Our European search index goes live
blog.ecosia.org
blog.ecosia.org
I don't see the point. What makes Europe democratic control something to cherish? The chat control plans, the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, the Digital Services Act, the militarization - none of it seems to be democratic tied to any values surrounding freedom.
Without you own search engines (or tech companies in general) you depend on third parties and become basically a puppet.
If, concrete example, e.g. Kagi doesn't censor or harvest data from or otherwise maltreat its users in any way, then what tangible benefit is it, to the European user, to avoid American-based Kagi, for so-called "sovereignty" reasons? What do they actually need, which is missing, that their democratic government can fix? For this question I'm not counting "other users are using it in a way I don't like"—I'm asking about the user themselves asking on their own behalf.
So I agree with you, but the premises are quite restrictive.
What is a real concern, however, is the American government influencing world events in ways that materially harms people outside of America. That government retains its power through the ongoing global economic dominance of American companies. Ordinary people can't do much to directly affect global affairs, but they can at least choose where to spend their money, so why wouldn't they choose to spend their money with companies who aren't propping up foreign governments that harm them?
This point of view I could have understood 20 years ago, but Snowden revelations happened in 2013. Before that, US social media have always been censored according to US social norms.
Uncensored, un-backdoored services from a foreign country have never existed.
As for sovereignty, considering the current US admin as well as US tech barons have been pushing their horses in several EU elections, it's pretty obvious that services from a foreign country with such policies are an issue.
- le tyrant
I also notice that at no point was any support given in the bs claims - just online propaganda sound bite with no substance.
And yes, I think EU gave me a lot as a citizen and I'm invested in it's success because it makes my life and life of my family better. I'm sorry if wanting my country to be better makes you angry.
I agree that the Chat Control plans are bad, however do you think that particular concern is better handled in China or the US? Also note they are not the law specifically because of active democracy.
The other points you mentioned I don’t see how they are anti democratic.
They just try to push it through when people are occupied with something else, which is very unfortunate (and they (who?) should be punished for it, I would want a society that "cancels" these politicians immediately for supporting such an anti-freedom policy), but that's it.
The EU is still a shining beacon of democracy in the world.
what democracy? Yeah some of them have it but not EU and all.
I pay about one Euro per month for ours. I can afford it. The king also has very high approval rating. People don't want him removed.
It’s gaining momentum again, so let’s not rest on past victories.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/coinbase-2b-dual-tranche-note...
I do agree with your overall point.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44811564
Anyway, this should be the correct link. Thank you for Pointing it out.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/eu-chat-control-plan-gains-su...
The EU as a collection/union of sovereign countries? Sure.
As an organization itself the EU is not particularly democratic or it was every designed to be a democracy. Its entirely by indirect appointees and unelected bureaucrats with minimal supervision..
And the "unelected bureaucrats" are just... bureaucrats. That's how governments are run the world over, even in places like Switzerland.
Or does your country vote regularly for the Director of Rail Transportation in your Ministry of Transportation? Or the Director of Lower Education in your Ministry of Education?
If your country holds referendums for that, your country is, sorry to inform you, bats**t crazy.
Let's please stop spreading anti EU propaganda and adress real concerns. For example the EU needs a full blown border protection agency and external EU border protection should be a 100% EU matter, not a member state matter. The EU should have a unified digital market. Etc.
Not really, you vote for parties local to your country. You can not vote for EP parties directly.
Anyways, ProtectEU, the new "break all encryption if chatcontrol fails" was proposed by a secret group, whose identities still not known. That's even farer away from a good and democratic institution than unelected bureaucrats.
I don't think calling these anti-EU-propaganda is a good thing, they are valid criticism (even if the EU is mainly a good thing), and they should be addressed at some point in time.
The people in the EU parliament are people you vote for, directly.
You can not vote for MEPs / parties / ideologies not present in your country.
Let's say I think breaking encryption is a bad thing and I would like to support and vote for someone or something that represent my opinion. Even if there are MEPs and parties in the EP that support what I want, there is no such entity in my country so I can vote for someone else who is against my opinions, or just not vote (and help the biggest party).
I can do anything, my opinion would not matter and my vote is useless for me. That's an inherent issue with the parties / integer number of elected officials, but it is much more serve in a "two level system" like the EP elections.
In other areas:
For the ChatControl, there should be something so a regulation can not be proposed again and again and stopping just before voting it down.
There should be a way for making EU-wide referendums whose result is binding / obligatory for the EU (council and commission) and thus for member states, too. (This is probably hard if you want "better representation" of different sized countries and probably there would need a fairly high bar for passing.)
