[HN Gopher] DuckDuckGo Removes Pirate Sites and YouTube-DL from ...
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DuckDuckGo Removes Pirate Sites and YouTube-DL from Its Search
Results
Author : TangerineDream
Score : 385 points
Date : 2022-04-15 19:22 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (torrentfreak.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (torrentfreak.com)
| zodzedzi wrote:
| 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.
|
| (Unfortunately NoScript has a limitation that you can't tell it
| to "only TRUST javascript from example.com when I'm visiting
| example.com").
|
| But recently I started noticing some websites pulling javascript
| from DDG (I don't remember which sites).
|
| So now I was wondering if DDG is getting into the tracking
| business, since they're now having their javascripts load from
| third party sites.
|
| Obviously this is anecdotal. But does anyone know if they are
| indeed beginning to track?
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Can you give us a list (or partial list) of sites that are
| pulling scripts from duckduckgo? We can look at what they're
| trying to do.
| zodzedzi wrote:
| I don't remember the sites; I'll try to find them again, and
| will share here if I do.
|
| I remember seeing 3 sites within an hour, and deciding to
| change the DDG setting to TEMP:TRUSTED afterwards.
| mormegil wrote:
| > (Unfortunately NoScript has a limitation that you can't tell
| it to "only TRUST javascript from example.com when I'm visiting
| example.com").
|
| uMatrix (which I'm using in desktop Firefox) works exactly like
| this. Plus it allows you to forbid/allow cookies, styles,
| images, scripts, media, XHR, and iframes separately (for each
| origin/domain).
| [deleted]
| zodzedzi wrote:
| Ok I'll set it up sometime soon and give it a try. Thanks.
| moehm wrote:
| It's officially deprecated, but it still works.
|
| https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix
| mrob wrote:
| uBlock Origin in advanced mode also supports this (although
| only scripts/frames/images, not the full uMatrix list).
| zionic wrote:
| > So now I was wondering if DDG is getting into the tracking
| business
|
| Anecdotal of course, but I've been seeing more and more DDG
| billboards. Those things aren't cheap, and my trust in them has
| declined the more I see them advertise in the traditional
| market.
| brewdad wrote:
| So where does one from here for everyday search? Google is
| out. Bing has many of the same problems as Google. Startpage
| blocks my VPN. Brave has always felt just a little "off" to
| me, but maybe they're worth a try. Any others I've missed
| that are worth looking into?
| californical wrote:
| I found Kagi[0] from somewhere on HN -- they make pretty
| strong privacy claims, and are in a closed Beta stage right
| now (you can give them your email, and they'll send you a
| signup link within a week or two). They're planning to
| charge a fixed rate for their search engine once they're
| out of beta later this year.
|
| So far, it seems to be working really well for me! Results
| are pretty excellent, and they support the DDG bang queries
| (like `!g`) if you ever need it
|
| [0] https://kagi.com/
| wand3r wrote:
| I second this. I use this full time now. A helpful HN
| user told me about hyperweb for iOS which I use to make
| Kagi my fulltime search engine on iOS. I have been VERY
| happy
| zodzedzi wrote:
| If they stick with billboards for advertising, I personally
| don't mind it. The issue to me is with tracking-based
| advertising(/anything).
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Suck Suck Blow has many redeeming features. One that's GOLD
| imho;
|
| duckduckgogg42xjoc72x3sjasowoarfbgcmvfimaftt6twagswzczad.onion/
|
| Running a hidden service is just so jolly gentlemanly. And it
| works in the total absence of JavaScript and no matter what
| utter lies I tell it about my randomised-per-request UA, and
| cookie black holes. The obvious dark side is that it's closely
| connected to Amazon.
| z3c0 wrote:
| > Unfortunately NoScript has a limitation that you can't tell
| it to "only TRUST javascript from example.com when I'm visiting
| example.com"
|
| I was under the impression that the custom option allowed this.
| Am I misunderstanding the point of this option?
| zodzedzi wrote:
| I see "Custom" allowing you to choose which elements (frame,
| fonts, etc.) to allow/block for the domain you're
| configuring.
|
| But it doesn't offer the ability to say "apply these settings
| to the domain example.com only when I'm visiting example.com,
| and not when I'm visiting anotherexample.com which happens to
| load JS from example.com".
| z3c0 wrote:
| Maybe I'm still misunderstanding, but when configuring the
| domain in the custom settings, it does allow you to limit
| the custom rules to only the site you're currently on, via
| the "Enable these capabilities when top page matches"
| dropdown. The default is "ANY SITE".
| zodzedzi wrote:
| I don't see any of these options in my plugin. I have
| NoScript 10, and it looks like there is a NoScript 11 out
| there; is that what you have? Maybe the feature was
| introduced in 11 and I'm missing that update; checking
| their changelog now...
