Set up https://noai.duckduckgo.com/ as my default search engine
Replies:
25
Boosts:
9
@cwebber in-fucking-deed
@cwebber nice! me too now!
I continually amazes me how many people do not do this.
@cwebber I didn't know they had this.
I did the same as soon as I heard it was an option. 👍
For those who may have only a partial picture, it is my understanding that:
1) Main #DuckDuckGo is Bing (Microsoft) under the covers, with the #surveillance bits removed. This is a good start IMO.
2) For some reason, DDG feels compelled to promote its version of "#AI Assistance". You can politely refuse, but as soon as you delete cookies the promotions return. They also have support for "good ads" (which I also politely refuse, and then they return unbidden). Both features should be "opt-in" and not on by default! 🙄
3) The "noai." prefix yields the same DDG with all the AI cruft removed (https://noai.duckduckgo.com). 🙂
Anyone have better information than the above?
@cwebber
I tried it for ages, but find Qwant better.
DuckDuckGo seems to use MS Bing.
@cwebber - its okay, but based in US - and despite its efforts at privacy - its still at the mercy of the demands of the current government agencies seeking info on use and users.
Better yet to find a search engine based elsewhere - say, the EU, which has much stronger privacy and security laws (even when applied upon governments) than US.
For my part, I either use Startpage or Ecosia.
@cwebber I was on duckduckgo but changed to qwant because american boicot. Qwant still have great privacy politics as far as I know.
Also ditch all chromium browsers haha
@cwebber FWIW Startpage is no AI by default & they say (!) they will keep it that way.
@cwebber if theres a massive movement away from google that could be the bubble pop
@cwebber @TimChaffee I switched to Kagi. Worth every freaking penny.
@cwebber
I did a while ago, it's so much better this way!
(For people who don't know, the full string to set is "https://noai.duckduckgo.com/?q=%s")
@silvermoon82 @cwebber This string does not work for me when there is a / in the searched string....
@silvermoon82 @cwebber I suspect the / is not encoded by firefox inside the %s. But I rarely look for somethig with a /
@cwebber
Dump all Google Stock
@cwebber I’ve been using Kagi for a while and (for me) it has better results.
Plus they’re incentivized to see me as customer, not as a blob of data to sell.
Of course they have their own problems too (like bad Safari integration).
@cwebber I finally made the switch recently too. I wanted to like DuckDuckGo for years but I found the quality of their results too much of a downgrade from Google (for the kinds of searches that I do). Now I've come around to DDG, not because their results have improved, but because Google's have deteriorated
@cwebber Honestly it's pretty good. I very rarely pop in !g to double check the Google results (which are slowly degrading anyway)
@cwebber Honestly, it's been about as good as Google for a while now. Not really because it's gotten any better though
@cwebber it's pretty good!
