Ah crap. I was giving #YaCy, the decentralised and distributed search engine, a spin in a jail on my dedicated server. But not only does it crash a lot or goes crazy on CPU usage while not responding to queries anymore, but it seems the author is going all in on AI / LLMs too. So uhm. No thanks. Self-hosted #SearxNG next?
Do you use #SearXNG and if so, do you know an instance that has good results?
Per ritornare ad avere un motore di ricerca che restituisce quello che realmente si cerca, senza AI, senza risultati sponsorizzati, senza manipolazione, c'è il meta-motore di ricerca open source SearXNG:
per installarlo su #Firefox, #Waterfox, #Librewolf c'è l'estensione dedicata:
https://addons.mozilla.org/it/firefox/addon/devol-searxng/
qua invece la guida a #SearXNG dei @devol:
https://newsletter.devol.it/guida-completa-a-searxng-privacy-e-liberta-nelle-tue-ricerche-online/
Pubblicato nel gruppo sicurezza: @sicurezza
Per ritornare ad avere un motore di ricerca che restituisce quello che realmente si cerca, senza AI, senza risultati sponsorizzati, senza manipolazione, c'è il meta-motore di ricerca open source SearXNG:
per installarlo su #Firefox, #Waterfox, #Librewolf c'è l'estensione dedicata:
https://addons.mozilla.org/it/firefox/addon/devol-searxng/
qua invece la guida a #SearXNG dei @devol:
https://newsletter.devol.it/guida-completa-a-searxng-privacy-e-liberta-nelle-tue-ricerche-online/
Pubblicato nel gruppo sicurezza: @sicurezza
@pikarl unabhängige Suchmaschinen z.B. metager und spezifische (Forschungs-)Datenbanken nutzen?
(also: back to the 90s)
@frandevol @pikarl Man kann auch so ein Mittelding machen. Einfach einen Container mit #SearXNG starten und die Browsersuche dahin lenken.
SearXNG durchsucht alle Suchmaschinen parallel und stellt die Resultate linear dar. Ohne Tracker, ohne KI, alles sauber.
I already went through all these. SearXNG is indeed highly desirable, but I got turned down by the too numerous times my search request failed.
I ended up for the moment with @kagihq . It is not free, but doubtlessly worth it.
🌟 There is an even better one: #SearXNG
This is a metasearch engine, meaning it looks anonymously for results on bing, google, qwant and other search engines and compiles them for you. It is not located in one single server, there are several self-hosted servers running SearXNG for you on a voluntary basis.
You can find a list on: https://searx.space; Choose one from the list and start using it.
#nextcloud made it possible for me to (self-)host my (and my family's) phone calendars, contacts, and even when pictures are taken, they get uploaded to our Nextcloud instance, and NOT to google/apple.
10/10, would recommend for any household looking to #degoogle.
Others include #searxng, has literally replaced all monolithic search engines, works great, no ads or AI
#mastodon, for my #activitypub based social network
#matrix for chatting with my social network
and also #KDE.
It's amazing to see that #DeGoogling is possible. 😎🙌
Share your favorite DeGoogle apps in the comments!
#nextcloud made it possible for me to (self-)host my (and my family's) phone calendars, contacts, and even when pictures are taken, they get uploaded to our Nextcloud instance, and NOT to google/apple.
10/10, would recommend for any household looking to #degoogle.
Others include #searxng, has literally replaced all monolithic search engines, works great, no ads or AI
#mastodon, for my #activitypub based social network
#matrix for chatting with my social network
and also #KDE.
Got upset enough that I now run a small instance of #searxng which does a similar thing to #Kagi (searches across multiple services) but without its own index - a metasearch engine essentially.
Strips out ads and AI responses and was moderately useful a little while ago for ascertaining that one service had heavily de-prioritised a blog post - the interface indicates which services provided which results.
It's been more than a year since I gave up on Google Search (I switched to Kagi.com and never looked back). I don't miss it. It had gotten terrible. It's gotten worse since, thanks to AI (of course):
https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi
--
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/15/inhuman-gigapede/#coprophagic-ai
1/
Got upset enough that I now run a small instance of #searxng which does a similar thing to #Kagi (searches across multiple services) but without its own index - a metasearch engine essentially.
Strips out ads and AI responses and was moderately useful a little while ago for ascertaining that one service had heavily de-prioritised a blog post - the interface indicates which services provided which results.
Get a NAS with #Docker support (like #TrueNAS. You can install web-services like @nextcloud which is a completely self hostable Google Drive/Google Docs replacement with addons to extend functionality.
#DuckDuckGo is currently the best search engine that isn't self hosted however #SearXNG is self hostable and very customisable.
#OSMAnd (customisable) or #OrganicMaps (straight forward) for Maps. Both use #OpenStreetMaps
#Android replacement, well Android. I personally recommend @calyxos which comes with an open source replacement to emulate Play Services called #MicroG
Although #Proton is technically a great service, CEO has come out as a Trump supporter so I'll leave that to your personal opinon. Another good service is @Tutanota