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How feasible is privacy-respecting personalised search engine results? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 6 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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The issue with Google's personalised search results is, imo:

  1. Not only is it not opt-in, but you can't even opt out of it. Personalised search results should be opt-in and disabled by default.
  2. The data kept on you is used to sell you ads
  3. The data kept on you will be handed over to state entities fairly easily

Given those three problems, how feasible would it be to self-host a search engine that personalises your results to show you things that are more relevant to you? Avoiding issues 1 & 2 as you're self-hosting so presumably you have made the decisions around those two things. And issue 3 is improved as you can host it off-shore if you are concerned about your domestic state, and if you are legally compelled to hand over data, you can make the personal choice about whether or not to take the hit of the consequences of refusing, rather than with a big company who will obviously immediately comply and not attempt to fight it even on legal grounds.

A basic use-case example is, say you're a programmer and you look up ruby, you would want to get the first result as the programming language's website rather than the wikipedia page for the gemstone. You could just make the search query ruby programming language on any privacy-respecting search engine, but it's just a bit of QoL improvement to not have to think about the different ways an ambiguous search query like that could be interpreted.

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[-] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

I know I’m not exactly hitting the mark, have you looked at kagi? You can personalize the weighting of results from certain sites. You can also add lenses which will let you drive results to forums, programming, academia, etc.

To me it was a bit like reliving the early days of google with the don’t be evil mantra still in tact.

Let me also say, it appears to be privacy respecting.

It has been good for me so far. If someone sees a reason I should run away from this, please let me know why and what we all should use instead, I’d appreciate it!

[-] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

Kagi's an interesting one. The main reason why I don't go with it is because you'd have to have an account, de-anonymising you. I know they have their "privacy pass" feature but that seems to essentially rely on trust that they aren't tying your private searches to an account. And also $10/month for a search engine is just pretty steep for my budget.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

I fully respect if it’s just not in the budget for you. A company has to make money somehow. I’d rather pay than get ads or worse let them collect and yet worse sell my data. Also, you can use a burner email and vpn if you want to add an extra layer of obfuscation in there for privacy.

Here’s a few links from their faq.

https://help.kagi.com/kagi/faq/faq.html#why-trust

https://help.kagi.com/kagi/faq/faq.html#why-should-i-pay-for-search

https://help.kagi.com/kagi/faq/faq.html#why-does-kagi-search-require-an-email-address

I really hope I don’t come off as a shill for them. It’s one of the few companies I actually really like.

I also run proton family, and really like the product offering. Their leadership gives me anxiety though. Promos and sales are only for new customers and standard pricing is a bit steep, but you do get multiple services.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

Also, you can use a burner email and vpn if you want to add an extra layer of obfuscation in there for privacy.

It's still all tied to one account. They could say, for instance, the same person searched for "beans", "onions", and "rice", as opposed to not being tied to an account where those 3 searches could have come from 3 different people. Of course, a search engine like DDG is only promising to not track you to try figure out if those 3 searches came from the same person, but various anti-fingerprinting measures could make it infeasible for DDG to do that. For a paid search engine, you'd have to pay for a new account per search if you didn't want it tied to any other searches, if you don't trust that Kagi isn't logging searches (which you shouldn't, because you shouldn't rely on trust for any threat model).

I really hope I don’t come off as a shill for them. It’s one of the few companies I actually really like.

Don't worry, I get where you're coming from and I most certainly think some people have a use-case for it.

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this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
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