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Duck Duck Go

Yeshuasdaughter

Yeshuasdaughter

You know, that one lady we met that one time.
V.I.P Member
Okay, so to start out, I should probably let you know that I'm about as tech-savvy as your Grandma, and should be treated as such. For instance, I still don't know what all the buttons on the TV remote do.

Moving on...

I first learned about and began using Duck Duck Go back in about 2011, as other more popular browsers were beginning to track their users and censor websites.

A couple years ago, I started noticing that my Duck Duck Go search results were somewhat censored. And worse, they were nearly identical to what I could find with Google or Bing. This was not the case before.

I used to be able to search through websites that had a very diverse range of opinions on many topics, but now, everything on Duck Duck Go seems so homogeneous, and there is not a wide range of voices and opinions. Everything sort of echoes whatever narrative the corporate media is schpeeling, without any dissenting thought.

I did some experimenting, many times, and it seems Duck Duck Go is censoring many news outlets and websites.

When I research, I like to hear all sides of a story, and really dive in to try to discover, "What is truth?", but with all this censorship, every search engine just seems to be an echo chamber of all the others.

Does anyone know of a search engine that doesn't censor results? I'm not talking about porn or gore. I really don't want to see that. But what I mean is a browser that does not censor thought or opinion. I'm so sick and tired of everything mimicking (or being owned by) Google.
 
Webcrawler?

I like DuckDuckGo but was not websavvy enough in 2011 to know the whole censor thing.
 
I started using Duck Duck GO a few years ago. I still use Google, reluctantly, as it is so useful for many things.

iu
 
Brett says he thinks Duck Duck Go is a meta search engine that searches other search engines like Google and Yahoo on your behalf, and that their sources' censorship will come through, which is largely to do with preventing disinformation and conspiracy theories, which by the way we agree with, since we are fans of science and reason and informed critical thinking and not the anti-intellectualism/alternative so-called facts game that's been spreading around the world lately and damaging democracies and public health efforts.

Not the same thing as the Internet censorship of Russia, China etc which maintain the propaganda of their respective autocrats and quash dissenting voices of reason and any critique. Worth noting the difference.

PS: And we do think Google, Facebook etc are evil, but for other reasons, like their tracking and commodification of users. Not because platforms like this are finally and belatedly starting to do something about what I mentioned above, in some cases after being dragged kicking and screaming in that direction - because it's in the opposite direction of their business models, which fan and exploit conflict and drama provided by disinformation narratives. Just thought I would add that to be clear.
 
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Callistemon said:
Brett says he thinks Duck Duck Go is a meta search engine that searches other search engines like Google and Yahoo on your behalf, and that their sources' censorship will come through, which is largely to do with preventing disinformation and conspiracy theories, which by the way we agree with, since we are fans of science and reason and informed critical thinking and not the anti-intellectualism/alternative so-called facts game that's been spreading around the world lately and damaging democracies and public health efforts.
Click to expand...

Good point. In this regard it's not so much about subjective beliefs or personal ethics, but rather a primary business concern- their objective liability exposure.

Those who use such web services to proliferate false narratives, particularly those which have been formally adjudicated and/or debunked are creating potential liability risks not only for themselves, but for the online platforms they use. Something that can make the suits- and their shareholders nervous for good reason.

While there remain a few players willing to operate in an unrestricted fashion, it may be inevitable that they come under the radar of either attorneys representing the government, or attorneys representing individual plaintiffs. Forcing them to fall in line with the larger entities famous for having those "deep pockets".
 
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Use any search engine and put in the search field:

search engines

That should bring up lists of search engines with reviews, backstories, biases, etc. Plenty to let you choose one as your favorite.
 
For those looking for torrenting sites...(pirated videos, etc) pretty much all search engines are excluding them.

And those that are still around are supposedly mostly Russian. Probably not sites people with Windows and American ip addresses want to venture into anyways.
 
I don't think you understand what DDG is or ever was.

It simply promised a trade off of less personal accuracy by doing away with personalized tracking. While Google may know that you own X business and a general search can therefore be narrowed down to something related to your business, in theory DDG knows nothing about you and will show the same results to anyone that makes the same search.

The idea of a search engine that "doesn't censor results" is an oxymoron, because otherwise how would any engine pick what results to show?

If it decides to show the most popular websites, likely what most people are searching for, wouldn't that mean it's inherently "censoring" smaller sites even if in the end showing more accurate results?

Also, let's say you search something about climate change and it shows scientifically respected sites but doesn't show the random blog of lunatics peddling objectively false conspiracies. That's the very definition of censorship yet it's also the search engine doing exactly what you asked of it, showing you relevant information over irrelevant one.

I suspect that what you really want is a search engine that will show you what you want to see regarding the topics you're interested in but they do not because you probably hold fringe or discredited opinions on said subjects.
 
Another comment on an alternative search engine with comprehensive reasons:


Which all seem to be leading to the same search engine of choice...
 
Brett has some interesting links to add to yours here, @Judge - and I'll hand over to him for a minute so you can get it straight from our household IT specialist. ;)

From Brett:

I've been unhappy with the "known" search engines for a long time, but recently the quality of my results has gotten noticably worse. I have been happy, lately, to discover a number of boutique, tiny search engines that are not driven by commercial interests, and promote interesting content instead of what someone is trying to sell you.

One example is Marginalia Search run by one guy out of his living room. From the home page: "Where this search engine really shines is finding small, old and obscure websites about some given topic". Another interesting idea is that he wanted to make search like flipping through a magazine rack, so you can feed it a website you like and it will come back with similar websites, with thumbnails so you can visually gauge your interest. Example:
Marginalia Search - browse:random

His blog is very interesting on the topic of constructing the search engine, and how it works under the hood, and how he avoids link-spam, link-farms, and other worthless content optimised to "game" Google. MEMEX - Gemlog

There are other tiny interesting search engines around, each exploring different ideas and niches, each making the internet a richer place to explore and work.
 
Callistemon said:
Brett has some interesting links to add to yours here, @Judge - and I'll hand over to him for a minute so you can get it straight from our household IT specialist. ;)

From Brett:

I've been unhappy with the "known" search engines for a long time, but recently the quality of my results has gotten noticably worse. I have been happy, lately, to discover a number of boutique, tiny search engines that are not driven by commercial interests, and promote interesting content instead of what someone is trying to sell you.

One example is Marginalia Search run by one guy out of his living room. From the home page: "Where this search engine really shines is finding small, old and obscure websites about some given topic". Another interesting idea is that he wanted to make search like flipping through a magazine rack, so you can feed it a website you like and it will come back with similar websites, with thumbnails so you can visually guage your interest. Example:
Marginalia Search - browse:random

His blog is very interesting on the topic of constructing the search engine, and how it works under the hood, and how he avoids link-spam, link-farms, and other worthless content optimised to "game" Google. MEMEX - Gemlog

There are other tiny interesting search engines around, each exploring different ideas and niches, each making the internet a richer place to explore and work.
Click to expand...

This is actually really cool. Thanks for sharing; the Marginalia stuff reminds me of being eight or nine & discovering hobby websites on the Internet at the public library.
 
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