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Tell HN: DuckDuckGo now has anoying popup

21 points by majkinetor 4y ago

DDG now shows popup for their extension. See how it looks here: https://i.imgur.com/xSvnCF6.png Its so anoying and show up constantly even if you close it, that I had to use uBlock Origin to remove it. Dark patterns seem to always happen no matter who you are or claim to be. Damn Eternal Semptember...

pwg 4y ago
The "plain html" variant of their search page does not give me any such popup: https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/ https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/
- majkinetor 4y ago
  That is a good tip! However, it looks like you do miss out some features that way. Most notably, you can't use search shortcut in Firefox/Chrome as it does POST instead of GET
  - notRobot 4y ago
    There's also https://lite.DuckDuckGo.com/ https://lite.DuckDuckGo.com/ and https://start.duckduckgo.com/ https://start.duckduckgo.com/ which doesn't have this banner.
    - majkinetor 4y ago
      It also shows on start.ddg: https://i.imgur.com/e0iMWB7.png https://i.imgur.com/e0iMWB7.png Also bangs do not work
deznu 4y ago
I saw this, closed it and it prompted me to go to start.duckduckgo.com - apparently if you clear your cookies often this popup can keep showing up, this subdomain looks to avoid this problem and simply not show popups.
- majkinetor 4y ago
  I am not cleraing cookies. This happened on all of my machines... start.ddg can be used with browser settings, which is nice. I switched to it.
adyashakti 4y ago
I switched to Ecosia.
- lionkor 4y ago
  Isn't that Google? Google lacks all the features I use DDG for (privacy and bangs)
  - zahma 4y ago
    It apparently is Bing.
    - GekkePrutser 4y ago
      Which is the same as DDG uses as a backend by the way.
      - zahma 4y ago
        I know.
dontbenebby 4y ago
The search engine is good but I guess they are having income issues since they keep pushing these McAfee style products and patterns. They’re useful more as a way to divert tax revenue from California to PA, my home state, which has been run roughshod by anti tax ex tech bros for too long, than as a suite of products in the way MS or Google offers. (I keep having to fall back to Bing for some types queries they’re better at slapping together a bunch of existing things than creating their own algorithms, spidering etc… but the bang commands are useful and a lot of IAs allow you to do an opaque query over HTTPS like calculate a sha256 hash that some users lacking terminal access might not be able to do locally.
Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y ago
TURN OFF JAVASCRIPT I'd say it louder if I could
bil7 4y ago
the extension is actually really good - enables you to use the !bang syntax
- puffoflogic 4y ago
  You don't need the extension for that, though...
wara23arish 4y ago
Switched to brave recently, like it better so far
theaudacityofyw 4y ago
Gave up on DDG after the Microsoft tracker thing, nothing against people still using it, I just couldn't personally trust them now. Objectively speaking, I found Brave Search provides better results with nice features. You can also use SearX to proxy DDG searches. It's a shame, DDG are otherwise so user friendly.
cf100clunk 4y ago
Have you tried using DuckDuckGo's Cloud Save configuration feature when using start.duckduckgo.com? Click on the three-arrowed hamburger menu and you'll find it. Set up DuckDuckGo's options as you like, then apply a pass phrase to store them. I know it isn't a direct solution to thwarting that popup the first time you see it, but it prevents it in the future. Cloud Save is handy to know in order to propagate your settings across browsers regardless of platforms. https://help.duckduckgo.com/settings/cloud-save/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/settings/cloud-save/

21 points by majkinetor 4y ago

pwg 4y ago

The "plain html" variant of their search page does not give me any such popup: https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/ https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/

majkinetor 4y ago
That is a good tip! However, it looks like you do miss out some features that way. Most notably, you can't use search shortcut in Firefox/Chrome as it does POST instead of GET
- notRobot 4y ago
  There's also https://lite.DuckDuckGo.com/ https://lite.DuckDuckGo.com/ and https://start.duckduckgo.com/ https://start.duckduckgo.com/ which doesn't have this banner.
  - majkinetor 4y ago
    It also shows on start.ddg: https://i.imgur.com/e0iMWB7.png https://i.imgur.com/e0iMWB7.png Also bangs do not work

deznu 4y ago

I saw this, closed it and it prompted me to go to start.duckduckgo.com - apparently if you clear your cookies often this popup can keep showing up, this subdomain looks to avoid this problem and simply not show popups.

majkinetor 4y ago
I am not cleraing cookies. This happened on all of my machines... start.ddg can be used with browser settings, which is nice. I switched to it.

adyashakti 4y ago

I switched to Ecosia.

lionkor 4y ago
Isn't that Google? Google lacks all the features I use DDG for (privacy and bangs)
- zahma 4y ago
  It apparently is Bing.
  - GekkePrutser 4y ago
    Which is the same as DDG uses as a backend by the way.
    - zahma 4y ago
      I know.

dontbenebby 4y ago

The search engine is good but I guess they are having income issues since they keep pushing these McAfee style products and patterns. They’re useful more as a way to divert tax revenue from California to PA, my home state, which has been run roughshod by anti tax ex tech bros for too long, than as a suite of products in the way MS or Google offers. (I keep having to fall back to Bing for some types queries they’re better at slapping together a bunch of existing things than creating their own algorithms, spidering etc… but the bang commands are useful and a lot of IAs allow you to do an opaque query over HTTPS like calculate a sha256 hash that some users lacking terminal access might not be able to do locally.

Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y ago

TURN OFF JAVASCRIPT I'd say it louder if I could

bil7 4y ago

the extension is actually really good - enables you to use the !bang syntax

puffoflogic 4y ago
You don't need the extension for that, though...

wara23arish 4y ago

Switched to brave recently, like it better so far

theaudacityofyw 4y ago

Gave up on DDG after the Microsoft tracker thing, nothing against people still using it, I just couldn't personally trust them now. Objectively speaking, I found Brave Search provides better results with nice features. You can also use SearX to proxy DDG searches. It's a shame, DDG are otherwise so user friendly.

cf100clunk 4y ago

Have you tried using DuckDuckGo's Cloud Save configuration feature when using start.duckduckgo.com? Click on the three-arrowed hamburger menu and you'll find it. Set up DuckDuckGo's options as you like, then apply a pass phrase to store them. I know it isn't a direct solution to thwarting that popup the first time you see it, but it prevents it in the future. Cloud Save is handy to know in order to propagate your settings across browsers regardless of platforms. https://help.duckduckgo.com/settings/cloud-save/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/settings/cloud-save/