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Ask HN: Alternatives to DuckDuckGo?

42 points by bArray ↗ HN
In light of recent news, DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg suggests the search engine will now filter results based on recent political events [1]. For those considering or aware of alternatives, what are they?

For me, DuckDuckGo was supposed to represent private (not selling user data), unbiased (i.e. apolitical), fast search results. Ideally a replacement would meet as many of these goals as possible. Some alternatives I'm aware of:

* Searx - https://searx.github.io/searx/

* Brave search - https://search.brave.com/

Note this is not a discussion about the morality of DuckDuckGo's recent actions.

[1] https://news.yahoo.com/duck-duck-go-reverses-course-will-dem...

58 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 121 ms ] thread
throwmeariver1
You know you could have just asked about alternatives instead of bringing up the thing you didn't want to bring up or discuss in the first place AND argument about it in the next sentence. Especially when your arguments show that you took the first best thing that ticked the marks without looking further into the corporation behind it. Without a doubt you also could have found a lot of alternatives by searching first because we had search discussions for about 2-3 months every week but whatever.

The best alternative for me is kagi.com but you need an invite and in the end you need to pay for it.

pixxel
“You know you could have just asked about alternatives instead of bringing up the thing you didn't want to bring up or discuss in the first place”

An attempt, perhaps, to head-off derailment, but here we are anyway.

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lizardactivist
Some alternatives:

qwant.com, based in the EU, using their own index without tracking.

ecosia.org, based in the EU, backed by Bing but with their own algorithm for filtering the results.

startpage.com, based in the EU, backed by anonymized Google results.

swisscows.com, based in the EU, backed by anonymized Bing results.

(this is not an advert for EU-based search engines, these just happen to be the ones that I know of)

czernobog
Never heard of ecosia until now. Looks pretty good!
tgv
A German one: nona.de. They prioritize German search results, though, but it works quite well for technical searches. Qwant's results resembles those of DDG and Ecosia rather a lot, so it might be bing as well?
twoneurons
EU based: you can assume they filter search results.

Both because EU mandates this explicitly, and because there's a constant regulatory threat.

Freedom of speech isn't a credible principle in EU.

stevenhubertron
I’m not sure how deranking lies affects it’s privacy or speed but you clearly have an bone to pick with DDG which in my opinion is a great product that more should use.
johnmorrison
You're intentionally warping the prompt here. It was very clear, and you're playing dumb because you have a political bias to promote.
stolenmerch
I think the issue is many people feel no single person or group should be deciding for others what the truth is or what is(n't) "misinformation", especially based on politics. Covid showed us that many times these authorities of truth could get it wrong and suppress information that was at least worthy of discussion.
yjftsjthsd-h
> I’m not sure how deranking lies affects it’s privacy or speed

Nobody said anything about privacy or speed.

bArray
I mention privacy and speed as an alternative ideally also offers these things.

I don't have a bone to pick with them, I have been a long-term user and promoter of their service. Perhaps the result of the suggestions here is that they are still the best option available.

nojito
Ranking search results by definition cannot be unbiased.
pessimizer
They mentioned "apolitical."

You can have apolitical ranking algorithms (although the results may have political implications.) I think what they were really going for is a-nationalist (to fail to coin a word.) It's legitimate to be wary of private industry partnering with government to push a nationalist agenda.

networkid
Yes, but making it explicitly politically biased is even worse
bil7
not addressing the morality but simply the reason: DDG is complying with EU sanctions.
diego_moita
Enthusiastic DDG user, here.

I don't understand the mental gymnastics that sees filtering out propaganda as "biased".

I see it actually as the opposite, as removing an intentional bias, as removing an intentional manipulation by the propaganda agent himself.

Compare to spam-filtering in your email: when you remove the noise, you get a better signal/noise ratio. When you hide information under a pile of noise you are actually "biasing".

There is no such thing as political-neutral information.

And if you believe that you alone, as an individual, have all the resources to efficiently filter out political manipulation in the information you receive then you're probably very close to the QAnon bunch.

core-utility
The issue comes in with propaganda itself not being black and white. There's inherently a estimation of whether something is propaganda or not, and it's often changing and based on limited information or a "sniff test".
nojito
Propaganda with regards to DGG's reasoning is actually black and white.
missedthecue
Once you open the door, where does it stop? I think that's the question, not whether Russian propaganda is propaganda or not.
Eddy_Viscosity2
The same can be said of spam filtering in email. Who decides what is spam? I actually want a search engine to not show me garbage results, and propaganda is garbage results.
missedthecue
Spam I feel has a very clear definition. Unsolicited emails from accounts and websites you don't know.

