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If anyone from DDG is watching this thread, thank you for your product and your commitment to privacy. As a privacy-conscious individual, I greatly appreciate

If anyone from DDG is watching this thread, thank you for your product and your commitment to privacy. As a privacy-conscious individual, I greatly appreciate your work. Is there a way to donate? I know you already monetize your product through ads, but I use an ad-blocker (among other things) because, well, most of the internet does not operate with the same values that you do. Since you aren't making any money off of me, I am willing to donate/pay for your service but cannot find any place on your site to do so.

erikig 8y ago
They make money off ads (based strictly on the search terms) so they should be just fine. If you'd like to chip, you can donate to the various privacy initiatives they support here: https://www.crowdrise.com/duckduckgoprivacychallenge https://www.crowdrise.com/duckduckgoprivacychallenge (and here) https://duckduckgo.com/donations https://duckduckgo.com/donations
nashashmi 8y ago
White list their page.
- FabHK 8y ago
  OP might prefer to give them money directly rather than seeing ads.
  - turc1656 8y ago
    Correct. I would definitely prefer to always just pay for services that I use so that 1) I know for sure I am the customer and 2) the service that I value has a stable revenue - ad revenue can be extremely volatile. I don't want the service I like to be at risk because of changes to ad-network pay rates or anything like that.
- ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
  I vehemently disagree with advertising in general, and go to efforts to make sure myself and my wife/kids see ads as little as possible (Pi-Hole, adblock plugins, no TV other than as a NAS screen, etc). I very much believe it is a form of malicious brainwashing. But, I very much want to reward the people who create the things I use. So I'll never whitelist any site or service, but I'll absolutely donate or make sure they get paid in other ways (and usually willingly donate more than they'd get from showing me ads).
  - kraig911 8y ago
    I agree with your position. I'm trying to figure out how to limit my kid from seeing any ads at all. Where can I get more information for this beyond adblock and host file manipulation?
    - eslaught 8y ago
      I'm not sure this is realistic in our modern society. Online, there is some flexibility: you can pay to remove ads for some things, and use ad-block on the ones that don't provide such an option. But in the offline world, I'm not sure what you're going to do. Physical ads are hard to block, you just have to avoid them when you can. Economically, I'm not sure we're ever going to get away from ads. As I've said before in some of my comments, it's not just about paying for things you use. It's about paying more than the people who are willing to put up with ads, because otherwise companies will just do both: charge, and use ads. That's what we see in TV, in addition to many other places, and there's no reason to expect that not to continue unless there were widespread backlash, and I just don't see that happening. I don't like ads, but most of my friends don't seem to see things the way I do.
      - PavlovsCat 8y ago
        > Economically, I'm not sure we're ever going to get away from ads. Why? Was there no human economic activity before they were ads? If spaceships appeared in the sky, and shot lasers at all ads, and anyone making new ones, would we find no way to make and sell and buy things regardless? That seems less likely to me than said spaceships. > I just don't see that happening. True, and saying "it should be possible" is not the same as knowing how to get from here to there. But I wouldn't say "never ever" in this context.
- stevenicr 8y ago
  unlike another in this reply thread, I do not "disagree with advertising in general" - however I disagree with much of the online advertising industry. I wrote a comprimise suggestion post sometime ago, turn adblock into fairblock and I'll see your ads without a grudge. I think end users should have more fine grained control over what they share and see when getting served ads. I feel some basic defaults are in order which can be sliders and checkboxes for more control, relinquish of control for more trusted sources. I don't want to see ads about alcohol or gambling, or games that profit from it. I don't want to see ads that move if I am not hovering on them. I only want ads that are self hosted, not third party injected. (don't punt the malware liability to third party, serve it yourself and be more responsible) things like this are important for security and privacy, and not an issue with ads, but types of ads. If certain publications run certain ads I may not purchase them, or lose faith in them, they can't punt the blame for yesterday's ads. Some things are limited by laws for billboards and such, I don't agree with all those regualtions, but indeed this is something that is important - and with the web it's easy enough to fine grain limit certain things from appearing in front of children, or people struggling with divorce, or all kinds of things - So we have the ability to make ads better, in some cases I would gladly share more info than google allows to be shared currently (I don't care if most web sites get the page and keywords I used to find them, it may help them help me. I do care if third party beacons and trackers share that info with lots of other people I don't know. I should be able to control this on a site by site basis with sane defaults.
  - manigandham 8y ago
    We tried. There are not enough of people like you to matter.
- dbrgn 8y ago
  White listing only helps them if you then actually click on ads, since advertising networks usually pay per click, not per view.
  - turc1656 8y ago
    Yep - and that leads to potentially unpredictable revenue, especially when there are disruptions in the ad-network revenue models and they force down pay rates. This puts sites/services at risk. I would much rather just pay for the service I value.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dharmab 8y ago
They also make money from affiliate links. Next time you buy something online, try searching for it with a !bang. Amazon's is !a, and there are many more: https://duckduckgo.com/bang?c=Shopping&sc=Online https://duckduckgo.com/bang?c=Shopping&sc=Online
tagawa 8y ago
Thanks for the kind comments! We don't accept donations but instead, we really (really really) appreciate it if people spread the word: https://duckduckgo.com/spread https://duckduckgo.com/spread

erikig 8y ago

They make money off ads (based strictly on the search terms) so they should be just fine. If you'd like to chip, you can donate to the various privacy initiatives they support here: https://www.crowdrise.com/duckduckgoprivacychallenge https://www.crowdrise.com/duckduckgoprivacychallenge (and here) https://duckduckgo.com/donations https://duckduckgo.com/donations

nashashmi 8y ago

White list their page.

