
Twitter CEO Endorses DuckDuckGo - stopads
https://twitter.com/jack/status/1199783221162053633
======
pkamb
I switched my iPhone to Duck Duck Go over the last few days simply because I
hate hate HATE getting linked to Reddit AMP pages from Google.

Reddit (and Stack Exchange) pages are what I use most to find honest
discussions about some topic. Very convenient to use those results to filter
through the blogspam.

Reddit's AMP pages are especially bad, with multiple annoying pop-ups that
don't get cookied when you dismiss them on AMP. I don't understand what Reddit
is getting out of the deal... their mobile site is equally as "mobile" as the
AMP page. The AMP experience is _so bad_.

No preference to un-AMP yourself on Google. So, I switched my search engine.
The DDG results seem significantly worse, or at least very different. But
old.reddit.com pages load perfectly, and fast.

~~~
distances
Another advantage of DDG: the result links are straight to the destination,
unlike with Google where there's a tracking redirection in between. This is
great on Android, as I can open the link straight in an app (like Wikipedia)
without going to the page first and then launching the app.

~~~
Leace
Yes, not to mention when you want to share the link in DDG you share the
original link directly but in Google you'd share the redirector link.

Given Google's scale they probably don't care about the long tail of technical
users such as us.

~~~
signal11
I tried this just now and this particularly seems to be a problem on Firefox.

On iOS (WebKit) and Chrome, Google’s search results can be copied just fine -
there’s no redirector because Google uses hyperlink link auditing (<a
href="..." ping="...">).

Firefox does support ping but disables it by default for privacy reasons.

Which is good, I guess, because now the link tracking is more apparent, but it
does still happen and leads to a worse UX for the user.

------
__ka
I have mixed feelings about this. If you recommend DuckDuckGo, Qwant, Ecosia
you're essentially recommending Bing. Each of them have to show bing ads,
forward the users' IPs as per Bing's terms of service (to fight ad fraud etc).
Similarly, if you recommend StartPage, you're recommending Google. Same drill
with ads.

I like DuckDuckGo. But unless they build their own search - I think the
fundamental problem has not been tackled. There is no good, independent,
private search alternative.

[Edit] I am not trying to single out DDG. There are a few replies that either
demand for proof (rightfully) or suggest Bing is used only sometimes. I do not
have conclusive proof, but have worked on search. Here's a couple of things
for the curious:

1\. Try to run this test: If you query "what is my ip" in duckduckgo (DDG), or
any of the other ones I mentioned, you will notice in the description of one
of the top results this IP: 207.46.13.147. It's a BingBot IP [0]. It's a good
enough test to spot where results are coming from.

2\. Open two browser windows side by side with DDG and Bing. Turn on results
for the country you are in in DDG. Look attentively. Try image search.

It is clear that DDG does some re-ranking based on its own, but it's very
often the same results.

[0]
[https://whatismyipaddress.com/ip/207.46.13.147](https://whatismyipaddress.com/ip/207.46.13.147)

~~~
liambates
Aren't DuckDuckGo searches a mixture of Bing, Yahoo, Yandex and their own
crawler?

I don't know a great deal about their infrastructure and would love to learn
more about it.

~~~
mikeleeorg
This article is from 2017, but has some more technical detail behind DDG than
other articles do:

[https://www.wired.co.uk/article/duckduckgo-anonymous-
privacy](https://www.wired.co.uk/article/duckduckgo-anonymous-privacy)

------
unicornporn
Honest question: how do you people even cope with the crap results?

I'm a StartPage user, but decided to try DDG for some time after the System1
debacle [1]. The Swedish localized search results are downright unusable
compared to StartPage/Google. I'm really trying to give it a chance, but I
keep reaching for SP in every other search.

[1] [https://reclaimthenet.org/startpage-buyout-ad-tech-
company/](https://reclaimthenet.org/startpage-buyout-ad-tech-company/)

~~~
Semaphor
Because they aren’t crap for me the vast majority of the time. I often hear
about local results, but flipping the "Germany" switch gives me great German
results.

There are 2 cases when I need to use !g, both of them are when there aren’t
many results:

1\. Rare error, simply not in their index

2\. Ambiguous term and I need to force a part of the query to appear. Because
DDG thinks it’s perfectly fine to ignore the user sometimes and show you
completely unrelated things even if you tried your best to tell them what you
are looking for __and __it’s in their index.

