Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
[Matrix/Element]Dead
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
actually awesome and fast search engine (depending on which instance you use) with no trashy AI and ADs results also great for privacy, if you don't know which instance to use go to https://searx.space/ and choose an instance closest to you
Did anyone else not know Lycos was still around? Lycos is still around. Seems not that bad. No AI stuff.
Whoogle is a good option for self hosting as well
Can someone explain the meaning of the name and the people building this project please?
You're trusting how information is filtered and funneled to you with a search tool, but a change to take lightly. Google sucks, but they have a lot to lose, a lot of eyes on them and I know generally their base motivations.
The best thing is to self host it, to have better uptimes and custom default settings
Dig out old PC from somewhere, install some Linux distribution, Tailscale and Docker/Podman, and install SearX that way.
What if you want to use the computer for something other than Google searching?
I have it running on my server, and honestly... I almost love it more than kagi. Still evaluating both, to make a decision by the end of the year.
Using it on my own server since... Ages ☺️ Can only recommend it. Even though google's results are often... Weird up to completely unhelpful.
Kagi works great for me. 100% worth it, best engine I've tried.
Edit: If you are curious about their privacy policy https://kagi.com/privacy.
5 dollars for 300 searches per month? Dafuk? And to top it up, need an actual account with email. Gets acquired in a couple of years, and all the data they gather on you gets sold. You'd be better off staying with Google.
The family plan (w/ unlimited searches) is better value. Also the whole point of charging upfront is that personal data plays no role on its business model. Ofc there's still the risk of it being acquired but the userbase (even if small atm) is still growing and (allegedly) is now profitable.
Does it have a widget? I want to integrate it in my workflow on my phone
No widget. You can make it into a web app though.
I mean it's often better than nothing, but it is a meta search that still often uses Google or Bing to gather results. IMHO, cut off the need for that data on the whole and use an option like Mojeek
For all their talk of doing things different with their own index and rankings. Mojeek is following exactly what Google did. It's still an ad based business model that makes users into products to be sold to advertisers. They're good now, while still trying to build market share. But once their investors get hungry, the enshitification will commence.
we make money mainly from our api, our investors are patient private capital and we don't take vc, appreciate your point but these are fundamentally different situations, our ads (when they run) will also be contextual so more of a ddg situation than a "makes users into products to be sold to advertisers"
fair enough if it's not for you though
Do you have topics that are censored? I searched for my reddit post "what I've learnt from the mantis aliens", and it does not show up in your results. Neither at google's. But it does on other search engines. The ufo/alien stuff are censored in most search engines, while there isn't a reason to be. That is how I judge search engines. And Mojeek doesn't give me the results I asked for.
Mojeek is cool, but trying to search something in my first language results in 0 results find.
Mojeek reminds me of early Google results which only searches title and inurl I like it
I'd use it if its public instances didn't get rate-limited so often
How is it compared to DDG?
In terms of search results, ddg sometimes will find very specific searches better and has more bells and whistles. I still prefer SearXNG, and have been using my instance almost exclusively since setting it up.
I never use DDG before, but I think it's pretty similar since DDG and SearX index their results from Bing (SearX and also index from Google, qwant... if you enable them), but SearX is decentralized and open source but DDG at core is not, you also have to trust DDG with your info (who know? maybe they lie about their privacy policy but I hope not)
