WTF? Has duckduckgo sold its soul? OMG!

Well, I don't know what to make of it. Duckduckgo as a search engine has transformed from a hard-ass "show me entire raw results from the entire Internet" to "every little piss-ant selling 2c of piss" -- and nothing deeper than that! You have to fight to find useful information! WTF??!!!

I am deeply f***ing sad about this. I have lost an old friend. Enshittification marches on.

Oh no I'm a new-ish user to Duckduckgo and haven't been dissatisfied with results. Are they inaccurate? Have you tried Ecosia? They make a point to not save user data and they use their ad revenue to plant trees!

Duckduckgo is mostly just a more useful and privacy-respecting front end to Bing. The problem we're seeing is probably emanating from the source, which is a shame but also predictable. I've started using Mojeek a lot, but it's quirky and does not seem to have either the aggregate index size built up to compete with the dominant players, nor a robust query logic. They are improving all the time but nothing like the Google of a decade or so ago.

eh?
I usually use both google and duckduckgo.  The results are very different but I haven't seen a lot of ads on ducky.  Love their browser and how easy it is to remove cookies, etc.  I never figured out how they make enough money to keep going.  

I miss Million Short - it was basically google, minus the top one million results.  But that didn't last long.

Does anyone actually use bing?  It's without a doubt the biggest piece of crap I've ever used.

I wonder if a lot of those websites selling 2c of piss are AI garbage sites crowding out the good old sites we're after.  I heard if you put a search condition for the results to be pre 2023, or something like that, you get rid of the AI returns.  Not sure if it works but that's what I heard...

if i can't find what i'm looking for with startpage, or duckduckgo  and need google results i use https://udm14.com/ to search google search engine without the AI summary's and ads (a lazy way to append &udm=14 to the search terms).  the udm=14 results are more like old school google search engine.  hope this helps. John

J. Syme wrote:https://udm14.com/

Good lord! If I read something more important than this this month, I'll be surprised. Thank you!

I've been annoyed by duckduckgo putting AI results on the search pages. I keep down voting them, clicking the box "dislike source"  or (I don't have the words right) "dislike AI."

I don't intend to steal John's thunder (udm=14 really is phenomenal!) though I do want to make a shout-out for the search engine I use:

Mojeek

It kinda-sorta ignores typical SEO tactics so that worthwhile results show up on the first page. It also scrapes other search engines when doing an image search, allowing you to pick and choose which one/s you want to reference.

I found out about it in the middle of last year and have been using it as my default search engine since then.

Stephen B. Thomas wrote:I don't intend to steal John's thunder (udm=14 really is phenomenal!) though I do want to make a shout-out for the search engine I use:

Mojeek

It kinda-sorta ignores typical SEO tactics so that worthwhile results show up on the first page. It also scrapes other search engines when doing an image search, allowing you to pick and choose which one/s you want to reference.

I found out about it in the middle of last year and have been using it as my default search engine since then.

Dang, I tried this "permaculture iowa" "edible landscapes iowa" "edible landscapers iowa" and got nothing about us for several pages...
We always hit on Google & DDG but maybe because I manage our Google page in that same browser (?) or maybe we rely on SEO with our new website. It's frustrating with the economy headwinds, and wanting to get in front of potential customers at this pre spring rush time when people are thinking of landscaping projects.

Pearl Sutton wrote:I've been annoyed by duckduckgo putting AI results on the search pages. I keep down voting them, clicking the box "dislike source"  or (I don't have the words right) "dislike AI."

I'd forgotten that was even there.
1) In the upper right corner of duckduckgo.com is a "hamburger" settings icon. (Three horizontal lines, stacked vertically.)
2) It pops out a menu, third item is settings. That opens the settings page.
3) By the "Search Settings" heading, click the last button "AI Features".
4) Now you'll be shown two features. The one you guys are talking about is "Assist". There's a paragraph telling what the results of the different settings will be. You can choose "Never" if you want. I set mine to "On Demand".
5) Be sure you scroll down to and click "Save and Exit", or your new settings will be forgotten.

oh, I get what you guys are talking about now.  https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/duckduckgos-free-ai-tools-are-now-out-of-beta/

I don't think that's here yet.  

But unlike google, it looks like we can turn it off.  

Google's ai summary cracks me up because it hallucinates big time for just about everything I search.  I read it when I need a laugh.  

I was reading up on alternatives to the big guys the other day, also partly in response to the increasing irrelevance of DDG results.

After tossing out a lot of alternatives, I settled on Qwant, which I'm pretty happy with.

Different results than others, and relevant. Privacy focused. Based in France and open source I believe.

The French seem to start up a lot of cool alternative software projects, and most of them seem to be unknown outside of France. Worth a look if you want other "alternative" software too.

https://www.qwant.com/

Wow, excellent responses everyone. Apparently I'm *not* losing my mind regarding DDG's degraded results.

Profuse thanks for all the alternative search options. I'm off to try them!

