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Comment by kkkqkqkqkqlqlql | Hacker News Reader

Then what is it? DuckDuckGo?

There are time of options. Some people find their happy place with DDG. Others with Braves Search, Kagi, Firefox. There's dozens to choose from. Opera and Vivaldi probably have search engines now if you are down to change your browser too. It depends on what your priorities are, but there's a search engine out there for you that is better than Google search

This vote goes to https://altpower.app

Kagi is brilliant. I find the whole Yandex -thing silly (EU spending on liquefied gas etc. from Russia is more than Yandex’s whole annual revenue) and only wish same scrutiny would be put on corporations funding Israel genocides.

I use DDG at work on Firefox with all AI blocked. If I would apart from Kagi, I would use SearXNG locally accessing it elsewhere with Tailscale. I think Hister seems promising, but have not tried it myself yet.

Kagi.

Trading using Google for giving money directly to a company that directly funds Russia’s efforts in the Ukraine invasion, that acknowledges and refuses to do anything about it, doesn’t seem like the greatest swap.

You might say directly in a sentence as many times as you want, it doesn't make it the truth. Kagi is not directly supporting Russian military efforts. It is a gross oversimplification.

Yandex pays taxes into the Russian government which is controlling military actions in Ukraine. Is this or is this not true?

Yandex pays taxes based off revenue it takes in from companies like Kagi. Is this or is this not true?

People here who pay into Kagi provide the search engine with the funding to pay Yandex. Is this or is this not true?

You can say it’s “not direct” and it’s an “oversimplification,” but the money still ends up in the same place all the same. You can try to wash your hands of it all you want by playing mental gymnastics.

Willingly paying Kagi knowing this makes you at minimum partially complicit in Russia’s invasion and ethnic cleansing of Ukraine.

Use Google and support US & Israel's wars instead!

You don’t have to tell me twice!

If it was a direct transaction like you claimed, you wouldn't need to describe so many steps.

I guess then you would also believe that someone who voted for the current president of the US also isn’t directly responsible for the war in Iran, ICE killing US citizens, and the alienation of Canada.

It’s easy to say “I’m not directly responsible” if you’re proxying it through someone else.

> someone who voted for the current president of the US also isn’t directly responsible for the war in Iran

Yes I would. And not for an ideological reason or political affiliation but because that's just not how "directly" works.

If that’s how you want to rationalize your worldview, sure.

Google pays taxes to the US government, which has launched a war on Iran that has raised the price of oil across the world.

The increase in oil prices have increased the oil profits of the Russian oil sector, which flow directly into the Russian war effort.

Google supports the Russian war in Ukraine!

You can say it’s "not direct" and it’s an "oversimplification," but the money still ends up in the same place all the same.

Willingly using Google knowing this makes you at minimum partially complicit in Russia’s invasion and ethnic cleansing of Ukraine.

A small search engine with a tiny user base is paying another search engine enough that it is paying enough tax on received money to fund a war? How does that make any sense? I also hate the war, I'm not on any side, but this just doesn't make any sense.

Google with the `udm=14` URL identifier. You can set it as the default search engine on all browsers, including on mobile.

Unfortunately DDG sucks now too. Most of the top results are LLM generated slop.

can confirm as of this morning. last i checked Brave's Leo was slop but i'm sure the models have changed

of course Google / Gemini search is slop as well but it is at least advanced slop. not like whatever Soylent 1.5 Flash that DDG is bringing to the table

Not using the A.I. version, though I do have an A.I. assit box up top at times. I've noted more rubbish search results lately -- I feel at at times DDG just doesn't bother to try or has deceased the giving a flaquk setting. My goto has been DDG primarily for about 10 years. I've struck this unhelpful Meh response on and off the last couple months primarily with slightly off the beaten track queries ...often having to go to something I had to do with Google, using quotes around an often common term I really needed the result to include to finally trying to narrow it down quickly defaulting to no results at all - then having to switch back to Google, where Google would surprise me with at least a handful of suitable results.

Click on AI Settings in the bottom right and turn off AI completely.

I don't mean their own LLM generated response to the query. I mean websites in the SERP. A lot are auto generated LLM slop. DDG isn't doing anything to filter out this low quality junk from their index.

https://noai.duckduckgo.com/

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