As asked.

  • Yerbouti@lemmy.ml
    0·
    10 months ago

    Why do people recommamend searchxng ? It seems to only show commercial links on my end…

  • FIST_FILLET@lemmy.ml
    0·
    10 months ago

    duckduckgo is a US company and the CEO is the previous founder of The Names Database. i don’t know how anyone trusts it when there are so many EU alternatives

  • macattack@lemmy.world
    0·
    10 months ago

    I self-host searXNG, but you can use one of the public instances as well. My understanding is that it is more secure because you’re search results are commingled with whoever else uses the instance, but you also can use something like libredirect to further distribute your search results across various instances for further security

    • JetpackJackson@feddit.de
      0·
      10 months ago

      How exactly do you self host your own searxng instance? Also, based on what you said, wouldn’t having your own instance make you stand out more?

      • macattack@lemmy.world
        0·
        10 months ago

        Someone already gave an extensive comment about how to set things up so I will skip that part.

        Good observation re: self hosting potentially reducing privacy. The way that I keep my privacy during self-hosting is to completely avoid search engines that track my IP address, and then, ideally, although the remaining search engines are less efficient than the likes of Google or Bing, the fact that the results are aggregated hopefully increase the efficiency of the results.

        For my default searches, it uses mwmbl, mojeek & qwant

      • elvith@feddit.de
        0·
        10 months ago

        Having your own instance can be bad for privacy, as all your searches come from your IP (hosted at home) or the same IP (hosted on a server). They might not be traced to you personally, but you might still get personalized results or your search may still be tracked, depending on how they track you.

        That’s circumvented when using it with some or bether many other people. But then, you need tot trust the admin of that instance.

        Self-hosted is easy if you know a bit about servers. You need a domain pointing to a server. If it’s the only thing hosted on that server and you have set up docker on it, you can just follow their instructions here to get it running in less than 5 minutes (assuming you run the default config and don’t customize all of the settings for a while): https://github.com/searxng/searxng-docker?tab=readme-ov-file#how-to-use-it

        • JetpackJackson@feddit.de
          0·
          10 months ago

          Ah ok gotcha. So it’s a trade-off of having the instance always up vs privacy? Interesting. Thanks for the detailed info! I keep meaning to get into self hosting lol

          • elvith@feddit.de
            0·
            10 months ago

            No, it’s not „always up“.

            There are three main ways how Google, Bing,… can track you:

            1. When you’re doing a search while being logged in, it’s probably you
            2. If you’re not logged in, they can set a cookie to recognize you on your next visit (although they may not be able to link this to you, your email address,… but that’s not needed). They may mix your searches with those of the other users of your PC, when those are using the same PC, browser and account (e.g. if you have a family PC with a single windows/Linux account that everyone uses)
            3. Even if you’re not logged in and don’t accept / delete your cookies, they still see your IP. Depending on your ISP you might have the same Ip for a long time or you might have it rotated regularly. Now they could only track the searches of your household (assuming everyone isn’t logging in and deleting cookies immediately)

            With Searxng, they can only do the last variant. But assuming you use a “real” server in the internet (and not one at home), it will likely have the same IP for its lifetime. And if you’re using it alone, that’s the only thing they need to identify you and track your searches. The more other people use your instance, the less useful this kind of tracking gets. Too much noise to identify a single person.

  • u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    0·
    10 months ago

    I use startpage.

    Also a bit unrelated, but I just found that Gigablast shut down 10 months ago. And also this (a bit earlier) comment from the author: (source)

    Yeah, Google forced my search engine basically out of business. I had ixquick.com as a big client at one time; I was providing them with search results from my custom web search engine. Then their CEO called me one day and told me he was cancelling, even though he’d been a client for over 10 years. He said it was because of some change Google had made to their agreement. Ixquick needed Google’s results and ads for their startpage.com website, and, even though my results were shown on their ixquick.com and later ixquick.eu sites, apparently Google wasn’t good with that.

    • RIP_Apollo@feddit.ch
      0·
      10 months ago

      I don’t think this should be downvoted. Brave Search is one of the very few search engines that is building its own index.

      DuckDuckGo and Startpage are both great, however DDG uses results from Bing and Startpage uses results from Google.

      We need proper competition against these big tech giants, and Brave Search is one of the few alternatives which is attempting to provide it. Mojeek is another search engine which uses its own index.

      • Lunch@lemmy.world
        0·
        10 months ago

        Yeah, I believe that the common consensus here on Lemmy is that Brave is ran by an A-hole and shouldn’t be supported. Secondly it’s hated for injecting it’s own ads and tracking into things aswell as the whole crypto thing.

        • XTL@sopuli.xyz
          0·
          10 months ago

          Simple fact is that brave is a series scam company that had tried one scheme after another. They are never to be trusted with anything.