Make the European Citizens' Initiative easier / clearer, it could be a simpler, less formal, non binding option to an EU-wide referendum.
Indirect democracy is just oligarchy with extra steps
Does that mean there’s the potential to form a party around your views?
(Not saying it’s a practical solution for you, but that the system probably would expect a new view to voice itself)
This however seems like a non issue to you?
> And the "unelected bureaucrats" are just... bureaucrats. That's\ > That's how governments are run the world over, even in places like Switzerland.
In most other developed countries they are appointed directly by elected officials or through a national well regulated (not self regulated) system.
> Or does your country vote regularly for the Director of Rail Transportation in your Ministry of Transportation?
Nope. But we frequently vote for the party/person who is going to appoint him. Not so option in the EU. Best case you vote a for a government which will appoint a commissioner which might have some say in the matter.
> and adress real concerns. F
Being about as democratic as the late Hapsburg empire (just without the emperor but with extra Kafkaesque bureaucracy) is not a concern? Maybe either granting the parliament full sovereignty or just outright getting rid of it (if nobody want to play a "federation" anymore) could the the first choice.
Why on earth couldn't the member states vote for safeguards AGAINST initiatives like that, so they can't repeatedly keep trying?
Did you think that comparison through? :)
I also like this as a platform for my own ideas. I think search (also RAG) is shit and that we need longer, higher quality vector representations of texts, and if I develop one I could potentially convince the people running this to try it.
Maybe pick up 1984 again if you actually believe this.
Furthermore, the US has made military threats against Denmark. Azerbaijan has recently driven out 100,000+ Armenians from Nagorno-Karabach by starvation and artillery bombardment. Georgia has been invaded by Russia in 2008, and now a pro-Russian faction has possibly seized power.
Furthermore, we have a military threat from Turkey, which occupies territory of Cyprus and has recently converted churches on Cyprus into mosques and discussed plans for similar things with Armenian cultural monuments in eastern Anatolia.
A clean solution to these problems requires an increase in military capability.
lol @ that Denmark thing. We shouldn't get involved in local conflicts between Azerbaijan and Armenia except for facilitating peaceful negotiations. Military investments will only move more money towards the MIC.
My heart goes out to Orthodox Christians in Cyprus but this has been going on since mid 1970s and no European military investments will change anything about this.
Instead of protecting their borders or investing in existing military equipment it's being sent to Ukraine where it'll get destroyed or get lost in the black market.
Investing in actual defense capabilities looks different.
The Denmark thing is nothing to laugh. Azerbaijan's ethnic cleansing of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabach is something we have the capacity to reverse. Cyprus is also something we have the capacity to reverse.
How many of the Archer systems have been destroyed? I count zero. The sensible things we have sent them are still there, the rubbish, maybe not so much, but we can afford to lose rubbish.
The problem is the timidity of the European politicians. They're refusing to operate at the appropriate violence level. I hope this will change.
Much of what the EU (now speaking EU not Europe) does is deliberated behind closed doors, without any transparency to those outside.
I live here, and it is extremely scary where we are all going.
Where are you claiming is better then?
The problems you point to are real and concerning. I'm still very glad to have an alternative to the US and China.
Not that I want anything like this but I can't just buy a gun here or question certain historic narratives without the risk of getting arrested.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/homicide-rates-from-firea...
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/26/world/us-gun-culture-world-co...
No disparagement intended, this is a rationalist opinion and mental model. My intent is not to be unkind or dismissive, it is to communicate "Live where you will be happy based on your mental model and belief systems under the assumption that you have no ability to change the system you exist in during a human time horizon."
(part time resident of both the US and Europe, high empathy and a desire to leave the world a better place through collective action even at the diminishment of self, so I lean towards Europe)
The quoted part doesn't say anything about "freedom", are you sure that maybe your perspective (coming from the US I guess?) matches with the values Europeans want?
Personally, I want more of my computing, in every sense, to be closer to me. Ideally in Spain, but OK within EU too, so if there are no search indexes run by EU entities, then that's something we should improve.
First, the claim is that it strengthens democratic control. I can't see how you could be against that.
Second, the more, the merrier. In this case, more search indices means more search freedom. If your country censors something, you can try another index. But only if that index actually exists, and falls under different rules.
Everybody is blaming Ursula for the deal with Trump, like it was her decision. The individual countries politicians made the call, she is just a convenient scape goat (Probably precisely why her position was created for, to push things politicians know will be unpopular). Politicians (leaders of EU states) have and do have all the power to give her the marching orders.
