Ok fedifam, I asked yesterday about if there's an online tool to check what ad tracking BS your #browser is leaking and surprisingly got no answer so I got off my butt and hunted it down.
Unsurprisingly of course the #EFF has a tool.
My #duckduckgo browser with #Mullvad #vpn aced it.
How do YOU rate?
https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/
edit
Make sure to test your browser as some clicks from Mastodon open their internal browser
#PennedPossibilities 649 2/2 — What research did you conduct for your WIP, and did you uncover anything surprising or fascinating?
This answer, however, should interest any authors wanting to learn something from another authors' search behavior. I finally got completely feed up with the substandard results from DuckDuckGo and the on again off again AI search creeping into Google results, even with &udm=14.
A few days ago I decided to research paid search. All FREE search, it goes without saying, monetizes your behavior, time, or attention, so I understand it isn't free. How much do you make per hour? When I search for anything that could be construed as a product or service someone could SELL, it's impossible to find answers. Look for words for describing how to rock a baby, for example. I'm sure you've a slew of searches you've given up on.
I am trialing kagi.com. I am NOT advertising it; I'm not endorsing it. I've only tried two searches of the 100 allocated me so far. However, those two have been so full of useful results that I'm still mining them the next day.
I'll report back after I use it more.
[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#seach #kagi #google #duckDuckGo #ai #aisearch
If you'd like to remove DuckDuckGo's AI features from a search, and get pre-slop results, try this:
(replace %s with your search term)
It disables all the AI features and it limits the search from 1/1/2001 to the end of 2021, right before ChatGPT came online and the slop began.
I know this means later info isn't searched, but it's getting harder these days to find new content.
@futurebird @lnlyisol What about trying:
cute "ant" stickers
?
Works on #duckduckgo every time 
@v_d_richards
I certainly did not know either. But i searched for it – on DuckDuckGo 
The core browser functionality of the #DuckDuckGo browser is the WebView component provided by the operating system. This means that the browser engine is #Blink on Android and Windows [my last option], and WebKit on iOS and macOS [not an option in my poll].
Sorry for the complication.
#Wikipedia über #DuckDuckGo
Die #Suchmaschine unterliegt dem "USA Patriot Act" und "hat Behörden wie dem FBI, der NSA und der CIA ... Zugriff auf seine Server zu gewähren".
Europäische Alternativen nutzen, wenn es um #Privacy und #Datenschutz geht. Meine Schlussfolgerung fürs Erste...
BAD #AliExpress UK, trying to force me to reveal my real e-mail address rather than the pseudonym #Apple created... #GDPR breach? Anyway, needless to say, I bought the item from #eBay instead, using my pseudonymous e-mail address there! PS #DuckDuckGo product search MUCH better than #Amazon...
One more reason why I switched to #Marginalia over #DuckDuckGo: it doesn't try and do wild guesses as to what I actually wanted to look for, sometimes to a fault. Search is skill-based but therefore precise, predictable and natural.
@marginalia Like, with one single exception, my results for "adhd bullet journal" on #DuckDuckGo and #Google were all super verbose lengthy AI-generated nonsense advice that ultimately said nothing of substance.
And that exception is also just due to someone owning the domain "bulletjournal" verbatim.
#Marginalia for me used to be just a fun toy or tech experiment, but now it's genuinely the only way I could possibly find information on some topics, even if I didn't want to. Crazy.
In your experience, which of these breaks apps/websites the most? (For example, the app freezes or crashes.)
Duck Duck Go is garbage, I’ve tried to stick with it, but I really need something better. Ugh. Not going to use G, tho.
Ich verwende schon sehr lange #DuckDuckGo, das kein Klon von Google ist, weil ich dort für meine Anfragen meist wesentlich bessere Ergebnisse bekomme.
Nur wenn DuckDuckGo nichts bringt, was mich befriedigt (meist bei kommerzieller Suche) verwende ich Startpage, also anonymisiertes Google.
Bei Deiner Suche: warum steht da in Deinen Suchworten google?
Ecosia ist nein war ein Bing Klon, und Bing bringt nach meiner Erfahrung keine guten Ergebnisse.
Mein Beifang; ich werde mal https://www.qwant.com/ ausprobieren.
I disabled #AI assist on #DuckDuckGo, but even when I do, I still get a bunch of search results that point me to 100% AI-generated web pages. Nowadays anyone can just fuzz search engines like #Google for lists of commonly searched queries, then generate slop responses to these queries, then cache the slop, and then use shady SEO techniques to get these slop pages to show up at the top of search results. And this is what I have been getting from a lot of my web searches lately, content from slop shops.
A part of me thinks companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon may themselves be investing in these shady slop shops to deliberately make traditional search engines useless, which would “incentivize” people to use #LLM -based AI like Gemini or #ChatGPT more often, though that is purely speculation on my part.
If you had asked my 20 years ago that the #Internet of the future would rapidly devolve and become increasingly useless as time went on, I would have dismissed you as a paranoid crackpot. Here we are in the future and I still can hardly believe how shitty technology is becoming.
@RaphaelWimmer it's called #DuckDuckGo #InstantAnswers, m8!
Was trying a duckduckgo search for a restaurant in town, and I clicked on a link to read it, then came back to the search results. Suddenly a bunch of links disappeared and the first two links were now tripadvisor.
I selected hide site from these results and immediately a tripadvisor link from another url (different country) pops up. I kind of kept going and hiding about 15 results and new tripadvisor links kept popping up. This went on until "Search query entered was too long. Please shorten and try again."
So is this a bing-underneath thing, or direct enshittification of duckduckgo?
This is while using uBlockOrigin, but that didn't help, I didn't see any way that the ads differed from the normal links either.
Someone has decorated my local post box with #GooglyEyes. Are we still allowed to call them googly eyes or will the search police insist that we call them #DuckDuckGo-y eyes? #postcrossing
dear #DuckDuckGo or other search engine: I want a little button next to every #search result that lets me exclude it from all search results for me, personally, forever. With an option to block the entire domain.
I'm definitely looking at #pinterest but there's just a lot of #AI slop out there. Tons of AI-generated websites. Even without the AI search "helper" things, I get a lot of shit that is just really low quality.
I don't think I see this witih DDG (there is a "give feedback" button with unclear effects on my personal search experience) and I'm not familiar with many other search engines now (except google and no). But if there's something out there that already has this functionality, I'll be happy to check it out and happy for the referral.
Which non-big tech search engine do you use and why? #search #searchengine #ecosia #qwant #kagi #duckduckgo #mojeek #brave
Gizliliğinize değer veriyor musunuz? 
DuckDuckGo, aramalarınızı ve gezinme geçmişinizi izlemeyen ücretsiz bir arama motorudur. Kişisel verilerinizi koruyun! 
Daha fazla bilgi edinin: https://duckduckgo.com/ #gizlilik #arama motoru #duckduckgo 
#turkey #türkiye
into bean pâté 
#RIPNatenom 
