A place to ask questions of Lemmygrad's best and brightest
Duckduckgo. Not for the privacy concerns, I believe that about as far as I can spit, but becaues I really like their bangs system. A lot of them have become very second nature for me at this point.
Also ducks are cute.
If I am searching something in Chinese I try to use baidu, but my actual chinese level is not that great. Working on it.
Duckduckgo.com
Because I've fallen for their privacy focused marketing strategy and I don't know about any other alternatives.
you can mimic that functionality in Firefox-based browsers by adding bookmarks with search keywords (e.g. if you create a bookmark with the URL https://piped.video/results?search_query=%s and the keyword yt, submitting yt some video in the URL/search bar will search for "some video" on piped.video)
they also provide a native onion endpoint which can be nice.
I'd like to use SearXNG instances but they don't seem to be reliable enough, so I use Yandex to annoy the libs (bonus that they don't block Lemmygrad results from naturally appearing)
Why Yandex particularly?
Mostly because they’re based in Russia to be honest so they don’t filter out “Russian propaganda”
I know they’re tracking though. I’ll happily switch if I could find an engine that doesn’t track and is reliable.
Can Yandex be added in SearXng?
That’s a good point. The website doesn’t indicate it searches Yandex, but perhaps there is an instance that does since it’s open-source and all
It's also good for finding torrents and free streaming services since other mainstream search engines like Google censor those results.
Really? Oh! I might try it for those then!
I use the duck duck go browser because of how lightweight it is, so that.
mostly startpage.com and qwant.com...anything to avoid using google directly
Same, been using Startpage with good results for years now
I hope everyone here knows that DDG is censoring it's search results https://www.vox.com/recode/22981115/duckduckgo-free-speech-privacy-oops so people'd rather use yandex instead of this shit
DDG censors us too, that's why I suggested Yandex
At one point, gpo.zugaina.org was censored due to a change in Bing's web crawler (I think), which was the last straw that led me not use DDG as my primary search engine anymore.
First SearXNG, now 4get, it scrapes from Yandex as well
Thank you so much for this one comrade! I am very thankful!
I have been trying multiple at this point, though I am not sure I found one I am happy with. I tend to use SearXNG, but I tend to make too many searches too quickly and it causes various search engines to block me for a bit.
I thought I should share another search engine if it helps:
Here's a few more search engines:
Marginalia Search - A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design - I just tried this one, and it's very handy. Definitely recommend, though the results may not be relevant depending on your search, but sometimes you may find another similar site you would want to bookmark for later.
wiby - A search engine of curated websites, useful for finding small blogs
Mojeek - Proprietary but uses its own web crawler
MWMBL - A free, open-source, and non-profit search engine
At this point, I have been unsatisfied with search engines because the internet it just filled with SEO optimized crap. I made a habit of bookmarking every interesting or useful thing I find. I rely on sites like Lemmy/Lemmygrad, Reddit, Hacker News, etc. to find interesting links. I also look for awesome list git repositories (such as this, this, this, and this) (and this and this to search for more) and Reddit/Lemmy wikis to find useful resources. If I find (semi-)trustworthy news sites like Grayzone, AntiWar, etc., I will keep a tab open to use that as my news feed instead of Reddit. If I want to look up a news story or opinion on a search engine, I tend to add the word "Marxist" or "socialist" and it sometimes gives me results I want. If I want to find help online, I either find the documentation web page or I will just add the word "reddit" since I still rely on reddit question posts to find answers.
Bringing Back The Minimal Web - A blog post about an idea I agree with and that I want to see manifested
One thing I would wish if we reach a socialist society is for everyone to be provided the option to make their own website (multiple options available for various levels of tech savviness, from self-hosting on one's own dedicated server to "simplified web designing tools with presets" for the least tech savvy) subsidized by the government. Then a search engine can be built to prioritize those sites, especially those that people used to make important informational resources.
I also like browsing Gemini websites, which requires a browser add-on or an entirely different browser. You may learn about it here: https://geminiprotocol.net/
I wish there were more Marxist Gemini capsules, though I hope to make Gemini equivalent mirrors of important Marxist websites someday.
I also wish there to be an org-mode protocol to make websites as org documents for emacs. There's this person's blog post that mentioned a similar idea, which I found from this discussion on Reddit.
I find that visiting niche communities on niche platforms helps with finding quality content and resources, thus I tend to enjoy looking through old/new protocols and small websites/platforms before they are flooded with commercialized crap and are abused by users that don't respect the sites' rules/etiquette/culture.
Sidenote: If you like to sail the seven seas, you can self-host Jackett to use as a proxy server to query torrents.
Do you find Gemini to be very reactionary as of late? I've been browsing Gemini for at least 2 years now, it has become full of fash and like 2 anarchists, at least in aggregators such as Antenna and Cosmos.
I store bookmarks in a text file and have over 300 at this point in less than one year.
Yeah, I do find it the same, but I still find some helpful and interesting computer-related blog posts.
I have been storing my bookmarks in Firefox and Buran for Gemini on my android phone, but I eventually want to transfer all of them to a text file and launch links via a menu launcher like dmenu, bemenu, etc.
I tried to mention other search engines, protocols, and tactics that no one else mentioned yet. I am glad you found one you are happy with. :) I know I made a wiki-like comment at this point, lol.
Ecosia because trees
Nice!
various SearXNG instances (I don't trust them all to be private, but some will be) and occasionally DuckDuckGo (because it's the default in Tor Browser)
I'm more often finding myself searching specific websites than using a web wide search engine these days, but when I need to it's generally DDG Lite.
Searxng when I can. At the very least it proxies other search engines and helps a bit with the censoring of various results.
Do you know if there is a way to proxy Yandex search results?
When you self host you can add whatever you like as a search engine. I'm sure someone has already shared the couple config lines required to add Yandex.
DuckDuckGo because Google is now complete trash, but also because it specifically allows for searching within specific countries, whereas Google likes sending me to captcha hell if I do too many searches in different languages or dare to use a VPN. There are other neat features too, but that was the biggest reason to just drop google completely.