Looking for a decent privacy-respecting search engine
Been using SearXNG for about a year now, and I just can't deal with instances constantly getting blocked by search engines anymore. So I'd like to find something a bit more reliable. I've read that DuckDuckGo has had some controversies in the past, and I wouldn't touch Brave with a 39 and a half foot pole.
29 replies
Startpage.com
Kagi is the best search engine on the web right now.
They charge for it because they need to get money some other way then selling your data. But it's well worth it.
We have to stop expecting things to be free. They can't be free if you want privacy and quality and no ads.
I've seen it mentioned and you're quite right about expecting to get quality, privacy, and free. It's always a pick two.
But can you explain why Kagi is so good?
Also a Kagi user here. First thing you'll notice compared to other search engines is no ads at the top.
Comparing between multiple search engines, Kagi consistently delivers relevant results for world wide content, but also for more local searches.
You can further refine your search by up/down ranking sites for yourself or even create customized lenses that search specific (types of) sites if you know where you might find the answer. There are multiple predefined lenses, for example searching only .edu domains, forums or programming language websites.
I could but you should just try it and see what you think. You can search 100 times for free to check it out.
If you find what you are looking for and even getting new good results you never saw on Google, that's a very good rating. :)
kagi is great, ddg is also improving
This might interest you. Tl;dr, engines recommended besides DDG, Brave and SearX are:
MetaGer, Mojeek, Swisscows, Qwant and YaCy
You can use Farside with a Whoogle instance.
That way you don't have to rely on a single instance.
TIL about farside, it looks very useful
How can I set this up on cromite?
I've added farside.link searx instance "main link" (https://farside.link/searx) to "homepage" but it gives me the same searx instance everytime
I'm pretty sure DDG said they were censoring certain results that were misinformation related to Covid stuff.
Some people flipped out because ddg said they were removing results for what they deemed as conspiracy theories about Covid, at least that's what I heard.
Very true. Yeah I'm not saying I disagre with their choice, I just couldn't remember akk the exact details of the drama.
Some folks want zero "tampering" with search results. But honestly, a y search engine by definition is already curating the results before they ever get to the end user. The algos and crawler indexing they do, on top of all the ranking choices for relevance and organization is all effecting what comes back from a search.
Plus just a million random junk results that wouldn't be helpful.
The Microsoft trackers issue is bad and they eventually had to address it due to the backlash, but that's not the only issue.
They also began explicitly censoring search results and information. Regardless of any given persons stance on any particular issue, things like censoring or downranking particular results or labeling content mis, dis or mal information means an entity like DDG is acting as an arbiter of truth and limiting the information users have access to rather than acting as a tool for users to utilize in searching for info and presenting any and all viewpoints, allowing the user to make up their own mind.
https://reclaimthenet.org/duckduckgo-down-ranking-russian-disinformation
I'll decide what is misinformation or propaganda for myself. If someone else is limiting what information you can and cannot have or determining what is objectively true for you before you even have exposure to other ideas, everything you "know" is unreliable at best.
What's the purpose of searching, if not finding?
Then why make finding harder?
What are the controversies with DuckDuckGo? I’ve never heard of anything.
Their browser is sharing data with MS, since they're using their services instead of Google. They've been upfront about it and explained there is no way around it.
As long as you just use their search engine, you're fine.
In addition to the Microsoft trackers, I referenced this as well in another reply in this topic:
https://reclaimthenet.org/duckduckgo-down-ranking-russian-disinformation
There are plenty of other sources that also reported on this.
Between the ones I tried startpage, DDG, and Brave the 1st one gives me the best results, all of them are privacy respecting
Maybe you should give Qwant a try
Qwant just shows Bing results, like most alternative search engines.
Startpage.com Other i use are listed on privacytools.io
Do you have the ability to run your own Whoogle instance?
I selfhost SearXNG and route it's traffic through a VPN. I rarely get blocked by search engines, and when I do I just change the VPN server. You lose the benefit of your data being intermixed with everyone elses on a shared instance, but you still get the other privacy improvements from SearXNG
Mullvad Leta is a good option but it's not convenient because you need to be connected to their VPN
Search (pun) for a SearxNG (read as searching) instance.
It's an open source meta search engine. You can make it even more private if you selfhost it.
OP said they want to stop using SearxNG.
Also, selfhosting it makesist less privacy friendly, if you are hosting it only for yourself, as the search engines your instance is contacting can easily determine that all those searches are coming from a same IP. Sp, even if it is preventing the telemetry collection, a detailed profile can be made on the person hosting it. Butiff multiple people are using it, profiling becomes difficult. Same is the case with using self-hosted VPNs. They are good against censorship and for some other things, but not for privacy.
Oh, thank you for correcting me! It's right there and I didn't see it. My bad.
You raise good points. I confess I hadn't thought about it like that. So, not only you corrected me, you also enlightened me. I'm today's lucky 10000!