Sadly recently google started doing that as well. Not as bad as DDG, the first
few results are still an answer to my query, but then they decide to spam the
results with useless sites that don’t have the term.

edit: formatting

~~~
mosselman
Use !s instead, it will take you to startpage which are essentially the same
results as on Google, without having to go to Google.

------
darzu
DuckDuckGo is still not ready to be my daily driver.

Here's my last significant Google search: "monaco IndentAction.Indent"

The documentation I was looking for[0] was the:

\- 1st hit on Google[1]

\- 17th hit on DDG[2]

but to be fair I didn't find it within the first _10_ (!) pages of Bing[3], so
at least it's better than Bing. And I work for MSFT. I submitted feedback to
DDG & Bing, hopefully it helps.

[0] [https://microsoft.github.io/monaco-
editor/api/enums/monaco.l...](https://microsoft.github.io/monaco-
editor/api/enums/monaco.languages.indentaction.html)

[1]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=monaco+IndentAction.Indent&o...](https://www.google.com/search?q=monaco+IndentAction.Indent&oq=monaco+IndentAction.Indent)

[2]
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=monaco+IndentAction.Indent&t=h_&ia...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=monaco+IndentAction.Indent&t=h_&ia=web)

[3]
[https://www.bing.com/search?q=%2bmonaco+IndentAction.Indent&...](https://www.bing.com/search?q=%2bmonaco+IndentAction.Indent&filters=rcrse%3a%221%22&FORM=RCRE)

~~~
leeoniya
2nd result on [https://searx.me/](https://searx.me/), thanks metaseach!

~~~
tomcooks
Underrepresented search engine. I don't understand how a federation of searx
forks hasn't popped up yet

------
gundmc
Digital ad company CEO endorses competitor of rival digital ad company.

~~~
chance_state
Twitter makes less than $3B/year on ads. Google makes $135B+.

Are they really competitors?

~~~
rndgermandude
Yes, they are. Both have ads as their primary revenue stream. It does not
matter if they are unequal in size, they still compete in the same space.

~~~
vishnu_ks
DuckDuckGo also makes money through ads.

------
throwgoo52441
Google appears to be doing increasingly creepy stuff in pursuit of higher
revenues.

For instance, I've recently noticed videos being recommended on my Android TV
which are particularly related to, or the exactly the same as, those I watched
recently on my computer (all done in private mode, no Google login anywhere).
This has happened twice after resetting everything. It therefore appears that,
contrary to their statements on tracking IP addresses, they're infact using
them for recommendations and tracking. We can only imagine what else they are
collecting behind the facade of SVs slef-conceited "liberalism".

------
skuthus
This is awesome - happy to see privacy oriented search become more popular. I
think DuckDuckGo needs a better name though - Something more ubiquitous. Duck,
maybe? Quack?

~~~
krackers
There was a rant by some other HN user about how DDG owns "duck.com" yet
refuses to just point it to a search page.

~~~
godelski
duck.com DOES redirect to duckduckgo.com. IIRC Google used to own duck.com and
wouldn't redirect, but once DDG got ownership they redirected it.

~~~
krackers
Visiting the page incognito, you're hit with a modal dialogue that you have to
dismiss before you can search.

~~~
godelski
This does not happen in FireFox. Are you suggesting Google is still playing
dumb games?

~~~
jobigoud
I can repro this in Firefox. Are you disabling Javascript?

~~~
godelski
Ahhh found it. uBlock was preventing it. I can reproduce now.

------
Waterluvian
I've heard about Duck Duck Go for a while and just never bothered. But I
finally decided to try it. It was easy. Settings -> Search Engines ->
DuckDuckGo.

And so far it's just fine. Gives me great results when searching for coding
stuff.

------
flurdy
Duckduckgo is great. But also because the easy !g !gi !tw shortcuts to search
in google or twitter as well.

Surprised to find lately that a lot of my searches only return relevant
results in a twitter search.

~~~
LandR
Also w! for wiki.

The bang commands are super useful.

~~~
ojosilva
That's a feature of most browsers location bar. Just assign a letter/string to
any bookmark of your liking and voila! No need to depend on DDG and
exclamation points for your quick searches.

A few of my favorites include hn for HN's algolia, th for thesaurus, wes for
Wikipedia in Spanish and d for... duck duck go.

~~~
flurdy
That is true. but my first search is always duckduckgo. Only if that doesn't
tell me straight away to I go for a !bang search. The location bar now is
filled with a ddg url so easier to just add ! to the search box of ddg.

And as I switch machines, browsers, profiles, and privacy mode all day long
the only ubuiqitous thing is that ddg is the default search engine.

I don't use the !w shortcut as usually whatever/whomever I have searched for
is in the info box on ddg's right-hand column and it usually has a wikipedia
link if I need to get more detail.

------
Seb-C
I did try DDG and Startpage a few years ago but ultimately gave up because the
results were not good.

I gave another try to DDG since about 3 weeks and so far the results are
pretty good. Not only they got better on the last few years, but for me Google
got worse at the same time.

Almost everytime I search in Google nowadays, I have to reformulate my search
2~3 times to get decent results. I often need to add double quotes, ask for
reddit or specify the language. Google today just tries too much to read my
mind, guess what I want and make interpretations instead of just doing what I
asked. Because of this huge waste of time, I became frustrated over time.

Also, I am French, use English very often (including at work) and live in
Japan, so the explicit region filter of DDG is really a bless compared to the
obscure and almost always wrong way Google handles this.

