I've DuckDuckGone'd to Brave Browser

[Alex Snyder]

The hill I will die on is the one where the Constitution of the United States lives. Censorship that breaks with the 1st Amendment is a non-starter for me. You're welcome to say anything under the tenants of "freedom of speech" and I strongly support that!

If a company wishes to make changes to its terms to protect its business, I can appreciate that. What I don't appreciate is changing terms based on political fads. I'm looking at you Coca-Cola.

I appreciate it more when a company sets the terms and stands by them. DealerRefresh has one main rule: don't advertise in non-sponsored threads without being asked to do so. We'll also remove posts that contain nudity and other things that are not typically found in business conversations, but we set these terms the day we started. We will not be swayed by a political fad to change our terms.

So, on the news DuckDuckGo is going to censor "misinformation" about Russia from search results, I am divorcing them. I gave Google the boot in 2016 when they decided to take a political stance by curating search results to favor certain politicians.

DuckDuckGo is FFGone for me now. Regardless of how I might feel about Russia, I will not be told what I can and cannot read. This is not 1984... yet.

Thank you @Jeff Kershner for turning me on to Brave Browser. It was an easy transition and I feel like I'm not being treated like a child. If you'd like to stay free, give Google the boot, give FuggFuggGone the boot, give Bing the boot and go here: https://brave.com/

 

[Tallcool1]

I have been a Brave user for about a year now. It was an easy transition for me as well. I have used Duck Duck Go as my search provider in Brave. I was not aware that DDG has gone to censoring. I am glad you pointed this out.

I have read that our Government closely monitors traffic on the TOR Network, and if I am not mistaken TOR is the In Private network that Brave uses. To me it doesn't really matter, I just found that interesting.

 

[Jim K]

Admire and respect your conviction and principles @Alex Snyder . I've been using DDG and Brave for a while, but will switch exclusively to Brave now. I only use Google when I want to know how my clients are searching and seeing the world.

 

[craigh]

There are a few other good alternatives as well. Vivaldi has some really cool features and lets you turn just about everything on and off to tailor your internet experience to your personal "power user" level. https://vivaldi.com/features/
I tend to use different solutions on different devices, but my primary is still Firefox + add-ons.

 

[craigh]

I have read that our Government closely monitors traffic on the TOR Network, and if I am not mistaken TOR is the In Private network that Brave uses. To me it doesn't really matter, I just found that interesting.

We have to assume that pretty much everything is monitored by both the government and private corporations.
I have always advocated for security by separation - spread your information out, use different vendors for different solutions and whenever possible use a VPN to add another layer of complication to the tracking.

 

[Jim K]

There are a few other good alternatives as well. Vivaldi has some really cool features and lets you turn just about everything on and off to tailor your internet experience to your personal "power user" level. https://vivaldi.com/features/
I tend to use different solutions on different devices, but my primary is still Firefox + add-ons.

View attachment 5863

Wow. Do you think that these products exist is indicative of a real problem?

 

[Greg_Gifford]

not trying to start shit - totally agree that free speech should be protected...

but at the same time, don't you think that the search engines (and social media, for that matter) have a RESPONSIBILITY to remove results that are proven to be "Bad results"? In this case, if someone is publishing misinformation or flat out propaganda that can easily be proven by multiple sources to be false, then why should it be allowed to show up in search results?

it's exactly the same thing as child porn - the pedophile could make the argument that his child porn site should be shown in search results because it's free speech... Or a website could make the case that graphic photos/video of a suicide are free speech, so they should show in search results.

Yes, you can go down the "but those are against the law" route - but I'm using extreme examples for a reason.

In this case - why is displaying information that's been PROVEN to be incorrect something protected by free speech? They're not saying you can't find it - if you WANT to find propaganda or misinformation, you can tailor your search query to find it... but for general queries, they have a responsibility to show relevant answers to the questions being searched by users...

 

[Alex Snyder]

@Greg_Gifford - This is nothing like child porn or things that have laws attached to them. Those things are very clear and simple to determine.

What is misinformation? What is propaganda? Who determines this? Are you sure you want to open up this gigantic can of worms?

 

[Greg_Gifford]

wait... seriously? Dude... They're committing war crimes and bombing civilians and still claiming that it's just a "military exercise" - and putting out propaganda to try to tell the Russian people that everything else is lying and nothing is wrong... it's common sense - so I'm confused about how you're trying to defend that by saying that someone has to prove it's misinformation

 

[Alex Snyder]

I'm not talking about Russia. I'm speaking in general. Who determines what is misinformation?