this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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Privacy

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I have used SearXNG for a while, but I switched to LibreX after the search engine started glitching. Recently, though, LibreX has stopped returning any results. I am currently on Mojeek, but the results aren't that great.

I have also tried Qwant, but I wasn't too keen on it. Startpage will be impractical, as I use a VPN and this engine often blocks me because of it. I don't want to use Brave Search for a number of reasons. MetaGer has too many important features behind its paywall. I'm not sure about DuckDuckGo, but I could use it if there was no other option.

Any suggestions, or am I being too picky?

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Maybe some will dislike , but i use yandex, i don't know why, but i get good results. I prefer to give them my info and not google

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Definitely not. Never mind "out of the frying pan, into the fire"; for me, this is "out of the lake, into the fire".

Using Yandex would involve giving my personal data to Russia. The possibility of my data falling into the wrong hands is the main reason I am looking for a private search engine; I'm certainly not then about to just walk up to the wrong hands and say "here you go". Not to mention the censorship.

Besides, I've blacklisted the .ru, .su, and .рф, .москва, and .yandex TLDs in NextDNS.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

Well i am far far from Russia so i don't care, it can't be worst compared to google. I don't believe too much in the real privacy, one way or another 3 letter agencies will get the info.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

What issues did you have with SearXNG?

You could try to self host it, or even just run it on your local machine.

Shameless plug on how to set it up locally, and how to set up custom filters (to block junk websites and redirect reddit to the old interface).

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It stopped returning results. I tried other instances: same problems. However, I think the issue may have been fixed.

I am currently on an iPhone, and I'm not really in a position to self-host (although I did try to set up a FreedomBox the other day).

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ah fair enough.

I started by having it on my laptop, and used it only there. Liked it so much that I'm renting a VPS around $5 a month to have it on all my devices.

But to be fair, I'm also hosting other things on that VPS (SearXNG is very light), so it's multi-purpose.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Who do you like for VPS hosting?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm using https://metager.de/ it's German and sometimes the results lean towards that but in 99% of cases it doesn't matter.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

There's an English version out there, but some essential features are paid, such as enabling moderate safesearch or adding Mojeek as an engine.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

As main search, among others, I use Andisearch, it's an AI search assistant, with own lenguage model and one of the most private search engine. own reader mode for websites in the search results, so you don't need to visit it, you also can watch YouTube and others sandboxed right in the search results, anonymous use, no ads, no tracking, no logs.

https://andisearch.com

Easy add it to your search engine list in your browser https://andisearch.com/?query=%s

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I use Brave Search, it's quite good imo

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

Brave

Its surprisingly good... I rarely need anything else

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

tbh im not sure but if you want google results with safesearch try resulti

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Why do u not want to use Brave Search? It's actually pretty good

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't like Brave as a company. Brendan Eich is an arsehole, Brave Browser has had (minor, but numerous) controversies, their crypto stuff is off-putting, and now they're sticking their new AI into everything.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

you could index brave and mojeek results with you're own search engine

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

you're attempts at denying grammar will fail back to back

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A random thought

Do we really want search engines ?

Or, do we want AI to tell us the answers to our questions?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

We want search engines. GPT-3.5 has a knowledge cutoff in 2021, so I only really use it for software recommendations and text/code formatting.