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This is a bad look for a company that is trying to build its brand on privacy and trust. Even though I don't use the DDG browser I hope they own up to this, re
by CivBase 6y ago
This is a bad look for a company that is trying to build its brand on privacy and trust. Even though I don't use the DDG browser I hope they own up to this, rectify it quickly, and learn from it.
- projomni 6y agowell... i'd much rather fix their deep search so it's as good as google's and not worry about this like this:)
- haggy 6y agoPrivacy has to be scrutized constantly and be the top priority. If it isn't, then you're going to end up with another google. A direct correlation exists between the revenue Google receives for selling data and the quality of its search. Google focuses completely on tracking and search, with privacy behind a far far away afterthought (if it's a thought at all).
- CivBase 6y agoI'm sure Google's thinking about privacy. They're thinking "will our latest privacy violation create enough of an uproar to affect our bottom line, or will the users just accept it like they usually do?".
- dabbernaught420 6y agoIn my view, anyone who trusts ddg is a bit silly - founder has a bad track record on user privacy. Founded Names Database[1], a social media website designed to collect user information as aggressively as possible, before selling all the information to classmates.com. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_Database https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_Database
- Torn 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
- Thorrez 6y agoI don't really think is an ad hominem fallacy. An ad homihem fallacy is when you attack the person making an argument rather than the argument. But no one here is attacking the people making the argument. The argument is "Trust DDG". That argument is being attacked as "DDG's founder has done bad stuff in the past, it's likely DDG will do bad stuff, so I won't trust it". That seems to be attacking the argument to me, thus not an ad hominem.
- hunter2_ 6y agoI'm fairly sure that "[you are] a bit silly" is the ad hominem attack, not that calling out the founder is an ad hominem attack.
- baddox 6y agoThat’s not an ad hominem attack. The comment didn’t say that the person’s argument is wrong because that person is silly. Clearly the comment is saying that the argument itself is silly.
- hunter2_ 6y agoThe intent of the comment was probably not ad hominem, as if it were rephrased like "trusting ddg is silly" because then silly is modifying the act of trusting. But as-written, silly is modifying anyone (a person) without distinguishing whether silliness is the cause or the effect; if silliness is the cause of the trust then it's an ad hominem attack. It would be more clear-cut if instead of "silly" they said "low intelligence."
- dabbernaught420 6y agoI meant my comment to read like this: [My opinion on trusting DDG] - [Reason for my opinion on trusting DDG].[More information about the reason] In this case, because I don't use the "personal attack" to reach my conclusion that the person was wrong, I don't think it would be a case of argument ad hominem. But if someone read it like this: [One reason for my opinion on trusting DDG] - [Another reason for my opinion on trusting DDG].[More information about the second reason] Then I am using the "personal attack" to reach my conclusion that the person was wrong, so I think it would be a case of argument ad hominem. My comment wasn't written very well, and I'll try to write better comments in the future. Not that adding an ad hominem to a valid argument makes it invalid, I guess?. But it's still good to avoid fallacies, and to write one's comments so they're likely to be understood the way one meant them.
- ViViDboarder 6y agoStill a better track record than Google, so...
- slmjkdbtl 6y agomost of us use it because we like ducks
- abc-xyz 6y agoAlso worth mentioning they're closed-source, US-based and for-profit. Why exactly do people trust them? Simply because they write a few articles/ads saying "privacy is important"? If you're willing to sacrifice search quality for privacy, as in switching from Google to DuckDuckGo, then you might as well take a step further and switch from Google to Searx/Ask.Moe.
- leereeves 6y agoAs a DDG user I don't feel like I'm sacrificing anything. Two sets of results are better than one (I can see Google results by adding !g, which I do less than once per day on average) and, ironically, DDG bangs are the easiest way to use even Google services like Translate and Scholar.
- itsmeamario 6y agoSame for me. Privacy is why I came, bangs are the reason I stay.
- abc-xyz 6y agoAsk.Moe also support bangs (I know !g and !gt works, not sure about scholar). Searx doesn’t but I imagine they’d gladly accept a pull request for it.
- leereeves 6y agoI don't know much about those search engines. What's the advantage of Ask.Moe or Searx?
- abc-xyz 6y agoFor me the fact that they’re open source. This thread is a prime example of why it’s so important. We really have no idea what DuckDuckGo is doing because they’re closed source. For all we know they could be forwarding users’ IP to Microsoft/Yandex/etc. If you want to market yourself as a champion of privacy, then the absolute minimum criteria should in my opinion be that your codebase is open source.