can someone please explain why we are supposed to trust DDG? Isnt it just a random website that popped up out of nowhere claiming to be private yet no audit has ever been conducted which substantiated those claims?

It is a legit company based in Pennsylvania, not some random website. Their privacy policy explicitly states they do not collect user info. If they are caught doing it anyway they could be open to legal action. While they may be lying, at least it's better than other search engines where collecting data is explicit and built into their business model. edit: I should have just down-voted and moved on.

> While they may be lying, at least it's better than other search engines where collecting data is explicit and built into their business model.

Just to be clear, are you saying that given the choice between collecting data and lying about it vs. collecting data and being explicit about it, you’d choose the first option?

Re: Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG

#114

Post by lohfu »

aendruk wrote: post #9
mattashii wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that a Firefox bug if the software it is reported on is Chromium? Those are two very distinct projects.

Quoted post unavailable.

how can you be sure? feigning verity isnt helping anything; at best you will not get downvoted.

Re: Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG

#115

Post by tinus_hn »

gouggoug wrote: post #57

Wouldn't changing the default search engine to "no default" be a solution too? I'm sure many people have thought about it, so, I wonder, what is the issue with this approach?

For a solution to be required there first has to be a problem. Then it has to be shown the new solution is better than the current implementation.

You’re not happy with the default which you can trivially change but no one has to change, so you propose having no default so you still have to change it but now everyone has to change it.

Re: Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG

#116

Post by yegg »

unknownaccount wrote: post #92

Can someone please explain why we are supposed to trust DDG? Isnt it just a random website that popped up out of nowhere claiming to be private yet no audit has ever been conducted which substantiated those claims?

Recently the National Advertising Division looked into our privacy claims and found them supported, see https://bbbprograms.org/media-center/newsroom/duckduckgo-pri... & https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/privacy-protection/12106...

Also a lot of what we do is open source on GitHub. We recently put out a help page detailing or web tracking protections that link to a lot of the relevant repositories: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/privacy/we...

And finally, I’m not sure that random or just popped up is an accurate characterization for us. We’re pretty well established at this point, having been around for nearly 15 years! I was an early user of this site and a frequent contributor during the early days of DuckDuckGo.

Re: Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG

#117

Post by dec0dedab0de »

jader201 wrote: post #113
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a legit company based in Pennsylvania, not some random website. Their privacy policy explicitly states they do not collect user info. If they are caught doing it anyway they could be open to legal action. While they may be lying, at least it's better than other search engines where collecting data is explicit and built into their business model. edit: I should have just down-voted and moved on.

> While they may be lying, at least it's better than other search engines where collecting data is explicit and built into their business model. Just to be clear, are you saying that given the choice between collecting data and lying about it vs. collecting data and being explicit about it, you’d choose the first option?

Just to be clear, are you saying that given the choice between collecting data and lying about it vs. collecting data and being explicit about it, you’d choose the first option?

Yes. Absolutely. Because that would give me some legal recourse.

Would you hire someone who hides in the fine print they can steal from you and you can't do anything about it, or hire someone else and accept the chance that they might steal.

The choice is between a bad thing definitely happening, or a bad thing possibly happening.

Re: Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG

#118

Post by lohfu »

canadaduane wrote: post #96
jonas-w wrote: post #16

Best approach i think is, they way "ungoogled-chromium" does it. They don't enforce organization policies, but they set the default config to "no search" and then leave it up to the user to change it.

This is only useful for people who know what a search engine is. (Seriously, many people equate "googling" = "search engine", and don't know there is a general category of this thing). Unless there are two big bold buttons on start-up--one that says "Use Google for Search" and the other that says "Use Duck Duck Go for Search"--it would appear broken to them. Even then, almost everyone would pick "Google" just for nam…

i would argue most people that install chromium, not chrome, no what a search engine is. unfortunately, since chromium lost google account login capabilities, i do not install chromium anymore. now i just think "search engine" means "google".

Re: Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG

#120

Post by ncmncm »

zaphar wrote: post #66
ncmncm wrote: post #55

There was a posting on HN not long ago warning that DDG was run by spammers, and that the "privacy" focus is purely a marketing ploy. This should be predictable on the basis that it is a free service, making you the product, and somebody else , therefore, the customer. It is hard to know what else one can do to get useful search functionality. It has been a long time since Google dropped any emphasis on usefulness. A…

I can find no actual evidence that DDG is run by spammers. This does not strike me as credible.

I can find no evidence that DDG is not run by spammers. Any claim that it is not is clearly what would demand solid evidence.
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