|
| Edit: Correction - I do have NoScript 11; but don't see
| those options.
| z3c0 wrote:
| I think you nailed it - I am indeed on 11. So good news!
| It looks like NoScript is attentive to user needs.
|
| Edit: seeing your edit - the plot thickens. I'm on 11.4.4
| - any difference there?
| zodzedzi wrote:
| I had 11.2.11.
|
| And you're right, according to their changelog [1], they
| added it in 11.3.
|
| >> v 11.3rc1 + Contextual policies (different
| capabilities for the same origin, depending on the top-
| level domain) configurable in the CUSTOM panel (thanks
| NLnet for financial support)
|
| Woohoo!
|
| Thanks for following up and making me look, I now have a
| better setup!
|
| [1] https://noscript.net/changelog/
| z3c0 wrote:
| Glad I could help! I would hate for someone to miss out
| on what has so far been my favorite feature of NoScript.
| freedomben wrote:
| 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.
| zodzedzi wrote:
| Ok interesting. I'll try to find those sites I encountered
| again and check it out with uMatrix.
| mikece wrote:
| I thought yt-dlp was recommended over youtube-dl these days. Any
| chance DDG suppressing a less-preferred program?
| [deleted]
| anm89 wrote:
| And I have removed duck duck go as my default browser
| anm89 wrote:
| *search engine
| zekrioca wrote:
| At least when querying "youtube-dl" it shows a small snippet to
| the right where one can see the URL..
| thematrixturtle wrote:
| 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.
| troyvit wrote:
| I don't see how it's a non-starter. DDG is still a better
| search engine than bing, if for no other reason than bangs. If
| a censored search engine is the non-starter then every well-
| known search engine is a non-starter.
|
| Maybe that's the real problem. There have been some recent
| articles on HN about how "search is broken" and maybe this
| article falls under that. Because what really gets me is that
| there is plenty of legit content on "pirate sites" and blocking
| them completely cuts off that content.
| KMag wrote:
| 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 provide crawling and basic indexing (for a fee, of
| course) so it's done once for everyone, with Amazon Lambda
| processing to allow search engines to customize their indexing.
| I'm not sure if it would make them much money, but it makes
| more sense to start up a search engine on AWS using Amazon's
| crawl and basic indexing vs. using a search engine competitor's
| crawl and indexing.
| post-it wrote:
| 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.
| KMag wrote:
| Google and Bing can already crawl AWS sites just fine. As
| long as Amazon doesn't provide any first-party search
| engine, just providing search engine infrastructure, I
| think it would be a net win for competition.
|
| As it stands, if you want to bootstrap your own search
| engine, you need to base your search engine on either
| Google or Bing's index, or perform the herculean task of
| making your own crawler+indexer+search engine. If Amazon
| can commoditize the back end, and let AWS-hosted search
| engines provide differentiators late in the indexing
| pipeline and on the search/serving side, I think we'd see
| more niche search engines spring up.
| perardi wrote:
| You know what? Not that crazy of an idea.
|
| Amazon is a weirdly plausible competitor to Google. They have
| a surprisingly robust ad business, and obviously AWS.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/03/amazon-has-a-31-billion-a-
| ye...
| guyzero wrote:
| Amazon ran A9.com as a search engine from 2004 to 2008.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A9.com#A9.com_search_portal
| [deleted]
| zanethomas wrote:
| duckduckgone
| einpoklum wrote:
| Damn it! You beat me to this quip! Here's your damn +1. Grrr...
| Kiro wrote:
| 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.
| tibyat wrote:
| qiskit wrote:
| > 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.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Searx. Use Searx. Does your search engine of choice fail to
| get results that the others pick up? Searx grabs _all_ of
| them and compiles them together. Don 't miss another search
| result!
|
| Also, proxying increases privacy. Also, it's open source and
| self-hostable.
| autoexec wrote:
| It's amazing how much collateral damage is caused by our horrible
| copyright laws. Mostly just so the MPA/RIAA can protect their
| roles as gatekeepers of what we're allowed to see and hear.
|
| They can put enormous pressure on even the wealthiest and most
| powerful companies to act as copyright police on their behalf.
| Even Google is afraid of them. ISPs are forced to spend huge
| amounts of time and money working for them. Now duckduckgo is
| being strong armed into doing a bunch of free work for them too?
| Maintaining lists of websites and domains to block and removing
| links to even non-infringing material like youtube-dl just to
| keep from being sued into the ground.
|
| I don't know what it'll take to rein in these guys, but I doubt
| the courts will be the ones to do it. So far courts seem fine
| with the idea that ISPs must permanently ban users from their
| service over nothing but repeated unsubstantiated claims of
| infringements which is an insane amount of power to give any
| industry.
|
| Has any US politician ever run on a platform that includes
| copyright reform?
