This is a bad diagram
Yeah.
The columns are squished together so the titles are basically one word and the data creates a ton of empty space. The colors should be lighter shades. White on yellow is just annoying. The row separators don’t extend to the row header, so it is easy to get lost when trying to compare the actual data.
My eyes just get confused and nope out.
Also the actual diagram is bad.
As in?
As in the actual data is bad, inaccurate, opinionated and doesn’t explain anything. Half of the chart is just “Cloudflare lol”, like at least explain why.
It’s a chart that looks useful at first glance, but the more you look at it the less you learn.
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Brave Search fully using their own index since April 27, 2023. But they refuse to identify their crawler and rely on googlebot if sites want to be excluded. Also their search API monetization of possible copyrighted content while understandable is a bit doubious due to their public stance on transparency.
StartPage also blocks VPN usage.
DuckDuckGo by their own admission now re-rank “trusted” sites to the top when it comes to what they clasify as"misinformation" so calling their “censorship” mild is huge understatement.
If I wanted to search for unverified info or misinfo, I could, but almost always I am lookkng for factual and sourced information. Please don’t force me to do otherwise.
It’s more about someone else making the decision on what is “trustworthy” for you
That’s how all search engines fundamentally work though. The whole point if that they try to bring the most relevant results to the top and downrank things like spam and unhelpful/irrelevant results. Downranking misinfo spam websites isn’t “censorship”. Not ranking resullts would make search engines completely pointless.
I’d disagree with equating disinfo with spam. Spam seems easier to classify, sites that try to get ahead by having nonsense keywords or whatever and want to sell you something. Dis- or misinfo is trickier, you need to decide what is correct info. Do you understand what I mean?
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Absolutely those things are different. But the point of a search engine is to, crudely and algorithmically, sort out both.
StartPage also blocks VPN usage.
Only accidental I think. They have the option of reporting that you’re behind a VPN proxy when it happens.
Didn’t have an issue since a year. Think they changed sth (airvpn)
Using mullvad I have to always come back to a specific country that I used a lot couple months ago
That sounds funny, why do you think that happens?
dunno, but already changed to another search eng on mobile
I still get it very occasionally with Proton VPN.
For me it was way worse a year ago. I would get blocked all the time, now it rarely ever happens.
I do agree, it used to be a lot worse. I switched away from StartPage for a while because it was so frequent.
If they pretend to be Googlebot they should be pretty easy to block, Google will let you check the source IP of Googlebot to prevent others from pretending to be it (which on some sites bypasses certain pages; plenty of PHPBB forum out there that will require an account to view threads, except when your user agent is Googlebot). It’s just a matter of doing a DNS lookup, which can be cached and shouldn’t take very long, even for larger sites. A similar method works for Bingbot as well.
Doing this verification will also kick out tons of other crawlers and bots that you probably don’t want anyway.
I don’t really see what optimisation of search engines has to do with censorship. Search engine users want answers, they’re not just an SEO API. Without some manual balancing, search engines would be as useless as the second or third page of Google.
They don’t pretent to be googlebot, they use their own crawler they just don’t share the name they use for it, so sites can’t exclude it with robots.txt. They just scrape the same sites that googlebot does, so if the site is excluded by googlebot they also skip it.
StartPage also blocks VPN usage.
Ancedotal but Startpage works perfectly fine with VPN for me. Certainly better than Google, which works but requires a lot of annoying captchas.
I used Startpage for a long time, and I’m perpetually connected to VPN on both my PC and my phone (different nodes at different times)
Never had a problem with my VPN
Interesting that you’re doing a search engine comparison, and not add google into that comparison. Also, there are no sources at all, so we can’t verify any of it, and I know that some of that data is incorrect. Sources would help us (the end user) determine whether our data is incorrect or yours is incorrect due to poor sources. Leaving out the sources, means this chart is actually rather pointless, because it can’t be verified (as correct or incorrect).
E: also, ignoring cloudflare with this statement and zero explanation, removes author credibility. Either explain exactly why “cloudflare so who cares lol” or don’t include that section at all.
This chart reminds me of this, which was actually quoted in a presentation as an actual quote…
The chart source is from here: https://digdeeper.club/articles/search.xhtml
Cloudflare makes you activate cookies and JavaScript, which serves to deanonymize you.
I couldn’t quite believe the Cloudflare thing, so I loaded up a new Firefox profile, disabled all cookies, and disabled JavaScript and accessed one of my websites that sits behind cloudflare and… It worked just fine.
Do you have more info on that? Is it only in certain cases?
I believe it’s only when they have anti-ddos enabled or CF thinks you’re a bot, it makes you resolve a captcha (sometimes), and that requires cookies and JS.
I get denied enough it is noticeable when I’m on a VPN with Mull. Sometimes it let’s me do a captcha, sometimes its just a straight up block. Usually dropping my VPN fixes.