FabHK 8y ago
OP might prefer to give them money directly rather than seeing ads.
- turc1656 8y ago
  Correct. I would definitely prefer to always just pay for services that I use so that 1) I know for sure I am the customer and 2) the service that I value has a stable revenue - ad revenue can be extremely volatile. I don't want the service I like to be at risk because of changes to ad-network pay rates or anything like that.
ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
I vehemently disagree with advertising in general, and go to efforts to make sure myself and my wife/kids see ads as little as possible (Pi-Hole, adblock plugins, no TV other than as a NAS screen, etc). I very much believe it is a form of malicious brainwashing. But, I very much want to reward the people who create the things I use. So I'll never whitelist any site or service, but I'll absolutely donate or make sure they get paid in other ways (and usually willingly donate more than they'd get from showing me ads).
- kraig911 8y ago
  I agree with your position. I'm trying to figure out how to limit my kid from seeing any ads at all. Where can I get more information for this beyond adblock and host file manipulation?
  - eslaught 8y ago
    I'm not sure this is realistic in our modern society. Online, there is some flexibility: you can pay to remove ads for some things, and use ad-block on the ones that don't provide such an option. But in the offline world, I'm not sure what you're going to do. Physical ads are hard to block, you just have to avoid them when you can. Economically, I'm not sure we're ever going to get away from ads. As I've said before in some of my comments, it's not just about paying for things you use. It's about paying more than the people who are willing to put up with ads, because otherwise companies will just do both: charge, and use ads. That's what we see in TV, in addition to many other places, and there's no reason to expect that not to continue unless there were widespread backlash, and I just don't see that happening. I don't like ads, but most of my friends don't seem to see things the way I do.
    - PavlovsCat 8y ago
      > Economically, I'm not sure we're ever going to get away from ads. Why? Was there no human economic activity before they were ads? If spaceships appeared in the sky, and shot lasers at all ads, and anyone making new ones, would we find no way to make and sell and buy things regardless? That seems less likely to me than said spaceships. > I just don't see that happening. True, and saying "it should be possible" is not the same as knowing how to get from here to there. But I wouldn't say "never ever" in this context.
stevenicr 8y ago
unlike another in this reply thread, I do not "disagree with advertising in general" - however I disagree with much of the online advertising industry. I wrote a comprimise suggestion post sometime ago, turn adblock into fairblock and I'll see your ads without a grudge. I think end users should have more fine grained control over what they share and see when getting served ads. I feel some basic defaults are in order which can be sliders and checkboxes for more control, relinquish of control for more trusted sources. I don't want to see ads about alcohol or gambling, or games that profit from it. I don't want to see ads that move if I am not hovering on them. I only want ads that are self hosted, not third party injected. (don't punt the malware liability to third party, serve it yourself and be more responsible) things like this are important for security and privacy, and not an issue with ads, but types of ads. If certain publications run certain ads I may not purchase them, or lose faith in them, they can't punt the blame for yesterday's ads. Some things are limited by laws for billboards and such, I don't agree with all those regualtions, but indeed this is something that is important - and with the web it's easy enough to fine grain limit certain things from appearing in front of children, or people struggling with divorce, or all kinds of things - So we have the ability to make ads better, in some cases I would gladly share more info than google allows to be shared currently (I don't care if most web sites get the page and keywords I used to find them, it may help them help me. I do care if third party beacons and trackers share that info with lots of other people I don't know. I should be able to control this on a site by site basis with sane defaults.
- manigandham 8y ago
  We tried. There are not enough of people like you to matter.
dbrgn 8y ago
White listing only helps them if you then actually click on ads, since advertising networks usually pay per click, not per view.
- turc1656 8y ago
  Yep - and that leads to potentially unpredictable revenue, especially when there are disruptions in the ad-network revenue models and they force down pay rates. This puts sites/services at risk. I would much rather just pay for the service I value.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

dharmab 8y ago

They also make money from affiliate links. Next time you buy something online, try searching for it with a !bang. Amazon's is !a, and there are many more: https://duckduckgo.com/bang?c=Shopping&sc=Online https://duckduckgo.com/bang?c=Shopping&sc=Online

tagawa 8y ago

Thanks for the kind comments! We don't accept donations but instead, we really (really really) appreciate it if people spread the word: https://duckduckgo.com/spread https://duckduckgo.com/spread