Barely news, to be honest. Just blocks the annoying popup and the requests that popping it up causes. Google Sign-In still explicitly possible, you just don't get a pop-up. One annoyance less.
...it was news for me.
As a Brave browser user, there are a few social media switches in the setting that i have set to 'off'; combined with this - things should be even better (as well as having another reason to go through the ://flags settings).
I rotate through my available built-in search engine[s] in Brave, I'll go back to ddg to try this out.
Nb - search with all engines this past 18months has been uniformly 'poor'.
>BleepingComputer has found that the option is baked into the general protection feature of the browser extension, so when the extension is active, all Google prompts are blocked automatically.
pop-up modal blocking becomes a standout "protection feature" when duckduckgo buys a big native ad to make this seem newsworthy
Haven't seen a headline about them making search better. Seems like every search engine this year got markedly worse. Even the alternatives are pretty poor.
I want to say I'd rather pick an independent alternative, but even that space is bleak. A founder here most famously made a fool out of himself and represented his search startup so poorly and asserting that not only would people pay for his search app, but that it was in the interest of privacy, while also requiring a browser extension.
If a search engine cannot recognize what content is good and which is bad, it's not a good search engine.
If there was a sea of garbage with some beautiful healthy fish still in it, it doesn't mean I'm going to start catching garbage and passing it off as halibut.
But the model of constant growth required and advertising to cross purposes of your users means that they're selling garbage by the pound and calling it fish!
I have no interest in agreeing that the emperor's new clothes exist.
1. Search engines are getting less good at ranking bad content below good content
2. The good content is getting worse. So bad, in fact, that it looks like bad content.
It may be a little of both. I lean towards 2, though. It’s kind of a race to the bottom in terms of jamming your page with ads, buzz words, and popups these days.
Generally speaking, the web doesn’t have great results for e.g. product recommendations. Part of it is because of how centralized the internet has become.
The best you can do a lot of the time is to just serve mostly Reddit results. But even that can be gamed.
> the PROPORTION of content is getting worse but GREAT content on an absolute numbers level is rising every single year
I’d love to believe this is true, but it can’t be true for every query. How much great content is out there for best gaming laptop or marinara sauce recipe?
Tech gadget review sites are filled to the brim with ads and paid links these days, without exception.
Recipe websites are also filled with ads, facilitated by long descriptions of unnecessary family history to create more vertical space.
> discovering new content is difficult
Indeed, great new content is almost impossible. There are blog search engines which do a decent job. Trouble is, those won’t cover all my queries.
Have you tried Kagi? I think you might find it appealing. Especially if you are a developer or someone who is regularly searching technical/code related things. It's really good for that, and allows you to weight/block sites as you please to further improve results.
Cool, considering switching as well. At first glance so much Apple stuff, thinking that somehow iOS and Apple devices are more privacy friendly is kind of a false analogy. Apple has lied about privacy protections and if you look into it you will find that Apple collects data for itself while blocking others from doing it (from their "ad campaign"). For example, if you opt out of health data, Apple still collects this information in the background but just doesn't show it to you. AppStore has been shown to collect extensive data as well. Don't put all your eggs into the Apple basket.
Aside from desktop (Firefox), much of my browsing now is on an e-ink tablet. I've found that an e-ink optimised browser, specifically EinkBro, is strongly preferable there.
That browser has some features addressing Web annoyances (adblock, somewhat lackluster cookie and JS toggles), but does nothing against cookie pop-ups.
A DDG browser with e-ink tuning might be interesting.
Note that these prompts can also be disabled in your Google account settings. I find them very irritating so I've disabled it on all accounts I manage.
Google has decided to show these popups by default to everyone that is browsing the web with tracking protection enabled since October 2022. This prompt has started to pop in our faces on most sites that integrate Google Sign-In as soon as we visit a page, often covering the content we are trying to view, and the website operators need to take specific steps to change the default behavior. We can only applaud DuckDuckGo for attempting to mitigate the destructive actions of Google.