We are getting fuck on a lot of things because we feel the need to rely on USA. With better/bigger militaries ourselves, USA will have les leverage.
And then, in a global comparison EU isn't that bad for what it is - a union of independent countries with quite different culture and history.
I'm hoping voters in European countries feel differently, I suspect not though.
The choice about not voting is easily a sign of democracy, than a sign of no democracy. An autocratic system would either prevent people from voting or arrange votes leading to high support.
However there is indeed a problem:
For one the parliament is weak. It has no right if initiative and no right of budget. These rights are with the elected governments of the member states, who control the commission and firm the council. However even those are (if we ignore Hungary and that complexity) democratically elected and can face votes of confidence over their actions (based on national law)
The other big issue are the topics the EU deals with. Those are mostly complex trade related things, where not being an expert or having special interest in a segment hardly interest the people. The "interesting" topics like taxation, health care, education, social benefits, inner security, ... are within national politics. And even topics where EU powers overlap are discussed from national perspective. Which directly leads to the third issue.
EU is multinational and multilingual thing. A commissioner or MEP can give a fabulous speech, but most people only hear a badly dubbed version, partially even with being double translated (first from, say, Bulgarian to German, then from German to Portuguese) which makes it really hard to debate.
Now saying "it's complicated" hiding eyes and turning around is an option, but even Germany itself is too weak to play in the international field against US (especially with the current political situation) or China. If they can't find a common stand, they will not behold against t the big countries. For a few small counties aside, like Switzerland and UK there is some room to benefit from the big neighbor but be special, but Europe falling apart weakens all.
Which is the final point: The EU is the best structure we had in a few millenia where we didn't have all those different countries fighting and going to war, but we're we have defined ways to negotiate, vote and execute decisions. There is lots of room to improve, with different priorities by everybody, but better than other things we had.
United States could ban the EU tomorrow from using windows causing a huge problem, we also can't produce our own semiconductors. We need technological independence at this point.
It doesn't look like your usual search page and I had the feeling I'm not on the main page at all.
I'll still try it as my new default FF search engine since google got really bad in the past months.
Examples of American cultural attitudes permeating social media platforms that have felt very odd in Europe: Firearms and violence (which is apparently allowed), and nudity (which is apparently always sexual).
The concerns about the current direction of EU regulation are valid and huge, I get that.
The most glaring and obvious example is the narrative surrounding race/gender relations. The EU has it's own racial issues but we get BLM riots too and we get chest thumping misandrists in Sweden.. the country that has done the most to promote gender equality of any nation on the planet.
BLM riots don't make sense in the UK for example, our race relations are much more nuanced, difficult, and probably put the Pakistani community in the most visibly disadvantaged position; but there's no space to talk about that as we're discussing George Floyd and police brutality (which, largely is not a UK issue at all).
I know for Americans this might come off as tone deaf because everything over there is so polarised it's like a battle to the death; but I think a major reason the right wing is growing in the EU is because of US cultural norms becoming prevalent (individualism over collectivism) and that naturally comes with some amount of xenophobia; as if you're living an individualistic mindset you naturally see resources as zero-sum.
The growth of right-wing movements thrive, ironically, by positioning themselves as a bulwark against what they frame as foreign cultural encroachment. It seems we're stuck trying to choose between a censored European world or an American one that doesn't fit us at all.
But if I have to choose, I choose the one that actually sort of fits.
It's incredibly frustrating to see people around you adopt US mentality, problems and problem solving. This can be simple things like talking to the police, ignoring the fact that there's a huge difference in talking to a police officer in Gothenburg vs. Baltimore. Some times you even run into people protesting something that's not a problem, but US centric social media has lead them to believe it is. At the same time many are completely oblivious to local issues.
For example, a couple of years ago there were suddenly people protesting drag queens reading to children in Denmark, and it was so obviously an outrage they had imported directly from American social media. (Granted, these were fringe nutjobs and were quickly dismissed in public discourse, but nevertheless.)
Our local right-wingers want to shut down our equivalent to the education department because “they are too woke”. Meanwhile those same “nationalists” want to stop funding local culture in favor of importing US culture.
This is in Finland of all places. I’m tired of our local social media drones going crazy over US nonsense but our right-wing parties want more of it.
The global cultural influence of the US is really showing and it’s going to be a wild ride as the world shifts to reject it as that influence starts turning against us.