| rglullis wrote:
| Lawrence Lessig
| autoexec wrote:
| I forgot about that! What a missed opportunity that was for
| this country. He's exactly the sort of person we need to see
| more of in politics.
| mfer wrote:
| It wasn't a missed opportunity. It was intentional. When he
| became popular enough to get into the main debates the
| Democrat party changed the rules to exclude him.
|
| It has led many to believe the party leaders don't want his
| message out there
| perardi wrote:
| His campaign was much more about electoral reform than
| copyright reform.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig_2016_presiden
| t...
|
| Which is broadly more important than copyright reform...and
| broadly Americans don't seem to particularly care about
| either of them all that much.
| wussboy wrote:
| Either would have been a win as far as I'm concerned.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The case for copyright reform is much more clear-cut,
| though. There's no plausible argument for the current
| extent of copyright.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Both are pretty clear cut.
|
| Lessig, in particular, doesn't push for throwing out the
| electoral college all together (to avoid system shock)
| but rather to move towards proportional representation
| the state level.
|
| That is, if your state has 10 electors and votes 60:40
| R:D, then you should allocate 6 electors for R and 40
| electors for D (rather than the current "winner take all"
| method we do). This kills off gerrymandering as a tool
| and makes it so that rather than appealing to swing
| states, presidential candidate would actually have to
| convince every state that they are the right choice
| (because you don't just automatically get California. The
| difference between a 55:45 cali and a 90:10 cali would
| completely change how you campaign).
|
| Right now, Presidential candidates campaign to swing
| states which is why you get weird things like presidents
| talking solely about auto manufacturing or natural gas
| extraction.
| ausbah wrote:
| scihub still shows up!
| Vladimof wrote:
| duckduckgo is kind of a joke, right?
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| tbh I find it to be better than Google
| Vladimof wrote:
| tbh I find that all search engines are worst then Google was
| 10 years ago (including Google)
| thematrixturtle wrote:
| Google pushed the envelope on how silly the name for a major
| company can be, but DuckDuckGo is unlikely to ever hit mass
| market success with that name. (Or, more importantly, the
| current implementation.)
| Vladimof wrote:
| Google even gave duck.com to them, for free, I think
|
| I used duckduckgo on and off for probably a year ... might as
| well use Bing if you like it
| gigglesupstairs wrote:
| It also owns www.duck.com. Not sure why they're still
| sticking with DuckDuckGo.
| barnabee wrote:
| I don't need these results but I don't want to support this
| behaviour/trend.
|
| Can anyone recommend a decent non-Google alternative.
| scarygliders wrote:
| Self-hosted SearXNG [0]
|
| Have your own search aggregator.
|
| [0] https://github.com/searxng/searxng
| swethmandava wrote:
| Check out https://you.com - lets you control your sources and
| is privacy focussed
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| https://search.brave.com/
| nabeards wrote:
| https://presearch.org
| xigoi wrote:
| Cryptocurrency? No, thanks.
| lolinder wrote:
| I've been using Kagi (https://kagi.com) for a few months and
| it's been great. It's free while in beta but will be funded by
| subscription fees afterward.
|
| The killer feature for me is the ability to up-rank and down-
| rank sites in my personal results, which has been really
| helpful for curating my tech-related searches. It allows me to
| quickly find high-quality docs and eliminate the garbage.
| tsuujin wrote:
| I've been using Kagi as my primary browser for a while. My
| only complaint about so far has nothing to do with Kagi
| itself, I just wish I could set it as my primary search
| engine in Safari.
| freediver wrote:
| You can, using (unofficial) Kagi for Safari extension.
|
| https://github.com/marcocebrian/kagisearchsafari
| californical wrote:
| I've set it as my primary search engine in Firefox, it
| looks like there are instructions here about how to do the
| same in safari: https://kagi.com/faq#default
| kovalevski wrote:
| so is ddg becoming a google ?
| nmilo wrote:
| Youtube-dl's site is yt-dl.org, not youtube-dl.org. Not surprised
| the second one doesn't show up. Not sure why this blogspam is
| here on HN either.
| miloignis wrote:
| yt-dl.org also seems not to appear:
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Ayt-dl.org&t=h_&ia=web
| mdaniel wrote:
| They are both bing suppressed, and as best I can tell are
| synonymous $ dig +short youtube-dl.org.
| 95.143.172.170 $ dig +short yt-dl.org.
| 95.143.172.170
|
| as for the blogspam, I'm sure everyone loves a good free speech
| suppression story, but yeah, I wish HN offered downvotes on
| submissions, too
| syoc wrote:
| I agree that was not a high quality post from TorrenFreak. I do
| however also find the blogspam label to be unfair. TF has
| pushed some important agendas over the years.
| [deleted]
| babypuncher wrote:
| What is with this blogspam?
