Many “alternative” search engines are better for privacy, but they are still vulnerable to censorship, because they rely on g**gle and m*crosoft’s indices for their search results. This isn’t a deep-hidden secret either, many of them disclose what search index they use on the “about” page, for example:
- https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/
- https://support.startpage.com/hc/en-us/articles/5138782571796-Why-isn-t-a-particular-site-appearing-in-the-results
- https://www.ecosia.org/privacy
There are still search engines that (claim to) maintain their own index. Most surprisingly, br*ve:
Censoring names in a post about censoring is hilarious irony.
That crap always reminds me of late 90s GameFAQs where people would think that spelling it “sh!t” wouldn’t get their comment deleted
I remember a page where people could post gossip about other people, but you weren’t allowed to cuss, so people wrote things like:
Becky Jones from Jamesdale High is a total sloot. She fricked a bunch of guys and even gave them bjobs and handj’s
Well, they were correct more often than wrong.
I especially like censoring Brave but then providing a link with the name
I imagine it’s to not provide SEO for the companies
I had a high school friend shill me brave because he worked there. Was genuinely into all the tech bro stuff and gold. So much gold. I used it for maybe 2 weeks before I got tired of the crypto. I should thank him though, that pushed me into FOSSland.
These days crypto is opt in, and you can disable the Brave rewards button if you like:
https://community.brave.com/t/completely-disable-crypto-wallet-and-brave-rewards-features/214563
Thats nice to know. Their CEO is a massive right-wing dickhead. So it doesnt matter whats optional its not worth it to use in the end.
Brendan Eichmann
Brendan Eich
Looks like Brendan Eichmann is a wrestling coach from Minnesota
It was a joke. I was comparing him to a nazi.
Come on.
Well, looks like it flew right over my head
You shouldn’t base your browser usage on whether or not the boss is a bigot. How many CEOs of big tech companies do you think are lovely people? There are plenty of real reasons not to use Brave, the founder being a knob is just the icing on the cake.
No, you absolutely should. Don’t use products that enrich pieces of shit. Thats how we got here in the first place by giving the sociopaths the money.
opt in
Unfortunately there is still one thing that you have to opt out of manually, and that is monetized new tab pages. It’s not strictly crypto-related, and it’s only like three clicks to opt-out, but can be slightly annoying if your workflow relies heavily on browser profiles like mine. Still a great browser tho.
I use Kagi, and while it does use google index, it also uses many other indexes and its own index. I wonder how this impacts censorship.
https://help.kagi.com/kagi/search-details/search-sources.html
Edit : Not much detail here but they do comment on it here :
https://help.kagi.com/kagi/search-details/search-quality.html
Avoiding Censorship and Bias
We do our best to avoid censorship and bias. Some results from traditional sources will reflect biases, but they’ll be balanced by results from other sources. Also, we have built product features to help with bias reduction. For example, our “World News” Lens includes articles from respectable media outlets across the globe.
One of the signals that does influence our ranking is the presence of ads or trackers. We penalize bloated sites regardless of their agendas.
I like the idea, but I can’t justify $10 a month. Downvote me or whatever, but I’m broke and need to cut as many subscriptions as possible.
That’s fair.
You could argue that it’s worth the money to get better results and avoid Google, but with so many companies trying to take $10 a month you have to draw the line somewhere.
No, I’m with you. $120 a year is too steep for searching for me. I like what they are trying to do but I don’t think the average person will spend that much.
Why downvote? That’s a fair point. There is a free tier with a few free searches per year (2000 or something). You could sign up and use this budget whenever your search engine of choice fails you.
The free tier is 100 searches one time only.
Really? Dangit, I’m misremembering stuff then it seems. Sorry.
Yea, I just think I either pay for something like Kagi, or I am subject to something like Google. I’m not sure there is a third way that pays for the servers and talent needed to deliver search results, but my imagination might just be limited.
I swear to God you people must work for Kagi.
