Finding *Uncensored* Browser Searches

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I’ve sometimes taken to calling myself a “screen monk” because I invest so much time IFO my desktop and my digital slave device (my smartphone). I appreciate accurate information and invest several hours each day sussing it out. I love truth and have found that unless we seek it and fight for it, it’s often surreptitiously pulled from our customary media menus. I host and produce a planetwide talk show, Casual Saints, on a network of 1.6M listeners, and I aim to report the most accurate facts available. This is my second talk show. My first was Blue Planet Almanac, and I also did environmental news reporting on the same network.

For a long time I’d used DuckDuckGo. That ended abruptly a couple of days ago, the moment they started actively censoring information about the violent war in which several nation-states are engaging. Here’s a Slate article, The DuckDuckGo Users Furious at Its Response to the War in Ukraine, as an example. You can find background on this several places.

So I have instantly switched to testing Brave’s search engine. But also, a very close, objective friend of mine turned me on to the Corbett Report’s coverage of search engines, Presearch Search Engine – #SolutionsWatch, and you can have a look at it. I’ve just now also started testing Presearch’s browser add-on. It looks encouraging.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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Erik, CAS, Cybertooth

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Mr. Austin wrote:

I aim to report the most accurate facts available.

Presumably, to do so requires you to make value judgements about what is more likely to be reliable and what is more suspect since you can’t possibly know the truth. Those judgements will also be swayed by your own values. So the end result will be your “censorship” and what you have rejected will not appear anywhere. At least DuckDuckGo would still show it further down the list.

Windows 10 Home 22H2, Acer Aspire TC-1660 desktop + LibreOffice, non-techie

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Bill C., wavy, bbearren, NaNoNyMouse

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And presumably, anyone always has the option to downlist, downrank or de-value their experience and research, and depend wholly on some thing (a company) or some one else. But neither I, nor the people I work with, choose to work that way.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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Mr. Austin wrote:

the moment they started actively censoring information

Nope, no censorship happening.

From Gabriel Weinberg of DDG

It’s also important to note that down-ranking is different from censorship. We are simply using the fact that that these sites are engaging in active disinformation campaigns as a ranking signal that the content they produce is of lower quality, just like there are signals for spammy sites and other lower-quality content

cheers, Paul

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Bill C., wavy, OscarCP, Sky

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We disagree, as is our right. After carefully watching (that means carefully researching) the last two years’ events, coupled with several decades in watching world, regional, and local events, what is happening now looks exactly like, sounds like, and walks exactly like a whole raft of ducks. In this age of surveillance capitalism, in which our lives are the products of massive, transnational companies, we are often and consistently being lied to. And the biggest problems come when we decide to accept anything we are told without first checking into it.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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Erik

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Paul T wrote:

From Gabriel Weinberg of DDG

It’s also important to note that down-ranking is different from censorship. We are simply using the fact that that these sites are engaging in active disinformation campaigns as a ranking signal that the content they produce is of lower quality, just like there are signals for spammy sites and other lower-quality

Gabriel Weinberg hasn’t told the (whole) truth.
It is not DDG than downgraded sites. It is Microsoft. DDG uses Bing.

The far right complains after the search engine DuckDuckGo vows to limit Russian propaganda.

..DuckDuckGo has little control over its search results because they are provided by Microsoft’s Bing, which announced that it would follow the European Union’s order to restrict access to the Russian state news agencies RT and Sputnik…

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Mr. Austin

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Alex5723 wrote:

Paul T wrote:

From Gabriel Weinberg of DDG

It’s also important to note that down-ranking is different from censorship. We are simply using the fact that that these sites are engaging in active disinformation campaigns as a ranking signal that the content they produce is of lower quality, just like there are signals for spammy sites and other lower-quality

Gabriel Weinberg hasn’t told the (whole) truth.
It is not DDG than downgraded sites. It is Microsoft. DDG uses Bing.

The far right complains after the search engine DuckDuckGo vows to limit Russian propaganda.

..DuckDuckGo has little control over its search results because they are provided by Microsoft’s Bing, which announced that it would follow the European Union’s order to restrict access to the Russian state news agencies RT and Sputnik…

Thank you.

Trusting my own company’s instincts and ability to suss out true facts, thus Mr. Weinberg’s company’s opinion has been bought and paid for by the known hegemonies of Microsoft and the EU. And PS, when the NY Times began running its abusive, meritless, highly destructive attacks on highly respected, well known organizations, I stopped reading or subscribing to it.

