This is awesome news for those who prefer not to use Chromium browsers. Between Safari, Orion [1], and DDG, macOS starts to have a competitive landscape for native browsing. Will definitely try once they will implement password syncing.
DuckDuckGo for Mac
51–60 of 84 posts
Re: DuckDuckGo for Mac
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
>This was never a thing that DDG claimed they were for. DDG is about privacy! DDG absolutely claims to give more neutral results. https://searchengineland.com/duckduckgos-new-video-targets-g...
Nothing about that video or article claims that. That is about Google tailoring the results for you. DDG is doing this across the board. So everyone gets the same results as the video states.
Okay, fair enough.
But I don't think the average user would consider this "unbiased" and "not filtered" as DDG has claimed their results are.
https://reclaimthenet.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Screens...
Re: DuckDuckGo for Mac
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ad blocking support in Safari isn't great. A lot of the best extensions are a paid subscription, and the free ones seem to be noticeably worse the uBlock Origin.
I just use the Privacy Extension from DuckDuckGo. It’s not an ad-blocker, but blocking trackers just happen to block most ads.
It's called "DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials" for those will look it up in the AppStore.
Re: DuckDuckGo for Mac
#54I'm using DuckDuckGo almost exclusively[1] for years now and I'm pretty happy with it. I don't see much benefit in their browser though. I think their "Privacy Grade" , which is shown very prominently in the browser UI, is more harm than help. It is much too strict and rating everything down is counter to their intention. Is a B site still OK? What about a C, or. B+? If nothing is A, this is just confusing to the use…
DuckDuckGo for Mac (the subject of this post) does not use privacy grades of any kind. We will be moving away for them on all platforms soon, and they were never used for search rankings, just for transparency. On using our app more generally, please see my comment here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31002089 As to what is going on with privacy grades more generally, we never felt comfortable rating a site an…
I agree that privacy grades are misleading, they could be replaced by the number of trackers blocked.
Re: DuckDuckGo for Mac
#55> Download the DuckDuckGo mobile app (or update to the latest version) I must say, this is a great method of marketing. I've never been super interested in trying the DDG mobile app, but the MacOS option caught my eye. I've now downloaded the app simply to sign up for the desktop option.
An aside about the mobile app: Pros- It integrates well with google things that Firefox seemingly doesn't, eg. Autofill of payment details, and still has some adblocking unlike chrome. The fire button. Cons- It has problems downloading most things, and the renderer blanks out when scrolling sometimes, and the the blocking isn't as comprehensive as ublock/privacy badger/decentraleyes. Worth having as a second install…
An update that fixed most download issues went out recently -- are you still seeing any issues there?
On blocking, it is as comprehensive when it comes to trackers, if not more so -- see comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31002232. However, from the post: "Our built-in tracker blocker isn’t a general “ad blocker”, but it does have the effect of blocking most creepy ads. Let me explain. Using our best-in-class tracker data set we block invasive trackers, which then typically blocks the invasive ads themselves. In other words, if you use an ad blocker to avoid creepy ads and tracking, you should like DuckDuckGo for Mac."
Re: DuckDuckGo for Mac
#56Is anyone still using DDG after they stated that they will be editing results re the Ukraine war? This was a clear statement that they not letting the algorithm do the talking - they are taking a parental role and deciding what we can and cannot see. I've switched to presearch - https://engine.presearch.org/ - which I have to say I'm enjoying.
Search algorithms are preferential and biased by design. They are always tuned for a certain result, and usually that's with a bias towards accurate information. Obviously they've failed at this in the past, present, and future, but it should hardly be surprising that literal propaganda produced by a highly militarized government run by a tyrant is being down ranked.
Re: DuckDuckGo for Mac
#57I'm interested in trying this. There are a few things about it that appeal to me more than the other options. Plus, I like the idea of another browser option. However, I find it weird that in order to get on the waitlist, I have to install the Duck mobile app. That seems like an unnecessary complication. And it also excludes people who don't have an iPhone. (I'm not sure if there's a Duck browser for Android.) If it…
You can also join the waitlist from our Android app. We needed this step to limit people in the beta as we make improvements before general release, and already made an in-app waitlist for our Email Protection and App Tracking Protection betas.
As for Apple Pay, we would love to add Apple Pay to both DuckDuckGo for Mac and iOS, but currently Apple does not expose the APIs to enable us to do so.
Re: DuckDuckGo for Mac
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but I trust Apple... mostly This for me is a big part of privacy. It's not about making sure nobody has my data, that's a near-impossible task and never ending. But if I can consolidate and limit who has my data to entities I trust slightly more than others, it's a win. Example, using a credit card comes with the inherent idea that you can be tracked. Your bank obviously tracks you and knows everything about you, V…
What is interesting is for me, I kinda take the opposite approach. Kinda ... A lot of my information has been consolidated to Apple. I am not naive enough to trust them completely. But I feel like I have made a conscious choice of balancing privacy concerns with Apple (and their business practices for the use of that data) and the convenience of features. But in my opinion one of my biggest issue I have with companie…
I could see your point there as well. If talking about Facebook and Google, I absolutely am on the same side of not giving them an inch more. I see them as data-first companies, whereas I see Apple more product-first. Whether I'm correct in that is debatable.
Re: DuckDuckGo for Mac
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nothing about that video or article claims that. That is about Google tailoring the results for you. DDG is doing this across the board. So everyone gets the same results as the video states.
Okay, fair enough. But I don't think the average user would consider this "unbiased" and "not filtered" as DDG has claimed their results are. https://reclaimthenet.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Screens...
The average user doesn't understand search engines then. It's expected that any search engine will prioritize certain results over others, because that's the entire point of a search engine, it filters and ranks sites.
"Unbiased" is doing a lot of work here. I think DDG's messaging about that could have been better, and they could have better indicated what was going on when they used that language -- but to be clear, there has never in the entire history of DDG as a browser been a period where they didn't rank political content and where certain political sites weren't given higher search rankings over other sites.
There is no betrayal here because this is just how search engines work. There couldn't have been a period where DDG wasn't ranking political sites because the only way for a search engine to avoid ranking political content is to not return political results in the first place (never mind the conversation of what does and doesn't count as "political").
At most what we see here is that DDG was a little too eager to lean into people's misunderstanding about what they meant by the word "neutral", and too slow to correct people who took something away from that phrasing that wasn't true.
Re: DuckDuckGo for Mac
#60Will the browser, like the search engine, decide which political perspectives I should be exposed to?
A search engine should rank results based on quality. Misinformation should be ranked poorly. Just because some misinformation has a political bent doesn't mean it should be exempted. Surely only the purveyors of political misinformation could disagree with this.
> Surely only the purveyors of political misinformation could disagree with this.
Ah, the preemptive "if you disagree with me you're spreading propaganda" tactic. Bold.
The funny part is how much your comment reveals about your own bias. Most other people can see it, but you yourself cannot. The exact thing you're accusing others of.