7 ms·

DDG is for-profit and serves for the most part Bing results. Why not pick something truly open, like search.marginalia.nu?

by bla3 4y ago

rvnx 4y ago
- RockRobotRock 4y ago
  Why are you spouting off accusations without any evidence? This blind cynicism makes HN a worse place.
- flatiron 4y ago
  They know the types of items you buy. You don’t get the exact items from Amazon. They can guess if you click a link to an iPhone and then later bought a $1,200 electronic but if you click on an iPhone and buy a PS5 they don’t know what you bought.
  - jbman223 4y ago
    That’s not exactly true - as an Amazon affiliate you do see the exact items purchased under each of your specific tracking IDs, as well as the price it was purchased for, category and device group it was purchased using (desktop, tablet, mobile). This also includes any purchases the user makes in a 24 hour session of browsing after clicking your referral link to Amazon. I’m unsure how many tracking IDs you can create in your account, and as far as I’m aware and can tell, you cannot pass specific UTM codes or other identifying information along with a click to Amazon that is passed back to you on the reporting side. Meaning, you could track users you send to Amazon, and where you’re sending them, and you can see outcomes, but Amazon only provides the tracking ID back to you as a reference (this ID is meant to be used on a site/channel wide level, but as I mentioned above could possibly be abused depending on how many you can create)
- goodpoint 4y ago
  > I hope Debian negotiated better Do you have any evidence that Debian negotiated a deal? Debian is not a company.
- yegg 4y ago
  We (at DuckDuckGo) actually have no current relationship (or commercial deal) with Debian. They did this on their own. That is, there is no revenue share here. Also, we no longer use the Amazon affiliate program, or Yahoo for that matter, and we don't (and never have had) any idea what any individual bought.
  - rvnx 4y ago
    Oh wow, so the deal is actually 0% revshare. And I thought I was a weak negotiator... :D Well congrats then.
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  Is that really the case here? I really doubt it considering how careful debian is when it comes to privacy. Even the popularity contest is opt in.
- nortonham 4y ago
  that lwn.net article is from 10 years ago...is it still accurate?
aendruk 4y ago
Probably because one doesn’t exist? That particular example isn’t a general purpose search engine.
nanna 4y ago
I think you're confusing for-profit, opensource and, as I assume would be the motive behind this switch, at least relatively privacy protecting?
garciasn 4y ago
Because the results from search.marginalia.nu are absolutely irrelevant?
- mrweasel 4y ago
  It would also crash marginalia I think. Which would be sad. What would we have Debian change the default search to? I get that DuckDuckGo might not be ideal, but it is better than Google, Bing, Yahoo or Marginalia. The results need to be good enough, but also not obviously anti-privacy. It basically leave you with DuckDuckGo, Qwants or Ecosia. Personally I might had picked Ecosia, had they not had a cookie banner.
  - yuhong 4y ago
    Part of the problem is that Google was designed when PCs booted from spinning rust and a fast CPU was a Pentium II.
marginalia_nu 4y ago
Flattering. Unfortunately my search engine is far away, both in terms of functionality and hardware capacity from being able to deal with that. Maybe some day, who knows, but not yet. Even if I'm destined to make the Linux of search engines, we're metaphorically living in 1992 or so. Would be funny though because it's both developed on a Debian workstation and hosted on a Debian server.
- isaacremuant 4y ago
  After DDG decided they would censor material they considered misinformation from Russia I went out search engine shopping and I'm using brave search. I value transparency and fairness and can make my own mind about things (I remember when being against the Iraq or Lybia wars made you a terrorist sympsthizer). Do you have any stance there? (I'm not saying you should have one or agree with mine, just curious. Every search engine might have its time and place).
  - marginalia_nu 4y ago
    In general I'm not a big fan of censorship. I think it's ultimately counterproductive. It sends the message that the "truth" needs to be protected from independent scrutiny, effectively undermining the credibility of the institutions, while enabling crackpots to develop a persecution narrative. That said I do block some sites, mostly nazi stuff if it's designed in such a way that it crops up in regular searches. It's a fairly small number of sites though.
    - _-david-_ 4y ago
      Do you have a list of the blocked domains?
      - marginalia_nu 4y ago
        Yeah, I didn't start annotating them until recently though, and like 39700 out of 40000 the domains are blacklisted because of spam. Probably a few false positives in there though but it's 40k domains :-/ You can check if a site is blacklisted using a site:-search like https://search.marginalia.nu/site/news.ycombinator.com https://search.marginalia.nu/site/news.ycombinator.com
brnt 4y ago
A Debian (or FSF, or ...) hosted SearX instance would indeed be interesting and perhaps most Free.
- aendruk 4y ago
  risiOS hosts a searx instance for its users and configures it as the default search engine. I worry about the sustainability of such a service though. Don’t they inevitably get blocked upstream? It might work better for more local organizations to host such projects. I’ve always liked the idea of community centers and churches and whatnot hosting shared services for their community.
  - bj-rn 4y ago
    /e/OS does too. https://spot.ecloud.global https://spot.ecloud.global
zagrebian 4y ago
> DDG is for-profit and serves for the most part Bing results What’s the problem? What matters is that my searches aren’t recorded and added to a profile.

