Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 341 posts

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#251

Post by vl »

makeitdouble wrote: post #148
jdironman wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just have a payment method that isn't linked to you?

How do you realistically do that online, short of getting into crypto ? I wonder if they'd even accept crypto, but their FAQ has nothing on their accepted payment and so it seems it needs an account even to just see that.

There are pre-paid credit cards you can buy in Safeway and such for a small premium. I'm not sure how to use them for paying online though (i.e. how to provide name/address/phone that match).

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#252

Post by yosito »

soco wrote: post #237
yosito wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about their business model. If their business is to profit off of satisfying customers then they are going to be motivated to satisfy customers. If their business is to profit off of selling advertisements, then they're going to profit off of selling advertisements.

Volkswagen business model is to profit off satisfying customers, yet their menu navigation is censored and they were never bothered to change it. How's that working differently for Kagi? Paying Kagi users just got hit with a new price model which judging by the reactions around here was not very welcome. Yet they all keep selling products, both Kagi and Volkswagen, against customer complaints. Can we agree that there…

Not every customer is going to be happy. And few, if any, companies are purely motivated by customer satisfaction. There are limits, especially legally, of what companies can do to satisfy customers.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#253

Post by JackMorgan »

DanHulton wrote: post #70

I debated bringing up Kagi at the top level here, since I already commented on it in a reply, but honestly I really want them to succeed and shit like this is why. It's a paid search service, and I'm honestly really happy with that distinction and what it entails. Being paid means that they can deliver on and support features that users can use to get the best results for them, without worrying how those features may…

I search ~1000 queries/month, and I tried using Google, DDG, and Kagi side by side for the last six months. At this point I'm 100% on Kagi. My last holdout was work using Google, but it's just so frustrating now after using Kagi, I finally switched over.

Yeah it's paid, but I am getting the best results and experience. Not everyone needs great search, but I do and I'm willing to pay for it.

I just recently got my brother to sign up, he's also gotten so tired of Google and DDG. Already a few days later he's really digging Kagi.

I think a lot of the pricing sticker shock is just because we've been price anchored to $0/month for the last twenty years. The $15/month for Kagi is what most people pay for a single coffee and sandwich, which saves them like ~5 minutes making by hand. Kagi probably saves me at least an hour a month, so from an ROI it's at least 12x better than a coffee and sandwich at the shop.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#254

Post by AnonCoward42 »

stakhanov wrote: post #204
AnonCoward42 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] A good search engine is an investment that could pay phenomenal dividends for me, allowing me to make better decisions for my business by having better information as input. [...] It sounds a bit like the use case of ChatGPT/BingAI. Depending on your specific use case it might be the wrong fit - especially if you want to look up PI - however it is excellent as a rubberduck/idea provider.

It's precisely the antithesis of a use case of ChatGPT/BingAI. I want sourced information, and the opportunity to read the source in its original form, make a critical judgment about it, and draw my own conclusions. Giving me the opportunity to ask a question and get an answer, when I have no way of knowing whether the answer is a hallucination is less than useless. It's a waste of time.

At least BingAI does provide its sources and ChatGPT/BingAI are made to be conversational, so you get the opportunity to ask actual questions and get an answer. As with everything on the internet take the answers with a couple of grains of salt.

You can also directly ask for the sources btw. In the end LLMs with access to the internet can be an abstraction to search engines. If it is good can only be assessed once you actually tried as it heavily depends on your use case and your approach.

LLMs are just a tool like everything else.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#255

Post by aembleton »

meitham wrote: post #177
DanHulton wrote: post #70

I debated bringing up Kagi at the top level here, since I already commented on it in a reply, but honestly I really want them to succeed and shit like this is why. It's a paid search service, and I'm honestly really happy with that distinction and what it entails. Being paid means that they can deliver on and support features that users can use to get the best results for them, without worrying how those features may…

I’m tired of all these “do no evil” organisations, that we back but once they succeed they give us the middle finger and harm us. Is search engine that hard to self host? Assuming I don’t want to index most of the web, such as non English sites, porn, most news sites. Surely there’s an open source solution someone has written to do that I can run from home!