What is American is the endless need to slap a scary label on it, turn it into a culture war football, and export the outrage everywhere else. We’ve been talking about equality, workers' rights, and anti-discrimination in Europe for over a century without needing Fox News to tell us it's dangerous. Now suddenly our own politicians are parroting this imported panic as if it were homegrown wisdom.
Especially when it comes to all the main doctrines of woke ideology concerning race and ethnicity, sexuality, immigration, labor and drug use.
The latter two used to be a common platforming of class equality. Woke ideology has turned common ground into a pitched battle against each other where the only winners are wealthy elites.
It has nothing in common with socialist ideas, this is why it was so eagerly embraced by big corpos and media - to divide those that need solidarity, to substitute representation in place of equality.
It certainly sounds scary.
That's not to absolve Americans at all, but rather to reinforce the idea that the EU should reign over those platforms in the EU, and/or promote its own.
Liberal 'feminists' borrowing the US word 'empowerment' to replace the word 'emancipation', and their new feminist dream is to be a CEO instead of finding a way to smoothen or remove hierarchical structures. Beauvoir is radically reinterpreted, and d'Eaubonne forgotten.
What's funny is that most movements on the right of liberals are becoming even more US coded (all beside one in the regular right, and all beside Monarchist and Bonapartists on the far right) , enough to forget even _very recent_ memories, because they want to transform my country into the US so much. Manifesting transformism shows while transformists were not a subject for almost a century (and Michou died less than a decade ago) is peak American (which isn't an issue if you're from the US to be clear). A more anecdotal example: my mother and aunts are catholic and go to every local church event, at least since their sister died. A lot of (mostly young) people converted recently and those neo-catholic act like Puritains, like they were in a TV show. Calling Yoga devil's work and other shit like that. The priests are trying to do something because apparently it became unbearable.
Even on here on somewhat technical discussions it's pretty much very visible what the US point of view is.
Qwant and Ecosia debut Staan, a European search index that aims to take on Big Tech
Nowadays the bulk of linking goes to ecommerce sites (amazon) from content farms (reddit) and all those sites are submitted directly to Google. I don't think crawlable internet exists anymore.
You can ask Icann [0] access to gTld domain list files (if you have a legitimate reason to do so). Once access you are granted access to a gTld, you can download a compressed csv file with a line per couple <domain, nameserver>.
You can start with seeds like common crawl, and go from there. You can also get DNS records from various providers. Then there's SSL cert logs that you can crawl. Plenty of sources, if you have funding (search by itself without ads sponsoring it might be a net loss, except some niche uses like kagi?)
Lack of education is also generally desirable to many people in power. Not just politicians who can more easily lie but also managers and execs. If the tax system is beyond most people's understanding, rich people are not gonna get taxed properly. If people can't do the math on how much value their work produces for a company, they are not gonna understand how big a chunk the people above them in hierarchical structures (like most companies) take out of it.
We do, on the other hand, need better regulation regarding how individual data can be used, collected, and shared, particularly in the US.
Even for established players these have value because the index gets stale quickly for certain queries that many people care about a lot. Even though that value isn't fungible, or enough to break even if it were, it's the kind of value that keeps the search engine competitive.
Did Qwants already work on an index?
> We’re aiming to serve 50% of French search queries by the end of the year, and will soon start rolling out to other countries.
We will see which kind of data privacy they will go for this time.
- The one that puts the data subject in the focus and protects the end user
- The one that aims to cut out Google and tries to hand out pieces of the cake to European companies.
Qwant has taken major investment from Axel Springer (Bild, Die Welt) and the day will come when the publisher wants something back for its investment.
At least on the outset Ecosia seemed to resist to be drawn into traditional media and their interests quite well until now, but them working together with Qwant is not a good sign.
Second, I read their blog. Critical thinking and reading helps one recognize BS.
Now the question is typically HN with no answer "proof". One can dive down a HN sub bullet tree with this. It's something like proving you exist. Nothing definitive there!
That's a rather limited slice of traffic (50% of French queries, 0% of everything else), and it's not described as the current state but their goal for the end of the year. The obvious implication is that right now even their French rollout is lower than 50%. How much lower, we don't know for certain, but 5 months is a long time. I have to imagine it is far lower than 50% right now. 1%? 10%? Hard to believe it is any higher than that.
So I think my original question was very fair. The answer could for example have been that they indicated on the results page, or maybe they had some kind of a per-user opt-in toggle that you switched. From your reply, I gather that's not the case, and you're just assuming that your results must be from the new index. That seems like a bad assumption to make.
Cookies banners are also not the only way to deal with GDPR, they are just an anti-pattern to make people hate GDPR and trick them into giving consent when they don't consent.