I’m uninterested in having any of us remain as frogs in cooking pots.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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Fred, Erik

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In lieu of DuckDuckGo, investigate Meta Ger Search, Mojeek Search and Feneas Searx as possible alternatives. They’re all displayed in Firefox’s search box for easy access. At times, I will review the search results from all of them just to see how their results differ.

Peace, CAS

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Fred, Erik, Mr. Austin

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CAS wrote:

In lieu of DuckDuckGo, investigate Meta Ger Search, Mojeek Search and Feneas Searx as possible alternatives. They’re all displayed in Firefox’s search box for easy access. At times, I will review the search results from all of them just to see how their results differ.

Peace, CAS

Good show in thinking for oneself!

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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Erik, CAS

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In this day and age, when there are “alternative truths” one must investigate search findings when the issue is of significance. “Trust” is a word that has lost it’s meaning for me, except here at Ask Woody.

Peace, CAS

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Mr. Austin

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So, we have a major world situation where a country is indiscriminately bombing and shelling civilians, including children, and websites run by that country’s government are denying that this is happening. I use this example not to invoke an emotional response, but both because it’s relevant and because it’s so incredibly blatant that all but the most extreme conspiracy theorists can see that it’s happening. So how should search engines handle this?

Let’s put the moral issues surrounding parroting that country’s government aside and look at the job of a search engine: the job of a search engine is to return the most informative and accurate results to the user. So, if a website is providing information that is so obviously inaccurate then surely it should be rated lower than websites that are providing (more) accurate information? This is nothing to do with bias or censorship, it’s simply the job of a search engine. If the website in question wants to be ranked higher then it should provide informative and accurate content.

And to counter the argument that search engines should rely solely on the popularity of websites to provide results, we’ve all seen many examples where search engines have rated websites based too highly on popularity and promoted malicious content as a result, so search engines have to do some filtering of results beyond that.

Of course, the judging of what is accurate and what is inaccurate can be hard in more complex cases, and whose responsibility it is will largely shape the future of democracy around the world, but this is not a complex case.

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Steve, wavy, OscarCP, samak, Paul T, NaNoNyMouse, DrBonzo

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After many years of experience in this, culminating in the most recent two years, it is clear to me that the term “search engines” is often a euphemism for state-controlled censorship. I remember well what search engines and directories were like in the days of, for example, Alta Vista or Lycos.

Now, instead, you/we are most often being shown what transnational, behemoth nation-states want to show us through widespread media controlled by them. They are wholly uninterested in truth or people or compassionate sanity. They are interested only in profits, and that shows in everything about their legal charters and their actions. It is clear that this is now an age of diabolically destructive censorship, and that is shown easily by the research of others. I don’t have to be an industry expert.

I am willing to trust what a government or company states only when it is possible to verify what is happening. Now, from where do nation states derive their operating capital? It is also clear that governments which are supposed to have their people’s interests at heart are not that way. Many national governments are ‘captured’ tools of mega, for-profit companies.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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Erik

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Sky wrote:

the job of a search engine is to return the most informative and accurate results to the user.

No.

Search engines have to bring results. No filtering, no accurate, no true, no rank…results.
Users have to decide which results to choose.

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Bill C., Erik, Mr. Austin

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Alex5723 wrote:

no rank

You are joking right?

cheers, Paul

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wavy, OscarCP

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Paul T wrote:

Alex5723 wrote:

no rank

You are joking right?

cheers, Paul

No, I am not.

I want free without interpretation search results like in ‘free speech’.

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Erik, Mr. Austin

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I want ranking. If I’m doing a search on “breast cancer”, I don’t want the first 100 results to be links to what Bubba from Oklahoma thinks about it or similar. I want links to something which is likely to be useful.

Windows 10 Home 22H2, Acer Aspire TC-1660 desktop + LibreOffice, non-techie

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wavy, OscarCP, Sky

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samak wrote:

I want ranking

Ranking is bought and paid for.

Google and Facebook face EU-UK antitrust probes over ‘Jedi Blue’ online ad deal

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Steve, Mr. Austin, Erik

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Indeed

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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This is a crucially important topic for citizens of democracies, being free to do so, to debate. Unfortunately, it is also likely to result in people complaining that AskWoody is getting “too political”, and then Susan will have to bring down the hammer.

As I see it, the fact that private companies are in situation where they have either to allow everything, however good or bad, to go through into the world, or else exercise some form of censorship (“moderating”), outright by not distributing some opinions, or by sending them to the Siberia of the back pages of search hits, that is the problem in a nutshell: This should be something for which there are clear rules, and it is not for private companies, but for democratically elected governments to do the job of laying them down and explaining why are the way they are: in fact, for those governments to do their job, which is to govern, and do so in ways that are decisive in all matters that require them to be so, and this is one.