|
| YouTube-DL comes up just fine in search results
| (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=youtube-dl&t=h_&ia=web).
|
| So does Pirate Bay
| (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=pirate+bay&t=h_&ia=web).
|
| The headline is outright false.
| Flollop wrote:
| the complaint in the article is around the serach engine's
| "search within site" feature.
|
| Compare the following two:
|
| -
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Athepiratebay.org&t=h_&ia=we...
|
| - https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Aycombinator.com&t=h_&ia=web
| miloignis wrote:
| 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.
| gigglesupstairs wrote:
| Both the website and the GitHub are top two results at my
| end, in India.
| miloignis wrote:
| 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?
| omgmajk wrote:
| Their main website is not coming up here (sweden). Only the
| github and some random fringe-sites, obvious scams and
| readthedocs.
| rejor121 wrote:
| Well, not using DDg anymore, based on this and the comments down
| below. Any recommendations?
|
| Maybe I'll give Lycos a try again xD
| zionic wrote:
| Just switched. Lets see how well brave search works out :)
| dirtyv wrote:
| I absolutely do not trust Brave. I tried their browser on my
| iPhone for a few months. Always chose the most private
| settings, don't save history, etc, so whenever I opened the app
| there was no evidence it had even been used before. After one
| particular update, I started the app and it opened up literally
| dozens of tabs. Going through them I realized each tab was a
| site I had visited in the past. Left a nasty review on the App
| store that they never responded to, but they pushed out another
| update almost immediately. Never again. I wouldn't be the least
| bit surprised if years from now we find out the CIA was behind
| Brave, like they were with Crypto AG
| syshum wrote:
| Brave was started by one of the Founders of Mozilla.
| einpoklum wrote:
| With respect to the Mozilla project (not so much to its
| current state) - that does not mean much. Different people
| were involved with it, and that was 25 years ago.
| elforce002 wrote:
| I switched when they decided to "curate" their search.
| derevaunseraun wrote:
| 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
| know when you use their products as intended you have no privacy,
| and they don't try to hide this
|
| Edit: since DDG isn't open source like searx, how do we know
| there is ANY truth to their marketing claims?
|
| Edit: Just for accuracy, the browser extensions are open source.
| But as far as I know, the actual search engine isn't
|
| Edit: They made over 100 million in 2020. They clearly can (and
| should) get an independent audit. It's shocking that they haven't
| had a single audit. Even startpage has
| colordrops wrote:
| I used them nearly exclusively and recommended them to all my
| friends. Once they started censoring content for political
| reasons (Ukraine), that ended instantly.
| moffkalast wrote:
| I've always been a bit suspicious that despite having
| seemingly no way of making revenue they manage to plaster
| every corner of the internet with their paid ads. Like,
| aren't they supposed to be a damn nonprofit or something?
| Makes absolutely no sense.
| mastazi wrote:
| > censoring content for political reasons (Ukraine)
|
| what type of content did they censor? Do you have a link with
| more info?
| autoexec wrote:
| Here's my take:
|
| Duckduckgo could easily be fully owned and operated by some
| three letter agency. The NSA is already able to go onsite and
| tap into the data that passes through corporations and they've
| been doing exactly that for decades (see Room 641A) and they
| can force corporations to keep silent about it using national
| security letters. You should already assume that every US based
| company is sending every scrap of data you give them to the
| state.
|
| With no way to avoid your data from going to the state, what
| are you left with? Worries over companies collecting, selling,
| and using your data against you. That's a very real and
| perfectly valid concern.
|
| We know that other search engines are doing those things, so
| it's best not to use them if we can avoid it. Duckduckgo
| _might_ be doing those things, which at least gives us a
| chance, and even if they are it 'd be better to hand your data
| over to several different companies than to give them all to
| one source (like Google for example) because the more data
| points any one company has on you the more control they have
| over you.
|
| The worst case scenario would be that Duckduckgo is actually
| secretly run by Google and the data being collecting from the
| service is being used to help fill your dossier at Google but
| if that's the case we're never going to know about it until a
| whistleblower comes forward.
|
| As defeatist as this all sounds, I do believe in taking steps
| to try to protect your privacy where you can, and I take many
| steps that go far beyond what most people are willing to, but
| we also have to accept the reality of the situation we have
| where our laws and regulations do not protect us, and there is
| very little we can do to protect ourselves but depend on others
| to do what they say. That's why I use duckduckgo right now. not
| because it's trustworthy (we can't know that), but because they
| might be and that's (sadly) the best option we have at the
| moment.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| > The worst case scenario would be that Duckduckgo is
| actually secretly run by Google and the data being collecting
| from the service is being used to help fill your dossier at
| Google but if that's the case we're never going to know about
| it until a whistleblower comes forward.
|
| The problem with this (and most other conspiratorial
| thinking) is that of course a whistleblower is going to come
| forward.
|
| Are you thinking that every employee of DuckDuckGo that knows
| this (and many would have to), is paid so highly as to just
| be quiet? That not one of them thinks, "hey, it would be fun
| to be famous? It would be fun to expose this thing that is
| suddenly going to make me a hero to millions? I could write a
| book about it afterwards and make a ton of money..."
|
| And of course, Google would consider this in the first place.
| Like "maybe this isn't a great idea, because secrets like
| that are hard to keep? And maybe this could destroy our
| company and that kind of risk isn't a great idea?"
