Advertise on DuckDuckGo Search • Hacker News Board

Re: Advertise on DuckDuckGo Search

#161

Post by 1270018080 » Wed, May 17, 2023, 8:39 PM UTC

ipaddr wrote: post #120

AlecSchueler wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With hindsight we can see their mistakes but isn't following the expert line the best thing to do in an uncertain situation?

Trusting in appointed experts instead of critical thinking is the worst thing to do in uncertain times.

Nobody knew if covid was airborne at the time, so the most correct answer was nobody knows. Some people got lucky by making things up on the spot and guessed it was airborne. At a certain point their confirmation bias and distrust of media broke their perception of the world and they became antivax etc, still no critical thinking taking place.

Re: Advertise on DuckDuckGo Search

#162

Post by Gareth321 » Wed, May 17, 2023, 8:40 PM UTC

I stopped using DDG when they admitted they are censoring political content (https://www.vox.com/recode/22981115/duckduckgo-free-speech-p...). I'm really tired of companies telling me what I may and may not view.

Re: Advertise on DuckDuckGo Search

#163

Post by okwubodu » Wed, May 17, 2023, 8:41 PM UTC

nomel wrote: post #2

I was able to convince my wife to switch for anything remotely "controversial", when, during the pandemic, we caught the relatively "real time" disappearance of several "against the grain" articles about covid [1]. By disappeared, I mean top results for the rough concept one day to not being able to find it, even with the exact title and text, the next. I want a search engine, more than a curated guide. [1] https://w…

Oh, DuckDuckGo just does that sometimes. Pretty often I'll pick a result then back out to the search results, and the one I had in mind to click next just isn't there anymore. However annoying, I wouldn't immediately jump to a political motivation.

Re: Advertise on DuckDuckGo Search

#164

Post by unity1001 » Wed, May 17, 2023, 8:41 PM UTC

nfriedly wrote: post #71

Georgelemental wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DDG may not be the best if you want to avoid political meddling. I switched to Brave after https://web.archive.org/web/20220831110219/https://twitter.c...

I'm not sure I would consider downplaying misinformation websites as "political meddling". In fact, I think I like DDG more for it.

Yeah. Like downranking Iraqi websites in a hypothetical 2003 when they said "We dont have WMDs". So much better.

Re: Advertise on DuckDuckGo Search

#165

Post by throw9away6 » Wed, May 17, 2023, 8:41 PM UTC

smoldesu wrote: post #96

coconut08 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is not a search engine's job to filter their results based on acceptable politics. the only explicit filtering out they should be doing is filtering out manipulation, explicitly illegal content, spam, fraudulent content and stuff like that. aside from that the filtering algorithm should be largely neutral and unbiased. it's not a search engine's job to refuse to answer search results because the owner finds it dis…

Does bad-faith propaganda not qualify as fraudulent content?

So no more NYT?

Re: Advertise on DuckDuckGo Search

#166

Post by RhodesianHunter » Wed, May 17, 2023, 8:41 PM UTC

tjohns wrote: post #100

thatnerdyguy wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh... are you suggesting that at some not-insignificant point into the pandemic someone credible was arguing COVID was NOT airborne?

Actually, yes. For the first half of the pandemic, much of the medical community was unsure if COVID was airborne. Examples: - https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/cdc-reverses-agai... - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7 - https://archive.is/wPD2D (Tweet from WHO) Note that "airborne" has a specific meaning in medical literature. Everyone agreed COVID could be transmitted in the air by respirat…

This is the excuse hospitals used to send nurses into covid units with no or insufficient PPE when they got caught flat-footed having no stored supply. (and it was BS)

Re: Advertise on DuckDuckGo Search

#167

Post by nly » Wed, May 17, 2023, 8:41 PM UTC

mattkevan wrote: post #68

I've used DDG as my main search engine for about 4 years now. Until recently I found I was still having to go to Google for specific queries, mainly answering coding problems. But in the last 6 months or so, Google's results have gotten so bad and DDG has continued to improve to the point where I no longer bother with !g. When I do use Google I often find myself in the strange position of not actually being able to f…

I still have to use !g daily.

Re: Advertise on DuckDuckGo Search

#168

Post by BobTheDestroyer » Wed, May 17, 2023, 8:42 PM UTC

AlecSchueler wrote: post #95

ummonk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was crazy to see suggestions to wear masks or claims that covid was airborne getting "fact-checked" by the media only to reverse their position months later after WHO put out new statements. In particular, the phrase "no credible evidence" was wildly thrown around without mentioning whether there were any credible high-powered studies that had even attempted to find evidence of the phenomenon.

With hindsight we can see their mistakes but isn't following the expert line the best thing to do in an uncertain situation?

[flagged]

Re: Advertise on DuckDuckGo Search

#169

Post by loehnsberg » Wed, May 17, 2023, 8:45 PM UTC

api_or_ipa wrote: post #59

Note that you can turn off advertisements in DDG. Not sure how long that business model will continue to last, but I would _happily_ pay money to not see ads and blog spam on my serps. You need to trust your search engine before you can trust just about anything else you find on the internet, and I truly feel like Google is no longer a trustworthy company.

Take a look at Kagi Search [1] where you pay with money instead of your data. Have been using it for over a year now and must say that the search engine is surprisingly good. The only time I ever use !g bangs is when I want live updates of sports events or so.

[1] https://kagi.com/

Re: Advertise on DuckDuckGo Search

#170

Post by sam0x17 » Wed, May 17, 2023, 8:47 PM UTC

btw it is literally just bing. The only reason they can afford it is bing gives them free API access. Would be impossible for DDG to afford the usual API fees without something like a $5/month subscription for normal usage. If they didn't give it away for free to DDG, bing itself would lose double digit usage numbers, since they report DDG usage as their own usage. Source: worked for a competitor.