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In 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
by dabbernaught420 6y ago
In 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.
- Thorrez 6y agoOk, but that's pretty irrelevant to the core of dabbernaught420's argument. Focusing on that is kind of pointless.
- dabbernaught420 6y agoA common fallacy I see, though I don't know if there's a name for it, is assuming that just because what someone is doing can be described by the name of a fallacy that what the person is doing is fallacious.
- travisjungroth 6y ago> Argument from fallacy is the formal fallacy of analyzing an argument and inferring that, since it contains a fallacy, its conclusion must be false. It is also called argument to logic (argumentum ad logicam), the fallacy fallacy, the fallacist's fallacy, and the bad reasons fallacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy
- dabbernaught420 6y agoI'm talking about situations where no fallacy has actually occurred, not situations where a fallacy has occurred but a correct conclusion has been arrived at anyway.
- kd5bjo 6y agoThat’d be a form of equivocation: the accuser is using an incorrect definition of the fallacy, instead of the true one.
- travisjungroth 6y agoI see what you mean. Just because you’re saying a person has a bad history doesn’t mean your committing an “ad hominem”. That seems different.
- the_cramer 6y agoSo what does any fallacy tell me then? Especially the fallacy fallacy? If it does invalidate the invalidation of fallacies it is in itself untrue...bz...recursion error..bz stack overflow
- dimitrios1 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 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.