It was made by an edgelord for edgelords.
CuckCuckGo belongs in the trash instead.
shouldn’t that category be “SearXNG” instead of “SearX”? – SearX went into maintenance mode a year ago and then archived their code last week – searx.space isn’t even bothering to list SearX instances anymore
Kinda bummed about that because some of the instances I liked were SearX, but I guess it’s time to move on.
How about Kagi?
I was looking for Kagi, but then realized they didn’t even have Google, which makes me think the data is probably nonsense and it’s just for the cloud flare thing.
I mean it’s kinda pointless to compare Google’s privacy features since they have none
They are the biggest player, and thus the baseline for comparison. How can people know how much better something is than Google if they don’t include the stats for Google?
Google is the default. How can you say that duckduckgo has good results if you dont compare them to google. Trash diagram.
Fully agree.
We don’t even know what search query was used either, and what the criteria was used to grade seach engine.
DDG’s results are perfectly fine to me - however for best results you shouldn’t structure search queries in the same way you would for Google
IMO trying Google after using ddg for a couple years just shows some big weaknesses in the quality of Google’s results. Fake SEO clone sites et al ☹️
Maybe that’s why ddg doesnt click with me.
How do i use ddg for technical questions that need some obscure forum posts from 15 years ago? I obly get stackoverflow and windows forums. Those arent helpful at all.
They’re the worst in terms of being the panopticum, but I don’t understand how easy it is to buy data from them.
I’m not impressed with Kagi. I was lied to by someone at Kagi when I asked a question about their using geo-location data.
(Well, technically not lied to, but it was clear they were being deliberately evasive and deceptive, which didn’t impress me much, since it’s a paid service I was considering.)
Obviously, my take may be biased, so I’ve added screenshots from the exchange I had with Kagi, but I’ve blotted out all names for privacy. Even though this left a bad taste in my mouth, I hope I’m not depicting this unfairly, so now you can decide for yourself.
Edit: If you’re tempted to respond in bad faith, go annoy someone else. I’m not taking the bait, I’ll just block your ass.
Edit Part 2: Why do all my comments attract the most insufferable neckbeards?
A. It’s clear why I found it deceptive since he was being a pedant about what constitutes search results (if a widget is summoned by a search term – which didn’t request it btw – then that widget is part of the results. It’s batshit looney to think otherwise)
B. But I literally posted screenshots for full disclosure and for the sake of honesty – and I’m still getting losers posting cringe in response. Fucking suburbanite straight white male energy stfu
C. Get blocked, fuckwits. If I wanted your opinion, I’d ask.
Which part of that replay was deceptive?
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I don’t think that’s (intentionally) deceptive, it seems like two people talking past each other… I’ve been frustrated with customer support at a lot of places, I don’t take it to mean those places are bad though. Good customer support is expensive and hard.
Thanks for sharing though, I’ll keep that in the back of my mind.
Edit: I’m also curious why you care if they serve you geolocated results? That might be part of what the support agent was confused by.
… also maybe tone it down a bit, I don’t think that other guy was trying to bait you and get you all hyped up.
I want a search engine that does not use any location data whatsoever to manipulate results because I see it as an extremely problematic practice. For example, someone who lives in my area would be more likely to see agencies and interests that align with fascism, since this is a heavily fascist state.
This, and it doesn’t seem like a big ask to have a search engine solely respond to deliberate input from the user, so I’m not sure why I need to defend searching for such a thing. The agent could have simply disclosed that they do use locational data to provide their services, and I would have moved on. Instead, he tried to dodge the question. Not only that, but he became very pedantic about what constitutes a “search.” In my interpretation, any widgets or any results whatsoever that use locational data would fall under this umbrella. It is needlessly pedantic to claim that it is something else entirely, since as you can see it was presented to me in response to my entering a keyword, a keyword which I might add did not request a widget at all.
While I feel like that in this case it is a non-problem, I could see while someone would like the ability to de-localize search results. Also agree on the rude aspect, thats just unworthy of such a civil discussion.
Legitimately, what part of that was deceptive? They outright stated that those specialized widgets you can’t disable. Your post here is far more misleading in comparison.
Why do all my comments attract the most insufferable neckbeards?
A. It’s clear why I found it deceptive since he was being a pedant about what constitutes search results (if a widget is summoned by a search term – which didn’t request it btw – then that widget is part of the results. It’s batshit looney to think otherwise)
B. But I literally posted screenshots for full disclosure and for the sake of honesty – and I’m still getting losers posting cringe in response. Fucking suburbanite straight white male energy stfu
C. Get blocked, fuckwit. If I wanted your opinion, I’d ask.
the most insufferable neckbeards
https://lemmy.one/pictrs/image/b7ad3f91-d781-4085-9757-873ed7e6f4ee.jpeg
he was being a pedant about what constitutes search results
You mean they were being precisely accurate
Fucking suburbanite straight white male energy stfu
I’m not male
If I wanted your opinion, I’d ask
You posted to a public forum, but man you’ve really got an attitude about any contest to what you’ve said.