DDG is for-profit and serves for the most part Bing results. Why not pick something truly open, like search.marginalia.nu?

by bla3 4y ago

DDG is for-profit and serves for the most part Bing results. Why not pick something truly open, like search.marginalia.nu?

rvnx 4y ago

RockRobotRock 4y ago
Why are you spouting off accusations without any evidence? This blind cynicism makes HN a worse place.
flatiron 4y ago
They know the types of items you buy. You don’t get the exact items from Amazon. They can guess if you click a link to an iPhone and then later bought a $1,200 electronic but if you click on an iPhone and buy a PS5 they don’t know what you bought.
- jbman223 4y ago
  That’s not exactly true - as an Amazon affiliate you do see the exact items purchased under each of your specific tracking IDs, as well as the price it was purchased for, category and device group it was purchased using (desktop, tablet, mobile). This also includes any purchases the user makes in a 24 hour session of browsing after clicking your referral link to Amazon. I’m unsure how many tracking IDs you can create in your account, and as far as I’m aware and can tell, you cannot pass specific UTM codes or other identifying information along with a click to Amazon that is passed back to you on the reporting side. Meaning, you could track users you send to Amazon, and where you’re sending them, and you can see outcomes, but Amazon only provides the tracking ID back to you as a reference (this ID is meant to be used on a site/channel wide level, but as I mentioned above could possibly be abused depending on how many you can create)
goodpoint 4y ago
> I hope Debian negotiated better Do you have any evidence that Debian negotiated a deal? Debian is not a company.
yegg 4y ago
We (at DuckDuckGo) actually have no current relationship (or commercial deal) with Debian. They did this on their own. That is, there is no revenue share here. Also, we no longer use the Amazon affiliate program, or Yahoo for that matter, and we don't (and never have had) any idea what any individual bought.
- rvnx 4y ago
  Oh wow, so the deal is actually 0% revshare. And I thought I was a weak negotiator... :D Well congrats then.
GekkePrutser 4y ago
Is that really the case here? I really doubt it considering how careful debian is when it comes to privacy. Even the popularity contest is opt in.
nortonham 4y ago
that lwn.net article is from 10 years ago...is it still accurate?

aendruk 4y ago

Probably because one doesn’t exist? That particular example isn’t a general purpose search engine.

nanna 4y ago

I think you're confusing for-profit, opensource and, as I assume would be the motive behind this switch, at least relatively privacy protecting?

garciasn 4y ago

Because the results from search.marginalia.nu are absolutely irrelevant?

mrweasel 4y ago
It would also crash marginalia I think. Which would be sad. What would we have Debian change the default search to? I get that DuckDuckGo might not be ideal, but it is better than Google, Bing, Yahoo or Marginalia. The results need to be good enough, but also not obviously anti-privacy. It basically leave you with DuckDuckGo, Qwants or Ecosia. Personally I might had picked Ecosia, had they not had a cookie banner.
- yuhong 4y ago
  Part of the problem is that Google was designed when PCs booted from spinning rust and a fast CPU was a Pentium II.

marginalia_nu 4y ago

Flattering. Unfortunately my search engine is far away, both in terms of functionality and hardware capacity from being able to deal with that. Maybe some day, who knows, but not yet. Even if I'm destined to make the Linux of search engines, we're metaphorically living in 1992 or so. Would be funny though because it's both developed on a Debian workstation and hosted on a Debian server.

isaacremuant 4y ago
After DDG decided they would censor material they considered misinformation from Russia I went out search engine shopping and I'm using brave search. I value transparency and fairness and can make my own mind about things (I remember when being against the Iraq or Lybia wars made you a terrorist sympsthizer). Do you have any stance there? (I'm not saying you should have one or agree with mine, just curious. Every search engine might have its time and place).
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  In general I'm not a big fan of censorship. I think it's ultimately counterproductive. It sends the message that the "truth" needs to be protected from independent scrutiny, effectively undermining the credibility of the institutions, while enabling crackpots to develop a persecution narrative. That said I do block some sites, mostly nazi stuff if it's designed in such a way that it crops up in regular searches. It's a fairly small number of sites though.
  - _-david-_ 4y ago
    Do you have a list of the blocked domains?
    - marginalia_nu 4y ago
      Yeah, I didn't start annotating them until recently though, and like 39700 out of 40000 the domains are blacklisted because of spam. Probably a few false positives in there though but it's 40k domains :-/ You can check if a site is blacklisted using a site:-search like https://search.marginalia.nu/site/news.ycombinator.com https://search.marginalia.nu/site/news.ycombinator.com

brnt 4y ago

A Debian (or FSF, or ...) hosted SearX instance would indeed be interesting and perhaps most Free.

aendruk 4y ago
risiOS hosts a searx instance for its users and configures it as the default search engine. I worry about the sustainability of such a service though. Don’t they inevitably get blocked upstream? It might work better for more local organizations to host such projects. I’ve always liked the idea of community centers and churches and whatnot hosting shared services for their community.
- bj-rn 4y ago
  /e/OS does too. https://spot.ecloud.global https://spot.ecloud.global

zagrebian 4y ago

> DDG is for-profit and serves for the most part Bing results What’s the problem? What matters is that my searches aren’t recorded and added to a profile.