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| DuckDuckGo was never meant to defeat spying by three-letter-
| agencies.
|
| It's meant to protect us from tracking by advertisers.
|
| I don't think it makes any sense for a three-letter-agency to
| run it. They can just NSL duckduckgo. They obey the law, as
| this news item shows clearly.
| GycDH6mb wrote:
| I use DDG not for any concern over privacy, but because the
| developer tools and results are so nice. !bangs are also
| excellent and a huge timesaver
|
| `! mdn window.postMessage` .. so easy!
| charcircuit wrote:
| >you know when you use their products as intended you have no
| privacy
|
| This isn't true. Google's privacy policy is not lax as you
| suggest it is.
| derevaunseraun wrote:
| Could you clarify a bit? If you are logged in they store
| almost everything, as is evidenced by Google takeout.
| s3p wrote:
| I read about a Github issue [1] where someone reports that all
| websites a user clicks on to DDG servers. Reading the
| employee's response was eye opening.
|
| They literally do not care if it has a bad look, they just say
| "we don't collect your personal information." What??? They are
| literally admitting to collecting domains in the feed of the
| Github issue but then just copy and paste their manifesto and
| expect us to think it's fine. I seriously do not understand
| this.
|
| [1] https://github.com/duckduckgo/Android/issues/527
| girvo wrote:
| Seems understandable to me. The explanation isn't just "copy
| pasting" their privacy policy, either. You are
| misrepresenting that thread and discussion.
|
| They're not a perfectly secure E2E encrypted zero-trust
| system. They do require some measure of trust to use. This
| has always been true. Don't use them if you don't trust that
| they won't misuse your data.
| derevaunseraun wrote:
| This needs more visibility
| jeffbee wrote:
| You're right to be skeptical. They are essentially a client
| state of Microsoft. Their results come from Bing and they are
| hosted at Azure. Their privacy policy is just vague enough to
| not rule out the possibility that Microsoft collects all the
| stuff that DDG says they don't collect.
| moffkalast wrote:
| They sure sound like a Microsoft shell company. Because
| nobody that's fully conscious will ever deliberately use Bing
| they had to get creative and rebrand it with the usual
| privacy and safety buzzword slogans that VPNs have perfected
| in the last years.
| throwaway82652 wrote:
| >since DDG isn't open source like searx, how do we know there
| is ANY truth to their marketing claims?
|
| You wouldn't know this even if it was open source. Open source
| does nothing here. Looking at the source code will not tell you
| their data retention policies or what is actually stored in
| their databases. It will also not guarantee the source that you
| see matches what is on their servers.
| zagrebian wrote:
| 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.
| amelius wrote:
| Perhaps they just keep the data in a vault just in case it
| might become useful someday. Not many people need to know
| about that. It can be just some box sitting at the point
| where data enters the datacenter.
| mastazi wrote:
| > The alternative [..] sounds crazy
|
| I also think that it is unlikely but, let's not forget that
| some unlikely things are regularly found to be true.
|
| In 2019 many thought that a global pandemic was unlikely, in
| 2007 they thought that the a housing market crash was
| unlikely, and so on.
|
| Personally, I think an independent audit would go a long way
| in clearing up my doubts.
| autoexec wrote:
| > If Duck really collects user data, the moment this is found
| out, they're dead
|
| It'd take a whistleblower for anyone to ever find out. What
| are the odds of that happening? I don't think we can count on
| someone who is being paid by a company to tell us about their
| actions when their livelihood/gravy train depends on it and
| they may be opening themselves up to legal problems for
| coming forward.
|
| Not may people have the sort of integrity that folks like
| Snowden, Klein, or Tice demonstrated and even those that do
| can be pressured into keeping silent.
| throwaway82652 wrote:
| >It'd take a whistleblower for anyone to ever find out.
|
| No it won't. If you have a hypothesis you can just test it
| out. Go submit some fake personal data and then see if it
| shows up anywhere else. This trick is as old as using a
| honeypot name or email address to test if a service signs
| you up for junk mail.
| throwawaybutwhy wrote:
| A certain philosopher named Occam would suggest that the
| simplest explanation for nobody finding out so far is that it
| is three-letter agencies who might be the ultimate funders
| and data buyers.