I just love what has become of this thread:
- Think it’s a nice post
- Look for Google/Kagi, but they’re missing
- People ask for sources, realize OP has chart from VERY dodgy conspiracy website
- People start accusing Kagi Support of lying to their face, Screenshota of convo attached
- Other users don’t think its a lie, rather a misunderstanding
- Insults start
- ?
Nice summary
Is cloudflare bad?
bad in the sense that its 1 (american) company that controls a hellala lot of the internet
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You? Me?
Why is Brave Search considered as heavily censored?
Because it doesn’t show the conspiracy theory enhancing the authors conspiracy anti-covid/anti-moon landing opinion :
meaning you will never find the truth about the moon landing or COVID vaccines there even if the query asks for exactly that. What you will find - though - is a bunch of irrelevant “fact check” or “science loving” sites, or ones shitting on “conspiracy theorists”.
Ahhh that’s reasonable. Thank you for the info!
Leaving out all other conspiracy theories, since I may agree with some of them, the claim that the moon landing was staged strikes me as mindblowing over everything else. You just need to look at the Moon wath a telescope to disprove it, no need to believe to any scientist.
Are the Ecosia results up to date? They used to be great, but awhile ago they changed something and it’s been hot garbage since. I still use them because trees, but I usually search with Ecosia, don’t see what I want, and then have to use another search engine.
Today I learned WebCrawler still exists.
First search engine I ever used in the 90s
Nifty. Did you make this op?
Nope, I got it from here: https://digdeeper.club/articles/search.xhtml
after looking around on that site, i deeply mistrust the original author about probably everything. using the search term “christchurch shooting was faked” and arguing that the search results attack conspiracy theories, which means that there is censoring going on - that does not fit my definition of sanity.
e: ah, and the moon landing was fake and covid shots are evil. dudes, this guy is nuts, dont even take the time of the day from him.
Wtf. Didn’t even have to go too far. Here in the brave section
meaning you will never find the truth about the moon landing or COVID vaccines there even if the query asks for exactly that. What you will find - though - is a bunch of irrelevant “fact check” or “science loving” sites, or ones shitting on “conspiracy theorists”.
WTF is wrong with this person.
This “article” is about spreading search engine for people doing “their own research” and making the US look stupid on TV or something.
I am for no “censorship”, however sometimes it is needed, because as for the example of the vaccines or moonlanding, people may je mislead, then search s* online and get a trash conspiracy article which enhances that stupid opinion. In this case there needs to be a way to spread good information.
While I don’t agree with his conspiracy theories, search engines should give us the information we are looking for. He asked for information, and some of the search engines effectively told him, “no.” That’s valuable information because it’s not just conspiracy theories they’re removing. For example, some years ago I heard a news report about some American political group called the “Proud Boys.” I wanted to look into them to find out what they’re about, so I Google them. Turns out Google has scrubbed their site from search. Accusations of this kind of political censorship are mounting, too. Another politically contentious site, KiwiFarms, is also delisted. I can only imagine how many other sites have been delisted over the years which we just don’t know about.
I’m an adult. I can make up my own mind. If I ask for information, I expect a search engine to provide it. Kagi passes this test.
This is my issue too. Yes, there are some things that are absolutely dangerous and some things that are completely nuts. But not all conspiracy theories, for example, are crazy. Some are actual conspiracies. That aside it’s a dangerous precedent to set when someone is picking and choosing what to show or not show and removing the ability of others to decide for themselves.
Many governments, organisations, companies, etc. can be above board, but they don’t always stay that way. Others are dystopian in their obsession with power and control. Its not always obvious what’s what when censorship and curation of results are going on.
And frankly, sometimes the ‘facts’ turn out to be wrong. Our reality is that we live in a world where profit and greed drives information and trends, where late stage capitalism leads to more exploitation and all of this is helped by bias, fraud, science for sale and yes, censorship.
I cannot trust a company or organiation that censors search results because quite simply it means I can’t tell if they’re covering over anything else and what that anything else could be.
Much like the parable of the boy who cried wolf. You’re either 100% above board and trustworthy or you’re not.
100%. We learned this lesson centuries ago during the Enlightenment. Censorship is harmful to society. Sure, if there were some magical and neutral arbiter of information, maybe it could work if democratically controlled. By there isn’t, and these tools are not democratically controlled. Every time people or groups get too powerful, they abuse the system for their own advantage. We should always presume companies like Google do the same using the age old premise of “protecting the children.” How many violations has this adage defended over the years.