Many are not going to be happy with their governments setting down rules as to what is acceptable and what is not to find in Web searches, but nobody is ever going to be happy with anything others, governments in particular, decide to do. And whatever justice there may be with this form of legalized censorship, it is going to be a very, very rough justice.

And for information that is forbidden but one is keen to get all the same, there is always the Tor browser and the Onion. (This thread is about a question about browsers, after all.)

In the meantime, yes, there is misinformation, aka lies, coming out of Russia and this is not news. Nor anyone should be shocked at the very thought of it: In a war, and this is what is going on between Russia and Ukraine, a government-controlled diffusion of information, that includes military propaganda, whether openly so, or in the disguise of coming from independent sources, is not about giving the news of what is really going on in as unbiased and factual form as possible, but in a form that makes the side making the propaganda with the pretense of news look good, the other look bad, to hide things that are best not known widely, to boost one’s side’s moral, and so on and so forth.

So this is a case that calls for stricter moderating than in normal times by the distributors of content. It would be naïve to assume that both parties in this conflict are being as truthful as truthful can be.

This does not mean I see the situation as being even in badness on both sides. As I have made plenty clear in my comments around AskWoody, it is not: The Russians are invading a country, unprovoked; a country that is giving them back more trouble than they can chew on as fast and easily as they expected. Although eventually they have enough guns and bombs and missiles and soldiers to prevail by reducing the Ukrainian cities to a rubble if that is what it takes. Whether it will go that far, it is not clear: who knows.

In the meantime, most other countries are doing what they can do to discourage the government of Russia to continue their war of choice. But there is a hard limit to what they can do: they cannot take actions that are even just a little militarily aggressive against Putin and his clique, at the risk of starting an all-out war with Russia that can quickly turn nuclear. We are all living in very dangerous times all of the sudden, and if one thinks that DuckDuckGo is bad (it is not, really) it cannot compete with what this situation is like.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Bill C., Steve, wavy, Fred, Sky

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Repeating this posting #2432760 from OscarCP , this is an important one i.m.h.o.

When gardening I think a lot of how happy we were in the recent past, thinking that our generation would leave a somewhat bit better and more safe and secure place to our children in the very near future.
What can ordinary people do to contribute to the struggle of this repeat of history that tends to destroy all civilisation in the present culture?
Or , in future, will there be a new mr. Albert Lin at a Nat.Geographic.Channel finding some millimeters ground dust in earthlayers of an old civilisation (with stockexchange papers and all) that existed in this inter-glacial period?

Just thinking

[Moderator edit] please don’t quote entire posts. Saying you agree with them is sufficient.

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Mr. Austin

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After years of using duck duck go I made the switch to brave after this announcement. I had already been using the brave browsers after some similar comments made by the Firefox ceo a while back. The brave search engine is in beta but I am seeing good results so far. Someone has to make a choice on whether or not to trust a result, source. I would prefer that to be the end user rather than someone else deciding for you. Presearch also looks promising as well. SearX, Mojeek, also are independent and seem good. I just don’t know much about the fully customizable part of it yet. There is also YaCy which is a peer to peer search engine. I haven’t tried it yet so I have no idea how that works. Most of the rest mentioned use bing for their results.

Windows 8.1 Group B, Brave & Mozilla ESR - grudgingly & Protonmail

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Mr. Austin

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censorship in war time is not a new thing in the US for better or worse.
If anyone wants to slurp up the slop put forth by the ru they can surely find it on their own.

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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Fred wrote:

Repeating this posting #2432760 from OscarCP , this is an important one i.m.h.o.

you are wearing out my scroll finger

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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Fred

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Sorry . So close to the heat here.

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wavy

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What do you mean censored during war time? the internet is and has been censored for years. who owns the infrastructure that gives us the ability to link with others to even see or share what we can? don’t kid yourself. They make the rules. if you want more freedom then use tor. but be careful. tor along with right search engine will give you what you want, but also everything else you don’t want which is also censored with search engines link bing and google. There is A lot of stuff a normal person doesn’t want or need to see.  for the most part could be worse. There are other country far more Censored the America.

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To me, this issue is important, but it is not a simple yes or no issue. Boycotting a search engine based purely on political or belief issues in an of itself limits your results. Personally, I would prefer a switch to turn rankings on and off.

I have used DuckDuckGo (DDG) for years but will use Google when I want to search for EXACT PHRASES as they allow you to use quotes (and other delimiters) to weed out all the junk results based upon one or two words in the phrase. While the number of junk results seem to have gotten worse at DDG over the past 2 years, it still is better than having the paid Google results that clog up the upper parts of the rankings.

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