Duck has always been sketchy. Yandex is my go to engine. Just be prepared to be flagged as a Russian agent. I'm on enough lists already, not the least bit bothered by the prospect.

Well to clarify, I never had any sense that DDG was sketchy or creepy or invasive. I was just mad.

Considering the alternatives, I think they have done something wonderful. It's just that the search results have degraded. Based on the comments above, it seems they are at the mercy of a "major search engine thingy with a different agenda." Well that's not their fault, so I think I will cut them some slack.

It would be interesting if they added a "give me the whole raw barf-bag from the entire internet" button. There's cool stuff out there, if you have a strong stomach and a clothespin on your nose.

Try Brave.

Christopher Weeks wrote:

J. Syme wrote:https://udm14.com/

Good lord! If I read something more important than this this month, I'll be surprised. Thank you!

indeed, thanks a million. i was using an addon that did the same thing but lately it stopped working  

I definitely noticed DDG is not a helpful solution these days.... i'm hearing a lot about paid search engines lately, which is great if you have extra cash laying around (but I dont). I will definitely be trying Mojeek. thanks!

Very grateful for the resources here!

It feels like 1998 all over again.  Finally more choices of viable search engines.

also check out SearxNG, I personally haven't given it a shake down test, but it looks interesting.. coming from a old guy running a variant of Linux on a 18 year old pc take my geek advise with a grain of salt so to speak.


update: for the lazy searcher that want to get better results without Big Brother tracking you (as much)  try https://searx.space/  then pic a search interface from one of the selections, lets say https://baresearch.org/  then type in: willow feeder  or rocket mass heater into the search box, if you like the results bookmark that search engine's home page, if you don't like the results either modify the search engine presets or move on to another one from the list.  you can setup your own search engine (for obsessive compulsive types) using the following help guide https://docs.openwebui.com/tutorials/web-search/searxng/  ....   hope this helps ya'll save some time looking for things and gets you back to doing things that give you peace.  John

I get a weekly email from DuckDuckGo,  DuckDuckGo Privacy Weekly. This week an article reminded me of this thread.

We think you should decide for yourself how much AI you want in your life – or if you want any at all. To that end, we’ve added a new setting to hide AI-generated images when you’re searching for images on DuckDuckGo. Try it by making a search on DuckDuckGo and heading to the Images tab. You’ll see a new drop-down option at the top of the page: "AI images: show" or "AI images: hide." The filter relies on manually curated open-source blocklists. It won’t catch 100% of AI-generated results, but it will greatly reduce the number of AI-generated images you see.

You can also bookmark noai.duckduckgo.com, where the image filter is auto enabled, AI-assisted summaries are switched off, and Duck.ai chat icons are hidden.

When DuckDuckGo isn't giving me quite what I'm looking for, I use this version of Google w/ the AI results removed: https://udm14.com. I can't remember who made it but I got it from PrivacyGuides.net which is a great resource for Privacy.

Resist the Enshittification!

I've used duckduckgo for many years. I particularly liked the lack of targeted ads when watching youtube videos when going through duckduckgo. (I can't stand ads- particularly on youtube- they drive me nuts!!!)

But in the past few days, when I watch youtube through duckduckgo, I've started seeing ads on some videos- lots of them. So many in fact, I can't stand watching commercial videos anymore.

Questions: Is there any way to remove the ads- and is there an explanation from duckduckgo why these annoying and repetitive ads are suddenly popping up now? In case it matters, I have a MacBook Air that runs Sonoma 14.41.1 as the operating system.

There are no more search engines. There is only AI.

M.K. Dorje Sr. wrote:
Questions: Is there any way to remove the ads- and is there an explanation from duckduckgo why these annoying and repetitive ads are suddenly popping up now? In case it matters, I have a MacBook Air that runs Sonoma 14.41.1 as the operating system.

I've only been using DDG for the past year or so, so I can't comment on an uptick in ads. What browser do you use? I use Brave and Firefox and haven't noticed an inordinate amount of ads. I DO think there are just more ads in general though and I don't think there's really a way to stop those. Having the "Do not track" setting activated can reduce the amount of what feel like targeted ads, but I think the overall # of commercials is a symptom of where we are as a society :(

Christopher Weeks wrote:

J. Syme wrote:https://udm14.com/

Good lord! If I read something more important than this this month, I'll be surprised. Thank you!

Thanks for that link!

I did some research, then I installed AdBlock, it didn't work. :(  Then I tried installing UBlock Origin, it works- no more annoying youtube ads!!! Yay!!

Another added benefit of UBlock Origin that I just discovered is that it also blocks ads on Pluto (pluto.tv) and Tubi (tubitv.com). These two websites are great resources for watching old movies for free.

I think one of the main reasons why I dislike ads so much is that I like the philosophy behind the benefits of frugality and I know that accumulating more "stuff" doesn't make me happy. (Except mushrooms!)

I love this meta search,  took some time to learn to configure this, but very powerful..