this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2024
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Privacy
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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
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How about actually improving the search results? It's my default search, which means most of the time I have to do a search twice.
I had switched to DDG search and, like you, was getting more and more frustrated with their results. I then switched to SwissCows (https://swisscows.com/) and have never considered another search engine since. The results I want are always top 5. Every time. I sopped testing alternatives long ago and am extremely content using SwissCows! I would recommend checking it out!
Will check it out. Would love to use Google search less but nothing really worked for me.
Please do! Again, the results I've gotten (personally) have been far superior to Google or any other reasonable alternative.
Interesting, it's sad that for me the search is quiet garbage and feed me with result based on my IP/location and I couldn't find a option to change that like DDG does.
Garbage results compared to google results? Lol. You sure you're using SwissCows? Lol. DDG was my default before switching to SwissCows and I find SwissCows much better, personally.
Uhg it drives me nuts when I search for some obscure programming topic and then I get links to local restaurants. That's not what I was searching for!
I tried to use it, but when I searched for stuff like "kdenlive reddit" it blocks the search because it may contain violence and pornography
It says they use Bing behind the scenes and deliver search ads from Bing as well.
This is not true. A 2-min look shows they are a Swiss-based, private search engine that does not serve ads (on mobile only apparently) and has its own web index, but also uses Bing’s web index.
Apparently, they do serve adds on desktop but they're based on anonymous search results and I presume having UBlock installed would resolve this.
Medium has a whole write-up here: https://medium.com/secure-words/try-swisscows-privacy-search-for-mobile-what-are-you-waiting-for-e616dd828328
I just got that from the website itself, unless I’m misreading it:
I believe you are correct. However, only on desktop. The Medium article specifically states they do not use ads on mobile so I believe ads are only on desktop. I typically use on mobile and have not seen any ads, nor on my non-mobile Firefox config when using SwissCows. Again, the ads are based on anonymous search results and in terms of relevant search results, at least in my testing, SwissCows far surpassed competitors.
are you working for swisscows?
lol. Nope, it was just the best search alternative to Google and DDG that I found worked for me. Thought I’d throw in my 2 cents. Isn’t that the point of this place?!
All search results are bad, this isn't a ddg thing.
Sure. With google I get more that I search for. It might be bad but it works for me. Ddg does not work for me in the same way. I use just to support is them as an alternative to Google.
Ok that's fine but google's searches are shit nowadays too. In fact I'm more pissed at google because they have the talent and resources to know better.
So DDG gets my traffic even if I have to dig a bit because fuck google. Fuck them in the ass with 20 lbs of red hot industrial grade rebar.
For me they work just fine.
No they don't. You can act like they do, but you'd be lying.
How would you know what works for me? Dude, is everything ok - is google holding your kids hostage?
I've been using duckduckgo for years. It used to be great. Nowadays whenever I use it I have to redo the search with !g or !b again to see the same garbage results and maybe between the three of them I find what I was looking for.
Now I'm using searx with 3 4 enignes selected to at least get their results in the same page. It's slower than I like it to be but overall it's faster than redoing the search in multiple engines.
Well they don't know literally everything said you so of course it's a bit off.
I've just started to search a bit more specific. Works well
Agree. I find solace in SearXNG -- https://baresearch.org
But these past few years the search algorithms have changed to be anticonsumer and now users are using social sites to get information fast.
In effect the Internet has taken the place of Cable News and been ruined and dumbed down.
If you search a lot, you should really look into Kagi Search, "a highly accurate, lightning-fast, user-centric, 100% privacy-respecting search engine with results augmented by non-commercial indexes and personalized searches." Much better than the ad-supported ones, or even DDG, in my experience.
Nah, it's definitely not important enough for me to pay for it.
Kagi may not sound good on its own, but what if I told you that they also turn around and give your money to a roundly disliked bigot, and cannot be dissuaded from doing this?
The problem is that you are required to give them your payment information and you need an account. That doesn't sound privacy respecting to me.
I'm not terribly thrilled with it, but a lot of VPNs do as well. Plus, this is their business model. If you're not paying for the product, you are the product. If they're caught double dipping (taking our money and lying about logging to sell), they'll be out of business shortly.
They do claim to log practically nothing. https://kagi.com/privacy
Yeah, there are definitely better alternatives. If they allowed you to pay in cash and there website was free of non-free JavaScript I would be at least willing to try it.
Both DDG and Google search is so bad these days that I actually started using Bing. At least with Bing, you can ask the AI to find that specific thing for you. Works almost as well as simply adding site:reddit.com to all of your DDG searches, sometimes better even.