I don’t have a google/gmail account (never have, to my recollection), and this pop up is on nearly every page I visit. I can’t get rid of it because I don’t have an account to change the settings on. It’s made me despise google more than I previously did, which I didn’t think was possible.
Thank you DDG for recognizing this infuriating issue. I don’t care if the search results are suboptimal. I love you anyway.
Unfortunately, I have to take the contrarian view and agree with some of the grayed out (presumably downvoted?) comments here that DDG's search featureset has stagnated and they're solely relying on the narrative of "Big Tech Bad!" to carry their brand and product forward.
"Big Tech Bad!" isn't in of itself an issue and can be a viable marketing message for ad blockers, VPNs, and products in that space. However, I'm afraid the real innovation in search is happening elsewhere; either in the form of traditional search engines (Kagi, you.com) or large language models (ChatGPT, LaMDA etc.)
We have actually been continually working on improving our search results. We're working on a new page to detail major updates on a quarterly basis, which should be live in a few weeks.
"A search engine’s primary job is to rank results. In other words, search engines try to put results that most quickly and accurately answer the query on top. At DuckDuckGo we produce search results from a variety of sources, and when we apply our own ranking signals we do so in a strictly non-political manner, meaning we don’t evaluate or otherwise take into account any potential political bias or leanings of websites in our search result rankings."
I can't seem to remove terms from search results any more, and I've tried every syntax I could think of. The reason I tried every syntax I could think of is because I couldn't figure out anywhere on DDG where search syntax is explained (other than !bangs.) I could have sworn there was an easily accessible page in the past that explained that.
1. Make quoted words and phrases work as intended, please. When I say: elixir "ecto.schema" tutorial, that's exactly what I mean and I want search results to reflect that.
2. Respect the minus sign. Almost every time I use it it's completely ignored.
Every company can market themselves the way they want. I’m simply lamenting the choice that DDG has made, in the same way Steve Jobs lamented the marketing-heavy PepsiCo for a lack of attention towards their products.
I, for one, assumed that at least half of HN would agree with you. HN has a skew of people that are pro DDG, but not so much that this is all that contrarian of a view
Serious question: what's the alternative? I've been using DDG for 1-2 years now (switched away from Google), but I'm open to trying alternatives.
My rough requirements are:
1. Ads are served based on searches, not tracking me across the web (I could also probably be convinced to pay a reasonable price for an ad-free search engine, but the search better be _really_ good)
2. Something similar to DDG's bangs. And yes, I know I can replicate the effect myself in browser, but that's not what I want - I want the pre-existing library of them.
3. Ability to search a specific site, (i.e. Google's/DDG's site:example.com)
4. Image search (bonus points for a reverse image search)
I took a look, but I am _very_ worried they will drop my account for (as their ToS puts it) "our provision of the Services to you is no longer commercially viable".
It allegedly costs them $1 for every 80 searches. On the 5 days of the week I do my day job I probably average 60-80 searches per day.
Interesting. I have a horrible habit of typing just the beginning of a domain name and then letting the search engine find that website for me. So I end up searching hundreds of times per day. Kagi has not complained to me so far.
I think that clause is in their ToS to prevent actual misuse of the service, e.g. building a scraper. Saying that, I agree that it's a concerning provision.
I hate that one of the results of that arrangement is that 50% of news search results are the MSN version of articles posted elsewhere. Another 40% of the results are the Yahoo version of an article posted elsewhere; I assume that's not a Bing thing, but it's a bad thing.
Thank goodness, it is a terribly annoying pop up that reminded me of surfing the net a decade ago. What is Google thinking? Thanks to DuckDuckGo for a great upgrade.
I wonder if there's (uBlock Origin) filter lists with only separate / specific things like this, which keeps up to date with latest updates/changes.
There's `AdGuard Annoyances` and `Fanboy’s Annoyance` lists (which i assume also have this blocking rule), but these big lists frequently break things unfortunately, so i avoid them.
