EDIIT :
Apparently, there is an issue with the warning request to disable the ad blocker
I use Fennec F-Droid and Cromite, and I don’t see this issue.
to get around the adblocker warning, use this link.
EDIIT :
Apparently, there is an issue with the warning request to disable the ad blocker
I use Fennec F-Droid and Cromite, and I don’t see this issue.
to get around the adblocker warning, use this link.
For what it’s worth, DDG recognized this immediately.
They dipped their toe in AI search, felt the pushback, and went all-in on putting toggles and immediately accessible opt-outs everywhere. They put a filter for AI images (and I hope they do the same for AI SEO spam).
In other words, they actually leaned in and listened to their own users. Unlike the soulless vampire on a throne Google has become.
While I do appreciate this, their search results aren’t great. I hate to say this, but even with horrible AI forward results, Google still returns better and more relevant results. I’ll still use ddg first but it generally leaves me wanting.
Usually if I search anything seriously, like for work, I use journals that require a subscription that I access through my institution. If I’m trying to find a funny meme, that’s different. Google is fine for the casual stuff, but since I just don’t like them DuckDuckGo seems like an acceptable alternative even though I’ve found it slightly less effective.
While their first party browser convinced me if it’s privacy capabilities, I need extensions (yes, recognizing that makes me much more fingerprintable) so I use their browser less than 1% of the time.
However, I have subscribed for their premium Services because I already trust their anti-tracker on my mobile devices and they have sufficient number of VPN nodes to be useful to me (I do miss Mullvad, and probably will use them when I’m traveling International, but it is getting harder to find good nodes and they don’t have servers in south Korea at all, either).
And their measures to make a neutered and neutral AI interface is the first time I’ve ever paid for general AI access, finding it’s helped some of my efforts as AI has been a necessary component for building my home studio and mini rack. I’m scared that my brain has already been ruined, acclimating to Google’s integration of Bard and then later Gemini, and I make a regular exercise of hunting for sites that have articles or discussions that will help me work through tech projects and puzzles “the hard way” with just vanilla search queries and amendments.
I love that DDG’s tech stack seems to play well in the general broader ecosystem, so it’s my search engine of choice for all of my Gecko/Fusion browsers (Fennec, WaterFox, LibreWolf, and occasionally, full-fat vanilla Firefox).
I had really thought I could grow into using Kagi but I couldn’t make it make sense for myself. When you’re limiting paid subscribers at the first tier to 300 general web queries a month, and i could consume that many just on correcting my own typos and re-searches alone, DDG was a better investment for me for the time being.
TL;DR - I love that these guys play well with others, so I’ll even pay for the access because I need them to still exist in a decade.
+1 for Kagi’s base tier limit. It’s just not close to enough.
It’s more than enough some types, but I agree, probably not the average lemmy user. I’m happy enough with their search results to pay for a higher tier.