What about propaganda? Is VOA propaganda? Are white house press releases propaganda? Every news service has a bias, some stronger than others. There is no clear line as to where propaganda ends allowable information begins.

DyslexicAtheist
what is being de-ranked isn't so called propaganda but outright disinformation. note the difference between disinfo and misinfo where the former is being spread intentionally the latter because the audience didn't know it was wrong. What DDG does the right thing by saying we will not put lies on the front-page of our results.

It would be impossible to filter out most propaganda - at least not the effective kind. Using the word propaganda makes these measures sound unjustified. It's better to call it what it is: deranking lies from the top search results.

philwelch
That’s an argument for filtering out all propaganda, but it’s not a very convincing argument for selectively filtering “enemy” propaganda.
the_optimist
Invoking Qanon in reasoning about why you should do something is the new self-lobotomy.
twoneurons
Let's say I want to see the last speech of Putin. To see his perspective and predict his next moves.

If I search on youtube, I will see the usual selection. BBC, Guardian, France24, DW, CNN

None will show his speech. Just images of him, while a journalist is rambling about how Western politicians reacted.

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networkid
Propaganda is a general definition for the dessemination of politically biased messages. All the news is covered by this definition. Especially during the war time. I don't understand why DuckDuckGo decides for their users whose propaganda is better.
awb
Everyone has a bias, yes. But there’s a huge difference between the Western perspective of a free press or independent journalist and state run propaganda.

Judges make decisions about ambiguous cases all the time. Rarely are things absolute in life.

networkid
Right now there is no very big difference. Sorry to disappoint you.
networkid
You just want to believe that the content you believe is more reliable and worth believing in.
networkid
Looks like you are enjoying consuming the content which corresponds to your political bias.
bArray
> Compare to spam-filtering in your email: when you remove the noise, you get a better signal/noise ratio.

And lose important emails. I don't mind my emails being tagged as "probable spam", but I should be the one to actually delete them (unless it's unbelievably low quality spam).

> There is no such thing as political-neutral information.

No, hence wanting multiple sources.

> And if you believe that you alone, as an individual, have all the resources to efficiently filter out political manipulation in the information you receive then you're probably very close to the QAnon bunch.

I don't want somebody to make that decision for me. How do we know DuckDuckGo have the resources? How do we know they don't 'rank' suggestions based on other political events?

Obviously we have different opinions about exactly what we want from DuckDuckGo, that's okay. I'm not against DuckDuckGo adding a tag or rating to indicate what they believe the trustworthiness of the source to be - I would even appreciate if they distinguish between cnn.com and cmm.com (fake example to make the point).

miked85
I don't see the "mental gymnastics" here, they either filter the information or not, right? I don't want tech companies deciding what is true or not, propaganda comes from all angles.
jppope
I recommend search.brave.com... though the privacy stuff is great, Brave is great for developers because they provide code snippets right in the search. HUGE time saver
Program_Install
I have to imagine that if your search and/or use of keywords is specific enough, you will find exactly what you are looking for regardless of the search engine you are currently using. In the end, everyone has an agenda, from both ends and everything in-between.
hk1337
My understanding is they’re demoting Russian propaganda, not filtering it. It’ll still be there just not at the top of the results. That’s kind of what you want from a search engine, to return the more relevant and factual results at the top.
miked85
Filtering and demoting is essentially the same thing, most people don't look past the first few search results.
Finnucane
Well, if you really want your Russian troll garbage, use Yandex.
omarhaneef
I don’t think unbiased results can exist in the sense that every ranking algorithm has an objective function that is essentially a bias.

You might say, hey I just mean political bias. But consider what that means. When does it not show up?

Search for front end frameworks and there is no question that rankings will be “political” in the sense that the ranking will favor some things over others. (Example: this ranking shows React, Svelte and Vue because it over weights popularity and doesn’t give my obscure but mighty framework any oxygen!)