~~~
cheez
Dude, Google is so much worse now... I have no idea what has happened.

~~~
U8dcN7vx
Having to make several searches means even more ads are presented ...

~~~
cheez
Genius

------
madiathomas
I tried DDG a while ago and it didn't feel natural to me. It will be so hard
for me to change a search engine after using Google for 20 years. I am too
attached to this search engine and it is good enough for my needs. I rarely
change things that are working for me. It feels strange for me when I am using
other search engines. I feel like I am cheating on my spouse. The first thing
I do when I buy an iPhone is to hide Safari and download Google Chrome. Same
thing when I buy a new Windows laptop, or reinstall Windows, I use IE/Edge to
download Chrome and never use IE/Edge again. Chrome is the main reason I
haven't switched to another search engine. It works better with Google apps
and I rely on Google apps a lot.

~~~
tomcooks
> rarely change things that are working for me.

But what if said things change to the point that they're unrecognisable? What
if said spouse cheats you? Because that's what's happening.

~~~
madiathomas
The benefits of using Google far outweighs the bad side of Google. When I want
to search for private things, I go incognito mode. I clean up my activity log
from time to time. I only allow Google Maps to track my location when I am
using it. To be sure that they don't track my location, I use iPhone, not
Android. That way I know they won't sneak some way to track me without my
consent.

~~~
jshc
incognito mode does not prevent your search from being tracked.

~~~
madiathomas
Any evidence to backup your claims that they track incognito searches? They
promised not to track and I don't see anything that suggests they do track me
when I am incognito.

~~~
livatlantis
Incognito is "private" in the sense that it doesn't leave a trace locally, on
your computer.

From
[https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95464?co=GENIE.Plat...](https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95464?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en)
:

> \- Chrome won't save your browsing history, cookies and site data, or
> information entered in forms. > \- Files you download and bookmarks you
> create will be kept. >\- Your activity isn’t hidden from websites you visit,
> your employer or school, or your internet service provider.

Your IP, referrers etc are still visible. The only thing is you're perhaps not
logged in. It doesn't do much to protect you at all.

------
vfc1
I've tried it and the results just aren't as good as Google. For example, it
does not index Javascript-heavy pages, which means a lot of documentation
websites for popular open source projects are seen as blank pages by their
indexer and simply won't be ranked.

Also, the ability to identity a given user allows Google to serve personalized
and therefore more relevant search results (which of course means you also get
personalized ads).

------
on_and_off
I felt that it was time to try to switch to DDG, so I just went to the
duckduckgo website, and it proposes to "add it to chrome".

It leads to a chrome extension page asking me to give complete read access to
what pages I visit to the DDG extension.

Naive question : how can I know what DDG will do with that data ? (And yes I
realize that this question applies to any search engine or extension)

~~~
pvarangot
Google already knows the pages you visit, worst case if you give them to DDG
you are making the playing field even.

~~~
on_and_off
Well the worst case is exactly what I would like to avoid. Otherwise, what's
the point ?

------
throwaway122378
I call publicity stunt. Jack is doing just as much to censor free thought as
is Google.

~~~
xwowsersx
100%

------
lifeisstillgood
I was very impressed listening to Weinberg on The Angel Philospher podcast
recently, and have been very happy with DDG as my default engine for about a
year. And yet it was only yesterday that I realised that (for a certain
section of the web) adverts on DDG are playing to a self selected audience -
basically it's like running banner ads on HN.

Weirdly you seem to have to go through BingYahoo -
[https://www.shivarweb.com/9242/how-to-advertise-on-
duckduckg...](https://www.shivarweb.com/9242/how-to-advertise-on-duckduckgo/)

------
partingshots
This is basically just endorsing Bing though. There’s nothing wrong with that
mind you, but I think it’s important to realize that DuckDuckGo is effectively
just a wrapper around Bing.

------
ydb
Yes @jack yes! Hopefully more high-profile thought leaders will enter the
public discourse to advise on more sane, privacy-respecting alternatives.

I'm glad I was relieved of hating @jack at least momentarily. :')

~~~
gootik
May I ask why hate @jack ?