  • andrew@lemmy.stuart.funEnglish
    0·
    10 months ago

    My first choice is actually Kagi these days. I pay for my search provider to have some peace of mind that my search provider isn’t selling me.

    • Crewman@sopuli.xyz
      0·
      10 months ago

      I got it not too long ago, and I love it. The results are good, and the features are what i wish all search engines had. Just not looking forward to when they sell to venture capatilists down the line, and everything becomes terrible.

      In the meantime, everyone should check out their Small Web intiative. Gives you a random blog or small website. There’s some really good articles I would have never read otherwise.

      • Atemu@lemmy.ml
        0·
        10 months ago

        Just not looking forward to when they sell to venture capatilists down the line, and everything becomes terrible.

        Judging by their ethos so far, I don’t think that’s a goal. I’d almost say it’s a non-goal.

        • Crewman@sopuli.xyz
          0·
          10 months ago

          I hope you’re right, but there’s plenty of well meaning projects and people that saw a large amount of money being offered and blinked.

        • elbowgrease@lemm.ee
          0·
          10 months ago

          I loved stumbled upon! it’s got repetitive after a while, but I found a bunch of stuff I never otherwise would have

      • sudneo@lemmy.world
        0·
        10 months ago

        I have also discovered very interesting blogs or site that I have then added to my RSS feed. They also offer a lens to only look within the small web, which they index themselves I think.

    • Pixel@beehaw.org
      0·
      10 months ago

      does kagi spit out location-relevant information? that’s something I’ve really missed on startpage, I like being able to just google “chinese food” and have the restaurants near me spit back out, and if a privacy-centered search engine can return a result comparable to something like google there that’d make me real happy

      • kinttach@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        10 months ago

        Nope. For that I use the bang shortcut feature to send it to Google.

        One nice thing about that, is that you can use g as a bang, instead of !g. It’s a little thing but easier to type on mobile.

      • randomperson@lemmy.todayEnglish
        0·
        10 months ago

        There is a map search mode that does surface location aware results, after explicitly getting your permission to get your location.

        • Atemu@lemmy.ml
          0·
          10 months ago

          Kagi does not request location permission; it uses network location (IP geo lookup).

          • kinttach@lemm.eeEnglish
            0·
            10 months ago

            So this is confusing. I did not know about the maps mode (thanks @randomperson@lemmy.today!). If you show the map and then press the “target” symbol to get your location, Kagi will prompt to enable geolocation.

            When using a regular search for “chinese food near me” I see results for a city thousands of km away. But if I select Maps first, then it shows my local area and I can search on the map.

            • Atemu@lemmy.ml
              0·
              10 months ago

              Oh, yes indeed. Map mode would request accurate geolocation.

              When using a regular search for “chinese food near me” I see results for a city thousands of km away.

              Yeah, that’s an unfortunate reality of IP geolocation, it’s not very accurate to begin with and can be extremely inaccurate in some cases too.
              Does Google (without a login) have the same issue with your public IP?

              Perhaps when a location query is detected Kagi could show a little button to use accurate geolocation instead. They seem to be pretty on top of little UX issues like these, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they implemented a solution like that if you opened a feedback thread.

    • dmnknf@lemmy.ml
      0·
      10 months ago

      I used to pay for kagi, but their CEO have some opinions that I absolutely hate about how to handle some issues, and this was a deal breaker for me. Nowadays I’m using searxng

        • randomperson@lemmy.todayEnglish
          0·
          10 months ago

          They announced a few months ago that they would partner with Brave to surface Brave search results too. The CEO of Brave is known to be homophonic. People got mad, and Kagi’s response was that they are too small to be picky, and have to focus on search quality.

          • dmnknf@lemmy.ml
            0·
            10 months ago

            And theres the issue someone opened on their page suggesting to include a special card on suicide related searches telling people how to find help, and the CEO dismissed saying it can be just someone curious making the search and he don’t want to “set a precedent” on showing things the user is not actively searching

            • tetris11@lemmy.ml
              0·
              10 months ago

              I… think I agree with that though.

              I’m not saying there isn’t a grey area between being socially conscious or full blow libertarian, but I do think that a search engine operates much better when it is unrestricted by societal qualms.

              Look how stunted ChatGPT becomes with each new rendition, or how SDXL is far more restrictive in what it can express compared to its earlier SD1.5 models.

          • Atemu@lemmy.ml
            0·
            10 months ago

            And also, like, their partnership with one of the most immoral companies on this planet drive most of the search results quality from the very beginning (Google). You didn’t sign up for a morally perfect search engine.

            When people made such a huge fuss about the CEO of some minor index that Kagi also happens to use beside like 10 others being a douche, all I could do is shake my head.