Technology
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
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Duckduckgo
Bing and DDG.
Searxng, reddit, gmap or OSM for mapping.
For work and general research I use Google and then I have to page down a lot to get past the targeted bubble links. It's frustrating.
For sensitive things (medical, legal, etc) I use duckduckgo.
For naughty photos / videos I tend to use Bing because for whatever reason, it does a great job of finding what I'm looking for.
All of them are bad to various degrees. I try to protect myself with ad blockers and I route everything through Pi Hole. They still have myriad ways of tracking you but I figure some defense is better than none. At least I don't see most of the targeted ads.
SearXNG, searches every search engine and regroups them in a single list, alongside the very powerful "bang" variant they use ("!!" is like "!" for ddg, and "!" is to only search with this search engine, ":en" is to choose a specific shortcode language.)
I use Ecosia. It works quite well, and if I ever need to search something on Google instead (like a coin flip/stock ticker) you can just do #g or #yt for Youtube They also plant trees and are carbon negative
Used to use SearXNG but got increasingly frustrated with it, so I mostly use DDG these days. Although, that being said, most search engines these days are filled with SEO clickbait trash which makes it basically mandatory to do site:reddit.com
Might have to try Kagi some day, despite my reservations about their pricing.
What frustrated you about SearXNG?
Many SearXNG hosts alter your search results without any easy way of opting out. For example, several will change Reddit links to Libreddit or use another frontend for Wikipedia and so on. Doing this, and not giving an accessible option to disable it, is unacceptable in my opinion. A search engine has no business in tampering with someone's results like this. If someone wishes to use Libreddit then that is their choice to do so - not the search provider's.
A combination of DDG and Google. DDG's results too often look like a list of sponsors so when that happens I fuck right back off to Google.
Get an ad blocker, get Privacy Badger, use a VPN, experience the internet the way it was before corporate shitbags got hold of it. Mostly.
startpage is google with what appears to be less tracking. only issue it that they block tor browser. DDG does not.
Can we stop trying to coin cute terms like "enshittification"? What that term describes is just capitalism working as intended.
There is a term that describes this behavior that we've been using for at least decades (to describe behavior that has happened since the inception of capitalism): rent seeking.