| kwatsonafter wrote:
| A certain philosopher named Occam would suggest that
| appeals to conspiracy are much harder to substantiate than
| appeals to incompetence or irresponsibility.
| girvo wrote:
| That's a pretty wild misapplication of Mr. Occams blade,
| I'd think. There are much simpler explanations than that.
| kevinh wrote:
| Surely the simplest explanation would be that no one has
| found out because they don't actually collect the data.
| jstanley wrote:
| Is that really the simplest explanation?
|
| Or is the simplest explanation that they're not lying and
| they do what they say they do?
| belter wrote:
| Lately, almost every conspiracy theory has been proven true.
| Or a more outrageous conspiracy theory is based on somewhat
| less aggravating true facts, that are then misconstrued as a
| more far fetched conspiracy:-)
| SapporoChris wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conspiracy_theories
|
| I am very interested in seeing you explain which ones have
| been proven true and your citing of sources.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| There are so many issues with DDG, but nobody cares [1]. Idea
| of having privacy focused search engine is strong. Then use
| kagi or searX.
|
| [1] https://lemmy.ml/post/31321
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| I think we care, but sometimes DDG marketing is pretty
| strong.
|
| That link you provided makes a good case for why DDG is not
| the ally we need in the privacy war.
| mastazi wrote:
| Can you provide a TL;DR of the article? I'm a DDG user but
| open to considering alternatives, never heard of kagi and
| tried searX a long time ago.
|
| Currently, whenever DDG doesn't cut it, I add the !sp bang
| and get Google results through StartPage. I know that SP is
| owned by an advertising company but I still prefer them to
| straight up Google. I tried using searX to get proxied
| Google results but it required a few extra steps so I don't
| usually go for it.
| derevaunseraun wrote:
| When I read about the founder and their privacy policy, I get
| the impression that this is something they care about.
|
| At the same time, as far as I know there has been no
| independent audit. Considering they made over 100 million in
| 2020, they clearly have the finances to fund an independent
| audit. It would also improve their reputation and clear up
| some of the uncertainty about their collection of user data
| in practice
|
| Even better (but more unlikely): they could open source the
| search engine so we all can audit them.
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| Back when DDG first started, Gabe was asking for
| ideas/opinions on features they had and might add, and I
| talked to him on the phone for a few minutes. He seemed a
| pleasant, sincere and honest person, and I've seen nothing
| since to contradict that. Unlikely he's got that kind of
| time any more ... here's a (2018?) interview (with Vivaldi,
| they'd just made DDB their default search), listen for
| yourself. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU9U26IWSYE]
|
| Suspicious of most of the rotten-meat smells on the net as
| I am, I use DDG for everything. Compare the person(s) who
| said "Don't be evil" (then...) to picking the name
| DuckDuckGo.
| arbitrandomuser wrote:
| Open sourcing still won't solve the issue right . What they
| open souce needn't be exactly the same they run on their
| servers
| avipars wrote:
| I could be mistaken, but I believe that DDG sources data from
| Bing and other large search engines... If their sources, such as
| bing decide to remove a site, DDG gets affected by this as well.
| pojzon wrote:
| And here goes my reason to use DDG. Not because I pirate stuff,
| but because I hate censorship. Its only a matter of time till
| they implement the same filters as GGle.
|
| And in no way those filters stop dedicated ppl.
| slig wrote:
| So much for a Google alternative.
| marcodiego wrote:
| We need a p2p, independent, distributed, FLOSS search engine.
| swayvil wrote:
| Censoring my search results is the opposite of what I want in a
| search engine. I will not be using ddg anymore.
| cpach wrote:
| I don't condone the actions of the Russian government; however:
|
| If you want better results from pirate sites, try Yandex.com.
| Quite good for finding torrents.
| draugadrotten wrote:
| Russian government has always appreciated
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kompromat so be careful what you
| search for.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| I used to be able to find MP3s with Google, until one day it
| simply stopped working. Then I moved to Baidu, which worked for
| a while. I now use DDG to find movies, and yet looks like the
| curtain may be closing on that one too.
|
| I fear it might only be a matter of time before Yandex stops
| working too.
| Jerry2 wrote:
| > _Quite good for finding torrents._
|
| That's because there's no DMCA law there and they're not taking
| down thousands upon thousands of pages like Google is forced to
| do every day. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.lumendatabase.org/
| codedokode wrote:
| Yandex has an agreement with copyright holders and removes
| sites with pirated content from results. But those are
| Russian copyright holders and they mostly care about content
| in Russian.
|
| Also Yandex removes sites that are banned in Russia, for
| example BBC in Russian or Navalny's site.
| seanw444 wrote:
| I love how we have to preface our approval of something foreign
| with "now I'm not a Nazi, but...'
