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

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

#81

Post by miloignis »

gigglesupstairs wrote: post #72
miloignis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The YouTube-DL website notably does not come up in those search results, it's their GitHub page that does. The website does appear in the sidebar, because it pulls the sidebar data from Wikipedia, and YouTube-DL's Wikipedia page does come up. Note that if you do a google search ( https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube-dl ) their website is the first result.

Both the website and the GitHub are top two results at my end, in India.

Interesting, mine are github, videohelp.com, and then ottverse. I imagine that adds credence to the theory that it's because of Bing's index removing them - maybe they use a different index in India?

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

#82

Post by HigherPlain »

srvmshr wrote: post #39

Serious Question: How is the DDG search structured? Is it a cosmetic skin over Bing, or is it aggregating from other sites like Yahoo, ecosia etc additionally? If it is just Bing under the hood, how does it exist as business entity. I am sure MS will take some action to consolidate their search share rather than seeing splintered.

DDG is Bing, they use its API to get the search results. They augment it with other sources to provide the "value added" part, but that's a tiny part. DDG doesn't want you to know that it is Bing, but Bing is what it is.

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

#83

Post by aunty_helen »

https://duckduckgo.com/traffic

Have a look at a 50 day average and you can see their mistakes come to light. I've shifted off them recently.

I used to be DDG for everything, then it became anything non-work related, then on phone with FF focus, now nothing.

VPN and clearing cookies after browser close except for a few certain sites has replaced them.

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

#85

Post by qiskit »

Kiro wrote: post #50

Funny how the narrative on DDG has changed. I used to get downvoted to oblivion for merely mentioning they used Bing under the hood. Where are all the people that used to defend them so vigorously? I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same people now hating on them.

> 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 regularly. Not sure why people here are making excuses for ddg or pretending otherwise. What I would give to get the google of old.

It's sad looking back on what google used to be. All the freedom and optimism of the 2000s is definitely gone.

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

#86

Post by freedomben »

zodzedzi wrote: post #69

I use DDG as my default search engine, along with NoScript in the browser. Often when I visit a new website, I peruse the (long) list of domains that the site is trying to pull javascripts from. I keep most of those source sites in UNTRUSTED status (including some of the big names in search/ads/etc). But I've always had DDG in the TRUSTED category because I had only seen its javascript before on the main DDG website.…

I run uMatrix and have noticed some DDG showing up on other sites as well. The sites in question appeared to be (at least ostensibly) using it as a "can I reach the internet" sort of check. If I blocked requests, it would say something to the effect of "no connection detected." I wish I could remember which sites they were, but I do remember seeing at least one call to improving.duckduckgo.com from a 3rd party.

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

#87

Post by zagrebian »

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…

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.

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

#88

Post by tibyat »

Kiro wrote: post #50

Funny how the narrative on DDG has changed. I used to get downvoted to oblivion for merely mentioning they used Bing under the hood. Where are all the people that used to defend them so vigorously? I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same people now hating on them.

No post body was provided.

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

#89

Post by post-it »

KMag wrote: post #45
thematrixturtle wrote: post #24

I suspect this is largely due to DDG using Bing under the hood, which has led to similar weirdness in the past, eg all major porn sites disappearing from the results in Singapore (while Google still showed them, mind you!). Still super disappointing though, and yet another reason why trying to build a better search engine on top of someone else's tech is a non-starter.

Having worked on Google's indexing system, I can't imagine how much it would cost to write all of the crawling and indexing code from scratch, and then run it on over the visible web. You need to bootstrap somehow form an existing index if you want to get anywhere in any reasonable time. If there's a market for alternative search engines out there, AWS is already serving so much of the web that Amazon should really p…

That's an insanely good idea. Since behind the scenes, Amazon would know who owns each website that it's crawling, an AWS search database would inherently be better-curated and more trustworthy than anything an external crawler could put together. Having your website on AWS would be crucial for SEO.

Awful for competition and whatnot.

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