You can run YaCy from home https://yacy.net/

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#256

Post by nologic01 »

geraldhh wrote: post #217
nologic01 wrote: post #161

My experience with both DDG, which I use as default, and Google, which I use as backup has been steadily deteriorating over time. That is the opposite of what you would expect if incentives and business models around this most basic utility were not broken. If people can build collectively incredibly useful resources like wikipedia and openstreetmap why not an index of the web as a public good that is devoid of the r…

the capacity of a community for content generation grows faster than the capacity for self moderation, putting a limit on group-size in regards to the level of 'unwanted' content (spam, hate, porn ...). automated moderation or more tolerance are needed to extend the group further; one of those can be bought with money.

Money is not a dirty word when people work for it (using it to keep count of who contributes valuable time and skill). Unfortunately what is happening - ever so frequently - is various digital cartels finding ways to extract permanent rents and use them to exercise undue and unaccountable control and influence instead of working for the money.

Decades of apathy and bad policy means that is not a trivial problem to crack, but in contrast with all prior technology revolutions, what we have is an entirely social, organizational challenge - disruptive change of behaviors can happen overnight.

We need to think boldly about these new "professions" (open source developers, online platform moderators, creative commons content generators, etc) and how they might become sustainable and purposeful options for people. The dividend we will reap collectively if we succeed is enormous.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#257

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

doubtfulcan wrote: post #248
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IP address. The classic example is scholarly/academic journals. Access by subscribing university libraries and corporations is still generally dependent on IP address. It has been this way for as long as I can remember. Early 90s at least. An expected retort might be "But consumer IP addresses are subject to change." True, but sometimes a "static" IP is non-negotiable. For example, in the past if one subscribed to IC…

Wouldn't they have to validate a paying customer to tie it to an IP aswell? If there is a point where a user is identifiable, it can't be rolled back with a "trust us" in my opinion if the focus is privacy.

Sometimes service providers on the internet try to accomodate "anonymous" payment via wire transfer or other non-credit card payment methods. VPNs are one example. Whether this is significantly "anonymous" is debatable. An obvious question is whether the service provider retains payment information after payment is made and if so, why. To provide service, arguably the provider only needs to know "this IP address is paid up through [date]". It does not need to know "this IP address is associated with [user]". It does not need to collect or retain any information about [user].

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#258

Post by aembleton »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #71
ploxiln wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 10x the customers who don't have any idea about these search operators, and sometimes accidentally include one, and are dissatisfied with the results. Companies can't help but cater to the 10x bigger market. They probably spend money less carefully too, so are more valuable to advertisers. I don't attribute any malice to this kind of thing. I just expect that if a project or product is trying to be more eas…

> There are 10x the customers who don't have any idea about these search operators The homepage of duckduckgo contains a lot of information about their products, and a whole FAQ about the search engine. Maybe if they also included a list of these operators, inexperienced people might learn about them. People don't use these operators because they don't know about them, not because it's difficult.

> The homepage of duckduckgo contains a lot of information about their products

How many people read these pages?

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#259

Post by ColinHayhurst »

Dalewyn wrote: post #145
CrendKing wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to realize that you like Kagi exactly because it has NOT been "succeeded", and you start to dislike DDG because it finally picks up popularity. Anything in the world that's used by large amount of users are guaranteed to piss off some portion of them, because they can only focus on limited amount of features. Google had been like that. Firefox had been like that. When 70% of Firefox users are non-techies, Fi…

>Firefox had been like that. When 70% of Firefox users are non-techies, Firefox has to start focus on the privacy niche to survive. Non-techies don't give a damn about privacy.

This is simply not true. I say this based on direct research, with users of our no-tracking search engine.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#260

Post by Dalewyn »

ColinHayhurst wrote: post #259
Dalewyn wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Firefox had been like that. When 70% of Firefox users are non-techies, Firefox has to start focus on the privacy niche to survive. Non-techies don't give a damn about privacy.

This is simply not true. I say this based on direct research, with users of our no-tracking search engine.

Non-techies use Microsoft, Apple, and Google accounts.

Non-techies use Chrome over Firefox.

Non-techies use Windows and MacOS over Linux.

Non-techies use smartphones over phones.

Non-techies use smart TVs over TVs.

Non-techies use social media and have accounts using their real names.

I reiterate: Non-techies don't give a damn about privacy.

Post reply on HN