What content blockers do people use alongside Safari on iOS?
I've been trying Firefox Focus but it's barebones, ad-centric, and doing nothing for cookie popups. Now with these Google popups infesting the web it feels like the 90s again and has made me stop browsing the web on my tablet.
It's useful to inform users that they can easily sign up without having to go through a confusing account creation process and having to worry about the site's security
Yeah, but giving all website interaction data to a company for "convenience" is exactly not how to make that easier. The logins and account information belong on the client side along with the person; and should be implemented fully on a client (with a separate encrypted backup strategy). The way this whole thing was implemented is so it can be abused.
√ Never autoplay anything; not even you(tube)
√ Block slideovers, overlays, and modal popups
√ No, I do not want to sign in with Google
√ No, I don't want your stupid tracking cookies
√ No, I don't want to sign up for any newsletters
85 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 150 ms ] threadpop-up modal blocking becomes a standout "protection feature" when duckduckgo buys a big native ad to make this seem newsworthy
I want to say I'd rather pick an independent alternative, but even that space is bleak. A founder here most famously made a fool out of himself and represented his search startup so poorly and asserting that not only would people pay for his search app, but that it was in the interest of privacy, while also requiring a browser extension.
Maybe the sum total of available content got worse instead? Will 2023 be better, I suspect not.
If there was a sea of garbage with some beautiful healthy fish still in it, it doesn't mean I'm going to start catching garbage and passing it off as halibut.
But the model of constant growth required and advertising to cross purposes of your users means that they're selling garbage by the pound and calling it fish!
I have no interest in agreeing that the emperor's new clothes exist.
1. Search engines are getting less good at ranking bad content below good content
2. The good content is getting worse. So bad, in fact, that it looks like bad content.
It may be a little of both. I lean towards 2, though. It’s kind of a race to the bottom in terms of jamming your page with ads, buzz words, and popups these days.
Generally speaking, the web doesn’t have great results for e.g. product recommendations. Part of it is because of how centralized the internet has become.
The best you can do a lot of the time is to just serve mostly Reddit results. But even that can be gamed.
but GREAT content on an absolute numbers level is rising every single year
excepting the death of good content through attrition and entropy good content only goes up unless we're all dead
it's just discovering good new content is difficult, especially when you're a sclerotic barnacle tied to legacy interests of all stripes!
I’d love to believe this is true, but it can’t be true for every query. How much great content is out there for best gaming laptop or marinara sauce recipe?
Tech gadget review sites are filled to the brim with ads and paid links these days, without exception.
Recipe websites are also filled with ads, facilitated by long descriptions of unnecessary family history to create more vertical space.
> discovering new content is difficult
Indeed, great new content is almost impossible. There are blog search engines which do a decent job. Trouble is, those won’t cover all my queries.
> sclerotic barnacle
Solid vocab choice. Respect.
If yes, then how so? Would that be based on bounce-rate, position of the clicked search result, suggestion accuracy... ?
* Our Mac browser already does this, announcement for that was here: https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-for-mac-open-beta/
* It's open source at: https://github.com/duckduckgo/autoconsent
* For our Android app it is in beta, and you can enabled it in settings.
* For our iOS app, it is coming soon, and then we'll work on extensions.
* We're updating this page quarterly for all our Web Tracking Protections across platforms: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/privacy/we...
Aside from desktop (Firefox), much of my browsing now is on an e-ink tablet. I've found that an e-ink optimised browser, specifically EinkBro, is strongly preferable there.
That browser has some features addressing Web annoyances (adblock, somewhat lackluster cookie and JS toggles), but does nothing against cookie pop-ups.
A DDG browser with e-ink tuning might be interesting.
EinkBro: <https://github.com/plateaukao/browser>
Useful features:
- Paginated navigation. This is based on touch regions rather than gestures.
- Black-on-white mode. Forces a white background and enhances blacks in text.