| tandav wrote:
| Private search aggregation engine
|
| https://github.com/searx/searx
| scarygliders wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| Installed that recently and been using it for a few weeks -
| it's great to self-host one's own search aggregator and I'm
| very impressed with the results.
| mfer wrote:
| They show up in the search results for me
| Apreche wrote:
| Someone should make a search engine that only indexes sites that
| Google and DuckDuckgo do not index. It would serve sort of the
| same purpose as like, lists of banned books.
| babypuncher wrote:
| I appreciate the sentiment but such an index would be 99.9%
| spam, malware, and phishing.
| userbinator wrote:
| In the eyes of some of those in power, youtube-dl _is_
| "malware".
| greggsy wrote:
| Not to mention some incredibly horrible NSFL shit
| hackernewds wrote:
| Not to mention, Game of Thrones spoilers
| paxys wrote:
| This is the same line of thinking as "someone should set up an
| alternate social network where users don't get banned". Except
| that 99.9% of bans at Facebook, Twitter and the like are
| completely justified, and so that's what the dominant content
| on your new platform will be.
| zarzavat wrote:
| > Except that 99.9% of bans at Facebook, Twitter and the like
| are completely justified
|
| Gonna need a big citation on that. One of my Facebook
| accounts got banned because I accidentally left my VPN on.
| Whilst I take responsibility for the terrible opsec, the fact
| is people get banned all the time for doing things that are
| anti- _Facebook_ rather than anti- _social_ (anti each
| other). I would definitely use a social network that doesn't
| feel like a police state.
| rrdharan wrote:
| Well for starters 99.9% of Facebook users don't use a VPN.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| It will be a lot of spam with a bit of useful sites sprinkled
| randomly.
| jfengel wrote:
| You want a list of spam sites, phishing, malware, and SEO-
| driven gibberish with back-links?
|
| Yeah, I guess that would probably be useful for something.
| Academic research into just how awful people are, perhaps. And,
| of course, as a blackhole list.
|
| Just make sure you get a bulk discount on disk space. Such a
| list would be _huge_.
| theknocker wrote:
| darkteflon wrote:
| To be fair, "SEO-driven gibberish with back-links" is an apt
| description of Google's actual results these days.
| eimrine wrote:
| Banned books are too dangerous for being find publicly, and
| list of banned books is too useless thing. Better to create a
| hidden torrent tracker for things nobody else wants to host.
| rolph wrote:
| a search using;
|
| anyterm :: torrent
|
| still returns alot of results for me sofar.
|
| and so does youtube-dl;
|
| top result is :
|
| github.com/ytdl-org
| mdaniel wrote:
| As for the YouTube-DL part specifically, I'm _pretty sure_ that
| 's a side-effect of them being dependent upon Bing for the actual
| index: https://www.bing.com/search?q=site%3Ayoutube-dl.org
|
| Also, _come on_; if someone gives up after one search term, which
| also includes advanced site-restricting syntax, there's no way
| they'd be able to operate youtube-dl anyway:
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=youtube-dl&ia=web
| maxk42 wrote:
| They don't rely solely on Bing. If a popular site doesn't
| appear, it's definitely a conscious decision on their part.
| muhammadusman wrote:
| Yeah idk why someone would type in the full URL of a site and
| not just the term they're looking for in a search engine...what
| a dumb way to test that on their part.
| daxuak wrote:
| What if I want to search what sites have mentioned those
| urls?
| lolinder wrote:
| That's still the wrong syntax.
| miloignis wrote:
| The point isn't that you can't reach the website by typing in
| the search term, the point is that they've deindexed the
| site. If you search for youtube-dl, neither youtube-dl.org
| nor yt-dl.org come up in the results, as far as I can see.
|
| You can still access it _from_ the results via other sites,
| like github and wikipedia (which even makes the real website
| pop up in the info square, funnily enough), but the search
| results themselves do not contain any links to the main
| website.
| ykonstant wrote:
| Absolutely! Why on earth would you test a dumb way of doing
| things on a user-facing service?! _slams hand on desk_
| Irrelevant!
| srvmshr wrote:
| 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.
| guyzero wrote:
| DDG does run ads just like Bing and Google, so it's just a way
| for Bing to get more search ad inventory out there.
|
| Once upon a time there were other sites that did the same thing
| with Google, but eventually Google decided they didn't need
| third parties to drive search traffic.
| HigherPlain wrote:
| 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.
| calibas wrote:
| HN constantly mentions DDG is really just Bing in disguise and
| they're essentially the same. However, that can't be entirely
| true because they produce different results for the same search
| term.