If you search for the history of any battle (just to take us away from the present conflict), I doubt two experts agree on the salient aspects let alone two algorithms.

soueuls
I agree with this and I feel that page ranking algorithms and their variants (depending on whether you want to boost novelty, controversy, contrarian articles, whatever) is already doing a good job at filtering out full propaganda.

And Russian propaganda is probably already taken care of because the rare moments I decide to search for information about the conflict, the only little propaganda I stumble upon is coming from Ukraine (over exaggerated body count, Snake Island, etc). Nothing new under the sun, fog of war is obviously expected and natural.

But this kind of censorship is clearly impeding my capacity to grow my worldview. And I don't trust the West more than the Russians (Irak's weapons of mass destruction anyone?)

I own a fairly big media in France and we have been covering the conflict, we made two videos on war communication tactiques and it's pretty bad from both side. Ukraine is using propaganda to drag Europe into this mess, Russian is using propaganda as usual.

It also reminds me the Covid, 1 year ago, any search about the "Wuhan leak theory" was deemed to be a "conspiracy theory", you had a hard time finding interesting resources about people digging into the idea with a scientific mindset and a desire to really figure out where that might come from. People who believed it was possible, were laugh at.

And now, it's considered plausible, nobody has a definitive answer to it, but it's a real possibility. For this reason, I don't believe in censorship from people who keeps calling the shots but who are as clueless as the rest the population.

Last but not least, like any individual I do have biases of course. But I am very wary of people who also have biases but who might have hidden motives and skin in the game.

Using the "liberal idea" of page ranking which is in my opinion a very abstract way of dealing with information (similar to the invisible hand almost) appears to me as a superior and more trustable way.

That's why, I am also leaving DDG.

bArray
> I own a fairly big media in France and we have been covering the conflict [..]

Very interesting to hear things from this perspective. I assume it is non-mainstream? (I would ask for a link, but I cannot read French.)

> It also reminds me the Covid [..]

This has for sure made me more weary. Off-topic conspiracies today quickly become plausible theories tomorrow. I don't expect sources to be unbiased, but I do expect to be able to consider multiple perspectives.

> Last but not least, like any individual I do have biases of course. But I am very wary of people who also have biases but who might have hidden motives and skin in the game.

Who fact-checks the fact-checkers? A large unaccountable 'authority' deciding what information you may or may not consume is _exactly_ what we are trying to avoid. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

> That's why, I am also leaving DDG.

Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed DuckDuckGo for years. If there is some reversal or this change is somewhat moderate, I will consider staying with them. For now I am just considering alternatives.

ricardolopes
I honestly fail to understand how downranking state-run propaganda that promotes a dictatorship's lies is considered to be a bad thing in a service that is all about providing useful information.

This isn't about silencing a political view, cancelling an unpopular opinion, or whatever. It's defending against a deliberate attack from an oppressive regime. Search engines already have to do a lot of tweaking, for instance to defend against SEO spammers. I don't know how can this be controversial.

Anyway, answering your question, I use and like Ecosia. I've heard good things from Brave Search, but haven't tested it yet.

bArray
> This isn't about silencing a political view, cancelling an unpopular opinion, or whatever. It's defending against a deliberate attack from an oppressive regime.

This is your opinion (not one I disagree with in this case) - but it's besides the point. I don't want DuckDuckGo to filter/sensor based on "politics of the day". I don't mind them tagging results.

> Search engines already have to do a lot of tweaking, for instance to defend against SEO spammers.

Sure, but there is clearly a difference here.

> Anyway, answering your question, I use and like Ecosia.

Will check it out, thanks.

ricardolopes
> I don't want DuckDuckGo to filter/sensor based on "politics of the day". I don't mind them tagging results.

Agreed on both. Maybe it should have been done sooner, to avoid looking reactionary. Though I understand why today that propaganda may be considered worse than in the past.

> Sure, but there is clearly a difference here.

There's a difference, but not significant IMO. Just like misleading results should generally be penalised, to help people get to the information they requested.

wolverine876
Search engines are filters: They filter the entire Internet down to just 5-10 links using various standards. I wish accuracy was an even higher priority for them.
harryf
I’ll just live dangerously and out https://yandex.com/ in here. They actually have great results for many things including local businesses (when you’re in Switzerland). Of course they’re Russian and may get blocked soon