Been using SearXNG for about a year now, and I just can’t deal with instances constantly getting blocked by search engines anymore. So I’d like to find something a bit more reliable. I’ve read that DuckDuckGo has had some controversies in the past, and I wouldn’t touch Brave with a 39 and a half foot pole.

    • Lettuce eat lettuce
      4•1 year ago

      I’m pretty sure DDG said they were censoring certain results that were misinformation related to Covid stuff.

      Some people flipped out because ddg said they were removing results for what they deemed as conspiracy theories about Covid, at least that’s what I heard.

        • Lettuce eat lettuce
          9•1 year ago

          Very true. Yeah I’m not saying I disagre with their choice, I just couldn’t remember akk the exact details of the drama.

          Some folks want zero “tampering” with search results. But honestly, a y search engine by definition is already curating the results before they ever get to the end user. The algos and crawler indexing they do, on top of all the ranking choices for relevance and organization is all effecting what comes back from a search.

    • @[email protected]English
      1•1 year ago

      The Microsoft trackers issue is bad and they eventually had to address it due to the backlash, but that’s not the only issue.

      They also began explicitly censoring search results and information. Regardless of any given persons stance on any particular issue, things like censoring or downranking particular results or labeling content mis, dis or mal information means an entity like DDG is acting as an arbiter of truth and limiting the information users have access to rather than acting as a tool for users to utilize in searching for info and presenting any and all viewpoints, allowing the user to make up their own mind.

      https://reclaimthenet.org/duckduckgo-down-ranking-russian-disinformation

        • @[email protected]English
          1•1 year ago

          I’ll decide what is misinformation or propaganda for myself. If someone else is limiting what information you can and cannot have or determining what is objectively true for you before you even have exposure to other ideas, everything you “know” is unreliable at best.