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=obscure+search+term&ia=web
|
| https://www4.bing.com/search?q=obscure+search+term
|
| That being said, when Bing censored "tank man", DDG's image
| search also produced 0 results for "tank man".
| cato_the_elder wrote:
| > If it is just Bing under the hood, how does it exist as
| business entity.
|
| They provide an alternative branding, targeted at "privacy-
| aware" users and hipsters.
| marpstar wrote:
| They aggregate from "over 400 sources" and run their own
| crawler: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-
| pages/results/so...
| bduerst wrote:
| Do they list their "sources"?
|
| It reads like they are saying a website = source, and the
| hyperlink for the sources is dead.
| cato_the_elder wrote:
| That's just their corporate propaganda. For the most part,
| it's Bing with some additional features.
|
| Their crawler (DuckDuckBot) doesn't have much of an impact on
| the search results, it's mainly used to provide instant
| answers. [1]
|
| [1]: https://seirdy.one/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-
| indexe...
| etataetaet wrote:
| To be fair the instant answers are usually quite good!
| aunty_helen wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| twoxproblematic wrote:
| jdright wrote:
| Ok, this is the start of the end for ddg, it was good while it
| lasted.
| eimrine wrote:
| Who really needs a search engine nowadays? The google or ddg or
| whatever is just a search aggregator for making no need to open
| Wikipedia for searching who is Franko then open weather.com for
| figuring out the weather next weekend then open SO for quitting
| vim and so on. I can not remember when I really searched
| something general last time which is impossible to find via
| single-site search. And of course free porn videos and other
| pirated stuff and cool-hacker-utils is never been searched using
| government-friendly search businesses.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| > Who really needs a search engine nowadays?
|
| Apparently a lot of people since google processes 6B searches
| every day?
| thematrixturtle wrote:
| I have no idea what the actual number is, but that sounds
| low. The average HNer probably hits three digits every day
| easily.
| eimrine wrote:
| 6B showings of ad-loaded webpage does not mean 6B successful
| results shown. And my claim is that most of successful google
| searches is just a wrong choice of a search engine.
| jjulius wrote:
| It's cool that you've had enough experience to just know where
| everything that _you_ need is. Not everybody has the same
| experience with finding things on the internet as you, nor is
| the average internet user anywhere near as technically-minded
| as you.
| teekert wrote:
| Hmm this will affect me, I always type tpb in ddg to go there.
| I'm also happy my provider is small and freedom loving so it
| isn't blocked (neither is RT for that matter).
| kingcharles wrote:
| What about archive.org? Will they delist that too? That
| definitely contains a lot of copyright-infringing data. Where
| will this end?
|
| Pirate Bay actually contains a lot of non-infringing items too.
|
| Who watches the watchers?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > Pirate Bay actually contains a lot of non-infringing items
| too.
|
| Wait, what have they got? _Actual_ Linux ISOs?
| robbedpeter wrote:
| And public domain content, and content licensed for free
| distribution, and abandoned software. The good stuff is there
| too, but the legit free stuff isn't all bad.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| What is going on with this company in the past several months?
| Completely destroying any goodwill they had
| Chalbroth wrote:
| DDG sucks in many ways. Besides the engine performing quite
| poorly, it also relies on third parties and so will return
| filtered results they may not even control. They also never
| supported IPv6 and are hosted at Microsoft or Amazon.
|
| IMO, there is no credible search engine today.
| QuikAccount wrote:
| > are hosted at Microsoft or Amazon
|
| I agree with most of what you are saying but this is silly. I
| get "Microsoft and Amazon bad" but basically saying "host your
| own infrastructure worldwide and index your own corpus or you
| are a bad actor is rather inane.
| walrus01 wrote:
| isn't duckduckgo just a skin on top of bing?
| bduerst wrote:
| They claim to have results from over "400 sources" but then
| don't list them.
| HigherPlain wrote:
| It's Bing.
| [deleted]
| NeonOverflow wrote:
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| I've started hearing ads for DuckDuckGo on NPR, of all places.
| Could be completely coincidental, but I find the timing
| suspicious.
|
| Do you think they're gearing up for an IPO?
| derekbaker783 wrote:
| I think they've advertised there for a while.
| ronsor wrote:
| I've seen DuckDuckGo ads on network TV.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I ditched DDG after it started to "downrank Russian
| disinformation". Thanks, I'll decide for myself where real
| disinformation belongs to. It became just another tool of western
| propaganda. I'm not sure if Google does that, but at least they
| don't paint themselves as good guys anymore.
| TheWill wrote:
| Quit using DDG when they decided to start censoring stuff. Been
| using brave search ever since, it's actually pretty good.
| funshed wrote:
| Have they? They whitelabled MSN/Bing search. It's probably
| Microsoft.
| [deleted]
| ravenstine wrote:
| I'm just waiting for the day they announce an NFT or a "trusted
| partners" program with establishment media entities. Come on,
| DDG, you've come this far, so truly jump the shark for our
| amusement.
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