This started with pointing out the author is a rabid conspiracy crank. His judgement for censorship was that these search engines didn’t show the “truth” of his crazy conspiracies about the moon landing and vaccines, and he flat out called actual science and knowledge false.
This isn’t a matter of censorship at large and what it means for society. This is simply a crazy conspiracy moron getting mad that his preferred false information is no longer being disseminated and he’s mad that actual science is instead.
This guy straight up suggested that he would prefer not seeing science and would instead prefer to see his falsities instead. This isn’t a matter of censorship, this is a matter of willful anti-intelligence.
You can claim “but I’m an adult, I can figure things out for myself” but you have to remember: so is everyone else, including all the anti-science, anti-vaxx, MAGA types. They have actively been causing harm for years now and this stops them in their tracks. It’s not censorship to throw out junk data and keep proper data. That’s just good information hygiene at a certain point. You can still find articles that cover these conspiracy theories on these search engines but you won’t get fake news sites purporting lies as truth because the availability of these things has caused more harm to our current, modern society than any amount of censorship has ever come close to.
The idea of the democratization of information has proven to be an abject failure. Unfortunately information does need to be gatekept by arbiters, and we have only proved over and over again for the past decade.
Relying on a single place for all information is also a complete mistake. There’s a good reason why every academic study or decent journalism always insists on multiple sources. You can’t trust that you’ll ever get the picture from one place.
Should search engines not have to do this? Yes. In an ideal world. But we don’t live in one, and now we’re likening these types of anti-science cranks to the scientific victims of anti-science cranks in the past. What we really learned from the Enlightenment is that those who pursue true knowledge should not be censored and those that reject it should be quieted.
And yes, finding the right people to be arbiters is hard. Yet this fucking guy should absolutely not be the arbiter of deciding what is and isn’t censorship.
I still disagree. Arbiters of factual information can’t be companies, and can’t be governments. Currently we don’t have a proper arbiter; I would argue that finding one isn’t “hard”, it’s straight-out impossible.
On the same line, who is it up to to decide what does it mean to pursue true knowledge?
I strongly believe that censorship is not the answer- it’s not the answer to anything. Let’s say you are in a circle of strangers, and one of them starts shouting to the others that you did something horrible. The solution to this problem is not to kill him, but to present a different source of information that can stand more stable than is (ex: I wasn’t there at that time, I have history of not doing that kind of stuff, you claim this for your own gain, …).
The solution to ignorance is not to shut down dissident opinions or theories, as flawed or dangerous as they may be, but to be open to educate.
In this specific instance pertaining to search engines, the correct way to make misinformation available would be to provide appropriate disclaimers with reputable and independent sources, not to censor.
I heard Naomi Klein say that conspiracy theories are the socialism of fools.
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I’m wondering that, too.
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Disturbing for having their slogan as, “the search engine that doesn’t know anything about you”
I guess they meant, “doesn’t know anything about you… Yet”
They need to earn money somehow, and the deal with Microsoft is the least privacy-invasive option they found.
I suggest overall to use SearxNG, but Qwant isn’t bad.
No doubt. And I’m not faulting them for making the deal or for collecting the data in general. I am, however, faulting them for claiming they don’t know anything about you and then turn around and collect things about you.
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Mixed in here are search engines and metasearch engines. Metasearch engines like DDG, Metager, and Searx are not actual search engines but rather sites that query other engines. I would rather see only actual search engines for comparison. I would like to see some non western (search engines based in non NATO aligned) countries included such as Yandex.
Data collection always happens. How does the engine know what to return if you did not send it a query(data)? Sometimes results are personalized/manipulated. Anonymity reduces impact of both.
What is Metager?
MetaGer is a German meta search engine (utilizing several search engines in the back). UI and results are of course available in many languages.
https://metager.org | https://metager.de
From their About page:
What makes MetaGer special?
MetaGer is different from other search engines. This is reflected not only in our public good orientation and focus on privacy, but also through some unique features:
- Possibility of creating a personal blacklist
- Function of the search in the search
- Advertising-free search possible
- Integration of search engine projects like YaCy
- The only German search engine that combines results from several large web indexes
- And much more…
What We Stand For
Guaranteed Privacy
Data protection and privacy are important to us. That’s why we don’t track or store personal data and offer several services to protect your privacy, for example our anonymizing proxy (“Open Anonymously” feature).
Non-Profit Association
MetaGer is a project of the non-profit association SUMA-EV, Association for Free Access to Knowledge. SUMA-EV is primarily committed to promoting media literacy.
Diverse and Free
MetaGer produces diverse results because it is a metasearch engine. We have explained exactly what this means in our transparency statement. By publishing our source code, we show that free access to knowledge is important to us. Our source code is free and open source.
100% Renewable Energy
Sustainability and resource consumption is also a big issue for us. Therefore we pay attention to the energy consumption of our services and only use electricity from renewable energy sources.