Lol, I know how you feel. Not long ago there was suddenly a bunch of chatter about it on Lemmy and I was thinking the same thing, that it had to be marketing. But I’m a curious sort and I was so sick of bad google results so I tried it.
Now that I have used Kagi I’m convinced it was organic chatter. I really do like it, I think it’s better, and if they offered money for posts I’d take that money because I’m paying $10 a month for a search engine, lol.
I thought this was a possibility at first, then I used it. The lad time is basically instant, the results are always good and it has a bunch of features with AI etc.
How does it compare to DuckDuckGo?
With Kagi I get what I want and sort through way less to no junk. With their lenses I can push reliable sources up and other sources down. I really like it.
Yeah. I hope that they provide a way to exclude Brave from the search engines (not optimistic considering the libertarian tech bro tantrum the lead dev threw but…).
But I think the advantage is really the personalized results over anything else. Sometimes you get some REAL fucked up SEO-heavy results. So you just block that site. And then everything works.
It DOES make me more than a bit concerned over how much data they have on me (especially as you need to use an access token to use it in an incognito window… where you are searching for the sketchiest shit) but… google already has that so…
They claim that no information on searches is a saved to an individual for now.
Companies claim a lot of things. Let’s see how the first legal issue plays out
I will say part of the reason I find them more trustworthy is that their business model hinges on some sort of ounce of privacy. Google’s hinges on exactly the opposite.
I strongly encourage reading up on the various VPNs and the like that charge people while still monitoring and tracking everything they do.
Ok that sounds neat thx
As sure as flies on shit! Any time search engines are mentioned there will be people in the comments writing about Kagi.
When I search using DuckDuckGo, I am searching using B*ng? 🤮
Yeah, its like a Bing without providing any information besides your search
I’m finding Copilot better than any search and better than buying by itself and world’s better than Google search, but it’s totally not private… So anything you seem sensitive or private you just can’t use it for
LLM powered search is so great, if it can’t find the information you’re looking for it will just make up random bullshit for you! And all it costs is Microsoft looming over your shoulder to datamine and sell everything you ever do!
B🤮ng
Hehe Bong
What’s the backwards R one?
Yandex, a Russian search engine
I don’t know how safe it is to use but man, their reverse image search has always impressed me. Miles better than Google’s or Tineye’s.
I always figured the markets that Google didn’t penetrate successfully (Russia with Yandex, China with Baidu, maybe Korea and Japan) probably ended up with their own circle of innovation just because there wasn’t a huge dominant player sucking all the talent and money out of the room. Thry might have gotten an edge through noncompetitive regulatory policy, but that bought them thr time to build domething more duited to local needs.
Back when it was socially permissible to acknowledge Russia did anything well, Yandex was doing some fairly innovative stuff.
Yandex is op if you want to finding movies “legally” for streaming
Still Privacy >> Censorship. If the search engine is privacy-friendly then we can talk about censorship. No brave bullshit
And this should be discussed on !privacy@lemmy.ml
I found it today on HN
What about Qwant
trees > censorship on the internet
If people want to find alternative search engines check out this actively maintained list
I don’t trust brave, especially given who the owner is
I’ve been spelling this for years…
Why would you trust a browser whose business model is based on user activity tracking.
Who before they were even remotely popular or profitable had one of the largest ad campaigns I’ve ever seen for a tech product. Who’s funding that and where is their value proposition coming from for that funding?
Hell no I’m not going to trust it
where mojeek?
@Mojeek@lemmy.mlwe’re gettin’ censored here 🫠
don’t you worry. imma make a meme specially highlighting you :p
deleted by creator
This is about search engines not web browsers. Firefox doesn’t have a search engine
I was more of thinking privacy. If it is causing issues, I can remove the comment.
OP: a lot of people talk about privacy at the expense of censorship
You: let’s talk about privacy and completely ignore censorship
Truly incredible discussion, here
Point taken.