- A really nifty "save as e-pub" feature. More here: <https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/107958709435468728>
- A ... not especially good reader-mode feature. (Better CSS styling w/ some margins would help a lot.)
- Integrated adblock.
- Good bookmarking for a mobile browser.
<https://diaspora.glasswings.com/posts/38e0c53096600139106600...>
As to why e-ink needs tuning:
- Persistence is free.
- Pixels are cheap. (Lots of them, very high DPI, 200--300+.)
- Paints are expensive and slow --- draw power and even at high-performance, at best a few Hz. High-quality is more like 1 to 0.25 Hz.
- Animated anything sucks.
- Pagination hugely beats scroll.
More: <https://diaspora.glasswings.com/posts/638a8d10e041013afba844...>
https://www.howtogeek.com/735152/how-to-turn-off-the-sign-in...
edit: Some comments below suggesting this is mistaken. Sorry, I hadn't noticed that in the past.
No, also in Firefox and Safari.
> Cause technically most people on Chrome login to it
I don't.
https://developers.google.com/identity/gsi/web/guides/itp#op...
https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/2-sign-...
Thank you DDG for recognizing this infuriating issue. I don’t care if the search results are suboptimal. I love you anyway.
"Big Tech Bad!" isn't in of itself an issue and can be a viable marketing message for ad blockers, VPNs, and products in that space. However, I'm afraid the real innovation in search is happening elsewhere; either in the form of traditional search engines (Kagi, you.com) or large language models (ChatGPT, LaMDA etc.)
At the same time, we've been continuously developing our Web Tracking Protections for our browsers and extensions. We also made a page for that here that is already out: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/privacy/we...
For example, search "cats" and "cats -adopt". The second result for me in both cases is "Cats for adoption".
1. Make quoted words and phrases work as intended, please. When I say: elixir "ecto.schema" tutorial, that's exactly what I mean and I want search results to reflect that.
2. Respect the minus sign. Almost every time I use it it's completely ignored.
I don't know, that is kind of the whole purpose of DDG to begin with.
I, for one, assumed that at least half of HN would agree with you. HN has a skew of people that are pro DDG, but not so much that this is all that contrarian of a view
My rough requirements are:
1. Ads are served based on searches, not tracking me across the web (I could also probably be convinced to pay a reasonable price for an ad-free search engine, but the search better be _really_ good)
2. Something similar to DDG's bangs. And yes, I know I can replicate the effect myself in browser, but that's not what I want - I want the pre-existing library of them.
3. Ability to search a specific site, (i.e. Google's/DDG's site:example.com)
4. Image search (bonus points for a reverse image search)
It allegedly costs them $1 for every 80 searches. On the 5 days of the week I do my day job I probably average 60-80 searches per day.
I think that clause is in their ToS to prevent actual misuse of the service, e.g. building a scraper. Saying that, I agree that it's a concerning provision.
Amazing how far they've come just as a Bing proxy but if they are ever cut off, they will be gone overnight.
BTW how do people know they truly are anonymous, has their code/connection to Bing ever been audited?
There's `AdGuard Annoyances` and `Fanboy’s Annoyance` lists (which i assume also have this blocking rule), but these big lists frequently break things unfortunately, so i avoid them.
I do this frequently simply because I find such elements visually annoying. I'd be all the happier if doing so also disabled tracking.
I'm referring not only to iframe elements, but the whole slew of social-share link-litter that's so prevalent on websites now.
That's a cosmetic filter. Look at 'Cosmetic filters' vs 'Network filters' [1]
> "social-share link-litter"
You can block these with a list like 'AdGuard Social Media' or 'Fanboy’s Social'.
[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Does-uBlock-Origin-bl...
I've been trying Firefox Focus but it's barebones, ad-centric, and doing nothing for cookie popups. Now with these Google popups infesting the web it feels like the 90s again and has made me stop browsing the web on my tablet.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/orion-browser-by-kagi/id148449...
Yeah, no. It's almost always an anti-pattern that's designed to get someone's real identity through their gmail account