~~~
pwython
Sacha Baron Cohen recently called out jack and the other "silicon six."

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/21/sacha-baron-cohen-rips-on-
fa...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/21/sacha-baron-cohen-rips-on-facebook-and-
big-tech-for-sowing-hate.html)

~~~
ehsankia
Don't get me wrong, I love his work, but I don't really understand why what he
has to say about tech is any more relevant than any other celebrity. It's not
like he has some deeper insider knowledge of the subject.

~~~
pwython
From the Anti-Defamation League:

> Sacha Baron Cohen is the well-deserved recipient of ADL’s International
> Leadership Award, which goes to exceptional individuals who combine
> professional success with a profound personal commitment to community
> involvement and to crossing borders and barriers with a message of diversity
> and equal opportunity.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymaWq5yZIYM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymaWq5yZIYM)

~~~
LegitShady
Argument from authority from someone else. This isn't a logical argument.

------
buboard
Searching google nowadays feels like searching an ad database. For me it isn't
even a matter of privacy but about exclusion of 90% of the web out there. Bing
is not bad either, nor is yandex. What else is there? Remember when google was
like this? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8JT9QWA-
eY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8JT9QWA-eY)

~~~
zo1
They also focus on the "buying" portion of the internet way too much. Either
that, or 90% of the internet is revolved around buying shit.

------
tuldia
Given the amount of M$ ads DDG has showing latelly does not surprises me they
might be partnering with bing.

~~~
teh_klev
> M$

Hello, 1990's Slashdot called and would like its tired old '$' satire back.

~~~
harry8
M$ would like their tired old 1990s business practises back, oh wait they
never left. Just like the M$ shorthand which we see less simply becuase we
talk about them less.

It's reputation they fully earned. You can write "Microsoft" in full whenever
you like if you prefer too. I think it's pretty reasonable to casually express
contempt at every opportunity for any business that puts money vastly further
ahead of ethics than they need to. You can disgaree with that if you like too.

Facebrick is the new M$. What do we have for Goog? "do no evil" with
strickeout for more money? $GOOG?

~~~
teh_klev
My friend, I think you missed the sarcasm and possibly some satire in my
comment.

------
mlinksva
> The app is even better!

What does that mean? I guess
[https://duckduckgo.com/app](https://duckduckgo.com/app) is a browser, and a
browser extension? The app is a relatively better browser than DDG search is a
search engine?

~~~
sprite-1
The DDG app is honestly pretty bad... the last time I tried it, there wasn't
even support for tabs so you're stuck with one page view at a time.

Honestly, IDK why anyone would not just use Firefox Mobile. It's got addons
support too

~~~
AdamSC1
Not sure when you last tried the app but it does indeed support tabs!

~~~
sprite-1
I believe I tried it a week or so after it launched. Although, I still stand
by my point that Firefox Mobile offers the privacy-oriented approach of the
DDG app and so much more via addons that it's pretty hard to justify using the
DDG app unless the phone is really low-end enough that Firefox chugs on it

------
joering2
The idea about private browsing is silly to me frankly. Sure DuckDuckGo can be
more "private" than Google on its face, but unless they are incorporated deep
in Switzerland and dev/null all traffic from a US-based IPs, they are
obligated, by laws, to record-keeping and in general KYC even if its only mere
"search quote" and "IP address". Otherwise the would quickly get shut down by
authorities (DHS in this example) under suspicious of aiding/abetting
terrorism the moment someone punches "how to make bomb" and they do not
properly store relevant meta-tag information.

~~~
kortilla
Citation that KYC dictates that a Swiss company record US IPs and what the
punishment is for not?

------
tyzerdak
Sometimes I use bing when google is showing biased results.

------
kmlx
how much marketshare does ddg need to have before we stop calling google an
outright monopoly on search?

------
dreamcompiler
There's an app??

~~~
dredmorbius
Yes:

[https://duckduckgo.com/app](https://duckduckgo.com/app)

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.duckduckgo...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.duckduckgo.mobile.android)

[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/duckduckgo-privacy-
browser/id6...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/duckduckgo-privacy-
browser/id663592361)

------
bemeurer
Nice endorseyment

------
handoff
I guess twitter will not be acquired by google anytime soon

------
zokula
It's too bad gullible people are falling for duckduckgo's so-called privacy
promises.

~~~
mxuribe
Curious, what privacy promises do you believe DuckDuckGo won't fulfill?
Genuinely interested to learn.

------
r00fus
Wow, Twitter is on a roll with their inactive user purge, refusal to sell
political ads (yes, issue ads are still allowed but monitored) and now this.

I applaud these moves.

